How an internship helped me land a job in Dubai.
About the Author: Ashish Chawla, a student of TSEC, Mumbai, gives insights into the various internships he did during his degree. He also shares how his last internship gave him an opportunity to land a job in Dubai.
I was inclined towards web development since the 2nd year of my college. Although I knew the basics of front-end development, I was yet to utilize my learnings in real-time. The first chance to put my skills to use came with an internship wherein I worked for a college senior’s blog. While working with my seniors, I came to know about Internshala, a platform to find internships. When I browsed their website, I got hooked! After that, I applied to multiple internships throughout my engineering and sharpened my skills.
My Internships:
1. BFY Sports and Fitness — Here, I had a personal interview with the hiring manager wherein I was asked about my WordPress skills and how I would set up a blog for them. As I already had an experience in this domain, I showcased my skills and got hired. During this 3-month stint, I had to create a website for their new venture called Keep fit at work as per the given guidelines.
2. Klipart Kreations Pvt. Ltd. — I worked here as a content developer for their blog. I would develop write-ups describing the events that took place at the NGO associated with the company. During the interview, I was asked a few grammatical questions which were pretty simple.
3. Deskerra Accounting Firm — They gave me a task to design an HTML page using CSS and Bootstrap framework, which I was able to do precisely, and that’s how I landed this internship. This was a two-month stint where I developed a blog for them.
4. Sunarch Ventures Pvt. Ltd. — This organisation was developing an education-based system for their offline institution called GuruNiketan. I applied for a backend development role here and was selected on the basis of a task to create a small system with 3 database tables. I was also asked to run a few queries to display the stated data.
5. Biophlox — This was an OpenCart-based e-commerce system, and I was hired based on my past experience with OpenCart. I made a dedicated OpenCart plugin for them as per the specifications they had stated.
After the end of my last semester, I got a job during campus placements; however, I had about 4 months of time on my hands before I would get the joining letter. So I decided to do an internship again! I applied to a couple of internships on Internshala. One of them was in ReportCard Technologies, an educational startup based in UAE. The selection process involved a telephonic conversation with the HR regarding the job description, tenure, working hours, etc. followed by a technical interview wherein I was evaluated on my knowledge of PHP, Ajax, and JavaScript. Some of the questions I was asked were –
a. What’s the difference between “for” and “for each” loop?
b. What is the difference between “GET” and “POST” types of requests? How do you process these requests?
c. Consider a scenario where there are 5 lanes and 25 horses. How many races will be needed to find out the fastest horse? In the same scenario, how many races are needed to find the second fastest horse?
d. Do you know how the bootstrap grid works?
I wasn’t sure of my selection but they appreciated my skills, and after a trial week, I ended up getting a full-time internship as a web developer for 6 months. My job was to develop new features and functions for their school management system to build their final product. The system had a lot of features in it like attendance, making classes, assigning students to classes, etc. My role was divided into 60% of backend tasks and 40% of frontend functions such as making layouts.
After 3 months of this internship, I got the appointment letter from the company that had hired me during placement season. I informed my manager at ReportCard Technologies that I’d have to quit the internship. As things turned out, they presented me with a counteroffer for the job with an opportunity to work in Dubai for 6 months. This completely blew me away! Obviously, I rejected the offer to work in an MNC in a testing profile and accepted the chance to pursue a career in web development, my first love!
In October, I flew to Dubai. It’s a startup with a small team and over the few months I’ve been here, I’ve enjoyed the job thoroughly. Currently, I’m working as a full stack developer and my responsibilities include developing the database of the entire system and inculcating new features in it such as switch functions, timezone management, etc. I will soon finish my 6-month tenure here and fly back to Mumbai to work with the new branch they’re opening there. Choosing to work with ReportCard Technologies was the best decision I ever made!
Amazed by Ashish’s experience? Do you also want to build a career in web development? Check out these web development internships and give wings to your career!
