Written by our founder, Andrew Ajoodha
Work experience for young individuals is an important step in transitioning from education to a career. The work experience I had when I was younger helped me to understand working life and what I wanted to pursue. That’s why, at Wirebox, we feel it is important to help students gain this confidence and skill, and the feedback we have received from them has been overwhelmingly positive.
How we recruit
When Wirebox started, we’d often be contacted by local students asking to do work experience for a week. We just accepted, and when they came, we showed them around and let them help out. Although the students appreciated this, it lacked structure. As we’ve grown, we have created a formal program. This ensures that candidates learn from all departments and see end-to-end how we deliver our projects for our clients across development and support.
Today, we still get many emails from students, and we wish we could accommodate all, but sadly, this isn’t possible. When we do have a place opening, we look for candidates with an interest in what we do who can showcase what skills they’ve already developed in tech.
What do work experience students do at Wirebox?
Students don’t just see what we do; we now provide real work tasks. This involves testing or making changes to an app or website with the support of a senior team member. We even set development challenges where we give them a task, and they try to complete it as best they can.
Our favourite recent student project was the Nandos selector.
We like to order Nandos into the office every once in a while. But taking 15 separate orders is not that easy. So, we set our work experience students a task to build an app where Wirebox staff could select what they wanted, and then it would create an order summary that’s easily usable on their website. Just look at what they made:
This wasn’t just a fun challenge, but it resulted in a useful tool that everyone at Wirebox benefits from.
Why offer work experience
Wirebox wants to give back and help students get a foothold in an ever-challenging economy and job market. We enjoy having curious minds in the office and find the students always enjoy the challenges they’re set. That’s why Wirebox will continue to support, fund and improve this program so it can enrich our local community for many years to come.
