For a year and a half in DIRECTUM support, I have solved more than a thousand requests, including those related to setting up the system and working with application code. "So what?" - a logical question arises. And the fact that I am a student from the economic department, who two years ago did not understand what the server part is for in the architecture of mobile applications, and that the site interface in the browser is actually html markup. And I will tell you how I got into an IT company, having no experience and skills in this area.
Where did I start
Hello, my name is Oleg, I am a DIRECTUM support engineer. Our company develops, promotes, supports ... in general, provides the entire life cycle of electronic document management systems and related products.
I suspect you thought that I was very far from the IT world. And it is true. I was as far away as my education allowed. At school I studied computer science: basic theory, programming in Pascal ABC, etc. At the university I studied the subject of information systems: again theory and a bit of programming in Delphi. In short, I knew only the very, very basics of theory, which are rarely useful in practice.
After the first and second courses, a couple of guys and I defended the practice where we developed mobile applications. More precisely, one person wrote them, and I and another guy did everything else. For example, we calculated the cost of renting it is not clear (at that time) what the necessary servers were for.
By the third year, the IT field was quite interesting to me. I have already tried to master the C# language. Installed the development environment and solved the problem of building triangles from triangle symbols (β²). Such puzzles are found in some university programs. A classmate - the one who wrote our mobile applications - reacted to my development something like this:
And yet I liked programming, even if it didnβt always work out well. I felt the pleasure of immersing myself in a sphere that is in constant development and surrounds you everywhere. It was then that I learned that there are many good IT companies in Udmurtia. Some of them are considered leaders in their fields.
Device for practice
I was informed about the vacancy in DIRECTUM in the autumn of the third year. The teacher at the university said that the company needed interns. And even though the university practice should take place in the summer, I decided that I would do it in the fall. In the summer I expected to rest all three months. Spoiler alert: This is my second summer in a row.
Initially, I applied for an internship, of course, for fun. I had no idea what I could give to an IT company when I practically do not know the basics in this area. HR manager Lena wrote to me in VK. She said that she had received my resume and invited me for an interview. And again, for fun, I agreed.
I thought that they would ask me about knowledge of programming languages ββand stuff like that. But at the interview they asked something completely different. For example, USE scores and participation in subject Olympiads during school time. I said that I often won in district rounds, and in mathematics and economics I reached the level of the republic several times. Then they learned my knowledge of the basics of programming. For example, they asked how . As it turned out, I knew about her. At university, we wrote sorting in Delphi, but I don't remember that it's called that.
In general, the interview left a double feeling. It seems that he shared his achievements, but he seemed to have failed in the knowledge of the basics (I could not remember and tell what we studied there in Delphi at the university). The basics, it seemed to me, were more important in the interview. I told Lena about my impressions after graduation. She reassured me and gave me hope that I would come here again.
Three days later, Lena offered to do an internship at the support service. In response, I asked a fairly logical question for me - βsomething will need to be learned, since I screwed up?β. But there was no need to learn anything.
Practice in the company
For a whole month, I was wondering why I was taken on an internship, and what I would do among abstruse people who write code all day long (what else are they doing in these IT companies?). I never formed any personal expectations for the practice because I just couldn't imagine it.
When I arrived, it turned out that everything was quite clear and interesting. For practice, feasible tasks for a student-economist were prepared. I was assigned a mentor who supervised the solution of two tasks assigned to me.
- I was involved in the administration of content on the DIRECTUM community site - a company forum with thematic branches (questions, articles, ideas, etc.). There I moderated a branch with questions.
- In addition, I got acquainted with the DIRECTUM system. This took place in two stages: first it was necessary to install it on a virtual machine, and then go through the health checklist and make sure that the main operations were performed.
I tried to perform the tasks of moderating the site and getting to know the system conscientiously - I asked a lot of questions to the mentor (at times it seemed that it was too much), I was attentive to every detail of the process. I wanted to make sure I was doing everything right. After 80 hours of practice, I completed both tasks as required.
The mentor wrote a review of my work, and the supervisor analyzed it. To a greater extent, it is not the fact of completing the task that is evaluated. Much more important are the components of this processKey words: motivation of a person to solve the set tasks, approach to their solution, mindset of the trainee, interaction with colleagues and a way to find answers to difficult questions. After weighing all these aspects, the manager made me a job offer. From the next month, I got a job.
Work in a company
I decided to close my ignorance of the basics. In the new year, I was trained both at work and at home. At work, these were internal training courses and certification for the category. At home, I studied Python and MS SQL administration. I tried to fix all my weaknesses: reading code, administering Windows and MS SQL, and, of course, administering the DIRECTUM system. I proved to myself that I can work in the field of IT and overcame hard .
In parallel, I solved various requests from customers. As my knowledge grew, conversions became more and more difficult. A year ago, these were simple requests to perform standard operations: generate a key for the system, issue access to a support site, and so on. And now more and more often these are various incidents in the system of clients / partners with which their administrators and developers contact us. At times, to solve them, you have to independently understand the application code and change it to suit the specifics of the client.
In general, this is a good option for immersion in the field - to solve appeals. You must first understand how to answer the client's question. Then you must be 100% sure that your answer is correct. Clients/partners will not understand you if you do not understand yourself.
Simultaneously with work, I had 1.5 years to study in the bachelor's degree. I chose the topic of the diploma at the end of the third year, when I became interested in the development of artificial intelligence in our company. I formulated it as business development based on artificial intelligence. Linking to IT and the economy killed two birds with one stone.
Like I said, right at this time . Ario is a solution based on artificial intelligence algorithms that classifies documents in various sections, extracts the text layer and facts from them, and does many more interesting things.
The manager gave me the task to set up rules for extracting facts from letters of reference. To do this, I took internal training courses on setting up these rules. And as a result, the rules I developed are about to begin to be implemented in the support service. This will help the department automate the completion of the Description field on case cards. Now support engineers read the entire letter from the customer, and then fill in the βDescriptionβ by hand. After implementation, they will immediately see the error text in this field, which will be automatically extracted from letters based on the written rules. In my university thesis, I used this development and defended myself with excellent marks.
And so 1,5 years passed, the impostor syndrome disappeared, and I already entered the master's program in the direction related to artificial intelligence. At work, I recently certified for the next category. I want to continue my professional growth in the IT field.
Life hacks
Now I can write my personal observations on how to get into an IT company without having sufficient competencies:
- Look for companies in your city, region, country. Decide where you would like to go and what position.
- Look at job vacancies in the company. Find out if there may be an open position in the department where they accept internships. Life hack: IT companies always recruit people, even if they do not write about it on the site. The market is growing all the time β> you need to expand your company and strengthen its position.
- Find HR contacts. Try! In any case, they will communicate with you, even if you are an economics student who understands little in IT.
- Remember that you can start with practice - expectations for such candidates will be lower than for employees. During the internship, you will have time to get to know the company. At the same time, show yourself and enlist support for further cooperation.
- Read how to behave in an interview, be smarter than me in this regard. Research the company, be yourself, answer questions honestly. Executives and HR managers love these guys. There are many great guides on this topic, one, for example, .
- If you are hired by the company, show yourself, ask questions, try to understand everything carefully in order to do your tasks as well as possible.
- Do not forget that the IT industry is quite vast and constantly changing. It will be faster to catch up on the basics if you do it at home. At all Always make time for self-study It doesn't matter if you are a student or an experienced developer.
Results
During my work at DIRECTUM, I realized that in the IT field, geeks who are closed only in their work, as from stereotypes about programmers, do not work. I haven't seen these at all. There are cheerful friendly guys who are ready to help newcomers and support them.
In my work there are quite boring problems, but much more often I solve interesting problems. Often I find some new challenges for myself and take the initiative to tackle them. It is not difficult to guess how I got to Habr with this article. That's what I like about my work - I can influence whether it's interesting for me to work here or not. I myself am responsible for this.
Source: habr.com