When Himanshu Jadaun, an IT major at Minnesota State University-Mankato, secured his SciTech internship with Nexplore, he was told that one of the primary projects he’d be working on involved automation testing, an area he had no experience in.
Jadaun, however, was undaunted. He did some preliminary research and in four days learned the basics of manual and automation testing, ensuring that he’d be prepared for his first day of work.
“When he found out what we did, he was so proactive in learning about these things. It was amazing,” recalled Debra Mormile, the HR Manager at Nexplore. Nexplore is a software development firm with offices in Mankato and Minneapolis. This small company uses automation and artificial intelligence to help address inefficiencies within the construction industry.
Four job offers, one great opportunity
Previously, Jadaun said, finding an internship hadn’t been easy. So this year, he tried applying through SciTech and of the four job offers he received, Nexplore made the best impression.
“The way Debra welcomed me and how she treated me were some of the things I loved,” Jadaun recalled fondly. “I only went there one day, but if we resume work in the office, I would drive to Minneapolis to work with them.”
Apart from his in-person onboarding in the Cities, Jadaun’s internship has been remote. As a quality assurance intern, he’s able to work from home, writing test cases for apps and websites, checking for bugs and working closely with the testing software.
“I’m loving that, writing the manual test cases. What I’m excited about is working on the automation scripts,” Jadaun said. “In the next few weeks I’ll start working as an automation tester as well. I’ll have to code in JavaScript and write programs that can fetch data from the websites and applications we’re working on to find the bugs and fix them.”
A guideline for success
During the interview, Mormile made a point of asking Jadaun what he was interested in learning and what he hoped to achieve. From her previous experience working with interns at Evolve Additive Solutions, another SciTech company, Mormile created a set of guidelines for internship success. The process begins with understanding their interests and providing experiences that meet both the company and the student’s goals. It ends with the intern giving a 20-minute presentation to Nexplore’s senior leadership team, summarizing what they learned.
Knowing that presentation is coming, Jaduan said, “it’s putting a lot of pressure on me, but that’s going to help me a lot as well. I’m going to develop and evolve throughout this internship; I’m going to learn new things. And then at the end, when I present myself to the executives of the company, I can actually tell them how I’ve felt working here and how it’s going to help me in the future. So all of these things, directly or indirectly, are going to help me.”
A future with Nexplore
Upon reflection, Jaduan said, “Internships are always the first step toward your professional career. These experiences are very important. They help prepare you for a fulltime job in the future. Right now, my objective is to work for the company as hard as I can. And if I could land a job here in the future, that would be really great.”
“About 50 percent of Nexplore’s employees have joined Nexplore though an internship program,” added Mormile reassuringly. “We hope to do the same with Himanshu when he is finished with his schooling.”
Get involved
Make an impact on a future STEM professional’s life and strengthen your talent pipeline. Start planning your internship today at scitechmn.org. At least 60 wage matches are available on a first come, first hire basis between now and August 2021.
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