Computer Science Major Mahesh Wosti knew exactly what he wanted to gain from his software and quality assurance internship this fall. Thanks to the strong communication and collaboration he shared with his team at Ōmcare, both his and the company’s goals were met.
“There were several things I wanted to learn coming in,” Wosti said. “Here at Ōmcare, I learned them all. Now I’m almost a pro.”
Ōmcare, a home healthcare technology based in Burnsville, Minnesota, maintains an open approach when it comes to hosting their internships. By consulting with their students on the technology they want to learn, the company can then find ways to apply that tech to their business needs.
In order to offer this level of autonomy to incoming students, Ōmcare looks for someone who can learn fast and work independently.
“Mahesh was willing to pick up tasks from any area,” recalled Ōmcare’s Director of Engineering Sajith Padmaja. “He’s a great intern who follows our company values. Our values are very important for all of us. It involves being respectful and innovative, and Mahesh is someone who follows that.”
Supporting new talent
For several years now, Ōmcare has hired talented STEM students like Wosti through the SciTech Internship Program. The success they’ve found with these candidates, keeps the small business coming back.
“If we get a smart engineer who’s still in college, we can teach that person from the start. It’s an opportunity to help them understand the systems that we’ve developed from scratch,” Padmaja said. For the team, there’s also the added benefit of knowing they’re giving back. “If we can contribute to a great future engineer and have an opportunity to help in their learning process, that’s something we are grateful for.”
Taking the initiative
Wosti started his internship with a debugging project. Working in the company’s main servers taught him a lot about the source code and helped establish a baseline understanding of Ōmcare’s Application Programming Interface (API).
Eager to learn Jenkin (a CI/CD automation tool) and Swagger (an API documentation tool), Wosti shared this interest with his supervisor who encouraged him to conduct some research on the topics. With these new tools at his disposal, Wosti developed a valuable skillset that he could then apply to his Ōmcare tasks.
“Learning Jenkins and Swagger was one of my biggest accomplishments that I achieved during these two months,” Wosti said proudly. “The feeling that you’re doing something for real is enlightening. That is one of the most important things we get from an internship.”
New tools for a bright future
When it came to the tools that Wosti was hopping to add to his resume, this internship helped him gain access to them all. “I learned the technology that I wanted to learn. I think I’ve covered almost all the technologies that are very popular in the industry,” Wosti said. “I’m very thankful to Sajith and the team for giving me that opportunity.”
At the time of the interview, Wosti was weighing his options of what he wanted to do after graduation. Whether securing a fulltime job or pursuing his PhD, either way, he said, “I want to become a good engineer.” Now, Wosti will have the opportunity to do just that, working fulltime at Ōmcare as Software Engineer.
Get involved
Looking to build your small business workforce? Apply now and start planning your internship experience today.
College STEM majors looking to get involved can enroll here while returning SciTech students can send their current transcript to scitechmn@mntech.org to reactivate their account.