Facebook EmaiInACirclel
IT Careers

PentaStagiu Online: Creating a Successful Remote Internship Program

Ana Maria Păduraru
Ana Maria Păduraru
Product Owner

In light of recent changes in the world’s dynamics, everyone has had to adapt to the new way of doing things, while practicing safe distancing. But just because some changes appear, it doesn’t mean everything has to stop completely.

Being fully committed to the motto #Never stop learning, Pentalog is aware that people – young ones in particular – need to continue learning, no matter the times.

PentaStagiu Online 2020

PentaStagiu is the very embodiment of continuous learning and knowledge sharing, providing the mentorship of some of the best IT professionals.

PentaStagiu – The Largest Internship Program in Eastern Europe & Romania

As the most sought-after training program in Romania, PentaStagiu offers access to practical experience needed by students following an IT path. It started out in Iaşi, in 2012 and since then, the program has seen the best and brightest minds of tomorrow (700+ graduates) who took on more than 1000 training courses.

What makes this internship program different is the fact that it is the best way for tech enthusiasts to learn from seasoned professionals in the industry and understand first-hand the workflow & implementation process of real IT projects.

PentaStagiu reached its 10th edition in Iaşi this year and it also had to adapt to the times, becoming 100% remote.

PentaStagiu Iaşi 2020, in a nutshell:

  • An in-depth online program targeting students from Moldova region only;
  • 4 modern tech stacks: Java, PHP, Front-End and Manual QA;
  • More than 900 applicants;
  • 80 candidates admitted;
  • 6 hours/day of intensive learning, for 1 month.

What happened at the PentaStagiu Registration?

We started registrations on July 6 and right away, we were pleasantly surprised by the great number of applications. With an average of 200 registrations per day, for over 10 days, we wound up with a total of 923 candidates.

Unfortunately, we knew we will not able to accommodate all of them, so in the next days we started analyzing the CVs, the test results and the interviews. In the end, 20 students were selected for each of the technologies, adding up to a total of 80 people who would go on to become interns.

The tie-breaking criteria used was based on the level of English, technical know-how and communication skills.

Also, this year we focused on enrolling only the students from the top technical faculties in Suceava, Iaşi and Galaţi. The majority of applicants came from the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University and from the “Gheorghe Asachi” University, but we were also pleased to discover many requests coming from the “Ştefan cel Mare” University in Suceava.

The Learning & Coding sessions started this week and each of the four teams created began to work along with their mentors.

What attracted the candidates to PentaStagiu?

It seems that the perspective of an intense 1-month internship program held online was very appealing to the students. We are definitely taking note of this and will apply this recipe for the future PentaStagiu internship programs: more sessions compacted in a shorter period of time.

Also, the idea of having professional developers as mentors, available for guidance and continuous feedback, seems to make the students more engaged and determined to take advantage of this learning opportunity to the fullest.

PentaStagiu Online Internship Program Mentors

Meet the mentors: the seasoned IT specialists who are guiding the steps of tomorrow’s developers.

This year, the most popular technologies were Java and Front-End – just as Pentalog predicted for the tech trends of 2020.

.

What We Learned

Once again, we learned that students want to upgrade their skills. They need a program complementary to the learning experienced in college, that can guide their steps towards a successful career.

This year’s online internship program was a pilot project, which we can proudly say went very well. We’re also aware that this time around, students are more tech-savvy. It helps our mentors do their job much easier, but is also a reflection of the level of expertise of our future colleagues.

Next year, we will definitely include a larger number of technologies, so that more eager-to-learn students can find plenty of opportunities to extend their knowledge.

Stay tuned for impressions from the PentaStagiu participants!


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *