Hi, I’m Maisie and I’m in my final year at Newcastle University studying computer science. Last year, I did my placement with Deep Secure, a cyber security company which provides cyber security defence products to businesses. I worked in the research team as a research assistant for the company. I will be returning to Deep Secure next year to work as a software engineer.
I learnt a lot during my internship and throughly enjoyed it. Below is a list of skills that helped me during my placement to get the most out of the experience. I hope this will be helpful if you are planning on doing a placement year.
Ask questions
One of the most important things I learnt during my internship was to ask questions. You are not expected to know everything and it is an invaluable opportunity to learn from others who have more experience than you. However, I found it is important to have done an appropriate amount of research before this, so you can ask more specific, purposeful questions. Asking questions was especially important when I was working independently, to help prevent feeling out of my depth. I did this by firstly asking for clarity if needed when given a new project proposal. This ensured I fully understood the requirements of the project. Then, at appropriate milestones, I made sure to ask for feedback from other team members to ensure I was reaching their expectations of what they wanted from the product. This helped me produce a more successful project.
Express what you projects you enjoy
Another thing I made sure to do when on my internship was to express what projects I had particularly enjoyed working on. This showed my enthusiasm for the role and I was then considered for similar projects which I also enjoyed. Similarly, I also expressed the skills I wanted to gain from my internship that aligned with my role in the company. For example, I was given the opportunity to give multiple presentations after expressing wanting to improve my communication skills. This helped me get the most out of my internship and learn new, different skills which I could not at university.
You don’t need to know everything
At the start of my internship, I was nervous that I might not know everything needed for my role. I would be using the programming language, Go, which was new to me. However, I did not need to be concerned, as my manager knew my starting level and aided me with my learning, by giving me projects gradually increasing in difficulty. I realised that the most important thing was just to get stuck into projects with enthusiasm, research was expected of me and I didn’t need to know everything initially. And of course, as before, it was perfectly okay to ask for help when needed. After a few weeks of my internship, I felt more comfortable in my role and had picked up most of the skills needed.
Be self-motivated
During my internship, I worked remotely, most of the time working on independent projects. Therefore self-motivation was very important skill for me to develop. I learnt to do this in a few ways. Firstly, I would set myself realistic daily objectives that I wanted to achieve. This helped me stay on track with project development and also helped with check-ins with my manager as I could easily show what I had accomplished and the progress that had been made to a project. Secondly, I tried to make the best use of my spare time and be proactive with tasks. Examples of this included updating older coding projects as my programming skills improved and researching different programming libraries which could be useful for upcoming projects. This way, I was able to show my manager I was able to take initiative and make the best use of my time.
Get to know the whole team
As I previously mentioned, I worked remotely during my internship. Therefore, getting to know all of my other team members was difficult. However, I tried to network with as many team members as possible. I met people on the sales team, the software engineering team, the research team and those in leadership. People in these different roles had different skills I could learn from and I was able to gain more experience. I was also able to learn more about the structure of the company and find out what departments I enjoyed. As well as this, it also just made my experience at the company more enjoyable and I am looking forward to going back.