Anisa Jibrell – General Assignment Reporter
Students decorate their LinkedIn profiles with the cumbersome details of past internships in hopes that employers will swoop in and take them out of their unemployment misery, an inevitable struggle that most students will have to succumb to at some point in their academic careers.
Krishna Sampath, program director of Apprentice 100, a software developer apprenticeship program, paid a visit to Southern’s Computer Science Club’s first and only meeting of the semester to discuss the perks of the three-month experimental education program and how it can alleviate the pangs of the job searching process for computer science majors.
“One of the key problems is, how do you get the experience that’s directly relevant to the job you want?” said Sampath. “That’s where Apprentice 100 comes in.”
According to Sampath’s Linkedin profile, Apprentice 100 is a public-private partnership between Independent Software and the state of Connecticut that provides technical training and employment development for individuals interested in pursuing careers in technology start-ups.
“An entrepreneur will have an idea, a dream in their head, a song in their heart, but no real technical skills to make it happen,” said Sampath. “So we work with them on how they would actually build that.”
Once students are selected to be a part of the program, they are placed in project teams consisting of individuals from various universities and academic backgrounds in order to promote cross academic collaborations.
“The reason we do that is because different universities teach different languages, and we find that people work better when they’re exposed to different ideas,” said Sampath.
According to Sampath, students work directly with companies on front-end projects that focus on JavaScript, a computer programming language universally used to create interactive effects on web browsers. They also focus on HTML, Hypertext Markup Language, a standardized system for tagging text files, CSS or Cascading Style Sheets, a language used for describing the look and formatting of a document written in HTML.
Students also work on back-end projects, which focus on PHP, a server-side scripting program, and MySQL, an Open Source database management system. Open source meaning, it is possible for anyone to use and modify the software.
Sampath said companies are invited to the program to interact with students and observe demonstrations, where students show what they’ve built, the progress they have made, and receive feedback.
“That way when you go in for an interview with a hiring manager or developer, you have something to talk about,” said Sampath. “They say ‘Oh, I remember. Julie, you were directly responsible for the database aspect of your project. That was interesting, how did that go?’ So that kind of thing.”
The program consists of two cohorts, one that runs during the winter and one that runs in the fall, and each cohort has 25 available slots for students to apply, said Sampath.
Following the Apprentice 100 presentation, students engaged in an open discussion led by the club’s co-presidents, Sahil Makhijani and Azm Hussein who are both sophomore computer science majors, about some of the short-term and long-term goals of the club.
“The whole point of this meeting was just to get out basic ideas of what we want this club to be in the future,” said Hussein. “For now we’re just gathering a few thoughts, and it’s up to you guys, well us, to see where we want to go from here.”
Hussein and Makhijani discussed the possibility of collaborating with the math and physics departments on projects and creating workshops to help club members work more effectively in groups. Both students also stressed the importance of talking to computer science professors about their specialties.
Julio Mansilla, employee of Independent Software and Southern graduate, said the job process can be especially difficult since companies generally require lengthy experience, or a high GPA to enter a company without experience.
“I, myself, didn’t have either of those things,” said Mansilla. “So I think this is a great opportunity to not let numbers talk or represent you, but let your skills, your passion, and your commitment take you to where you want to go.”
Photo Credit: Derek Torrellas
Great job!