inniAccounts: the intern experience

Internships are an ideal way for students and recent graduates to gain experience in their intended field. This week marks the first National Internship Week. To celebrate, we take a look at the experiences of our own interns so far.

Interns at inniAccounts

A good internship can strengthen a CV, provide knowledge and skills grounded in real-life business practices, supply industry contacts and even result in full time employment. As an employer, here at inniAccounts we have an established reputation and take pride in providing training opportunities to interns each year. We’re committed to providing fresh challenges and hands-on experience to ambitious university trainees. Our interns usually work on new features and innovative projects where they can bring fresh, bight ideas to our fast-growing company.

This will be the third summer that we have hired a new pair of interns. This month we have welcomed two developer interns from Nottingham University, Calum and Ryan, who have joined our technical development team for a summer internship.

Matt’s story

Matt joined inniAccounts as a technical intern in summer 2014; while completing his final year as a Software Engineering student at the University of Nottingham. During his internship Matt began to work on the creation of mobile apps. Matt found the internship to be hugely valuable, allowing him to gain practical experience and to work collaboratively with a wide array of new, unfamiliar technologies.

‘Despite having spent several years prior to University learning and practising my craft, I feel working at inniAccounts within a real production environment really advanced my skills. I definitely see real value for anybody within computer science and software development in getting career experience through an internship, rather than just popping out of university.’

Following the internship Matt stayed in contact with the company and began to build the foundations of a native Android app as a side project, the same codebase that we at inniAccounts continue to build on today. Matt accepted a job offer following his graduation and is now a full-time member of the developer team. He continues to work on the Android app, used by hundreds of our company clients, as well as integrating the existing web app and working on the development of a iOS app.

‘Working at a small company has given me a lot of room to grow, influence and push new ideas. I have a seat in the developer meetings where we decide what’s next for the product, here I have made contributions that have directly affected the direction of the company’s products. Whilst I have felt pressure every now and again, juggling various different tasks simultaneous, the experience has strengthened me into a highly competent, valuable developer and team member.’

Accountancy was an area that Matt previously had little awareness of, but he now intends to continue his career in the financial technology industry.

‘Working at inniAccounts all in all has shaped me, my skills and my career in a positive way. I am very excited about what I can offer throughout the rest of my career.’

Ryan’s story

Ryan is a second-year student in Computer Science at the University of Nottingham. This summer he has joined inniAccounts as an Assistant Developer to work on a new, cutting-edge Receipt Capture feature for our Android app. The internship project is based on the top three requested features from our clients and will use innovative back-end technology.

Ryan has spent four years in part-time employment and has been well trained by his university course. However, this is his first degree-related job and with all the new experiences and real-life implications there was a lot of pressure in the first few days. Thankfully the team at inniAccounts were supportive and friendly, so the pressure soon eased off.

‘The job here feels a lot more technical and specific than my university projects. I’ve been working on a framework I’ve never used before, which was difficult to grasp initially. I’ve also been using programming languages that I’ve never used before, which added to the challenge. You have to understand how the whole system works before you can focus on your task.’

Ryan discovered the internship through the Nottingham Internship Scheme. After only two weeks he already feels confident about his progress. Ryan feels the most rewarding aspect of his internship is being given the responsibility to deliver something that clients will use and benefit from.

‘I’ve learnt a lot, even after only two weeks. It’s reassuring to know that what I and the rest of the team are working on is something that will reward real people using it to run their businesses. It will also give me something to boast about on my CV.’

Ryan has another year at the University of Nottingham, after which he may pursue further studies or enter the world of employment. He’s passionate to find a job that makes a difference for real people, the rest of the team at inniAccounts are sure that he’ll succeed.