Assistant Developer Review

The role involved working on tri-weekly sprints in teams, selecting our own set tasks to complete, functionally testing others’ tasks, and doing QA testing in the final week of the sprint. We’d start every day with a morning stand-up to say what we achieved the day before and what our plans for the current day were. We also took part in sprint refinements and retrospectives along with the other developers, each sprint.

I’ve learnt a lot more about development in a working environment - using the Scrum framework. Before, I was familiar with HTML and JavaScript at a basic level, but I have since learnt about Typescript and Vue.js which are more widely used in the working world - compared to what I have used at university.

From the start, we were given equal responsibility to our seniors each sprint and not held back by the fact that we were placements. Once our initial training was completed, we joined the development team to do friendlier tasks for the first sprint and then got to choose from the same pool of tasks as everyone else on the team for every sprint after that.

We were encouraged to ask questions at every point of the year and were given dedicated training for development whilst the other placements were focused on more customer-facing-based training. Through daily stand-ups and weekly 1-to-1s with our mentors, our progress was monitored (in a caring, non-scary way) and encouraged.

As a smaller company, it was quite easy to get to know everyone in your team and also in the company as a whole. We have company socials multiple times a year, whether that’s a Christmas meal or a summer outing, as well as social stuff organised by department or with the other placements.

I’ve enjoyed my placement a lot and will be sad when I have to leave to go back to university for my final year. I’ve learnt so many important skills involving development as well as working life in general. It was also nice to be able to build good relationships with my coworkers - those who are full-time staff and the other placements.

Yes

You should research the company and its products as it shows your interest in the company as a whole and not just the placement. In the interview talk about your interests and hobbies and not just what you do at university as your passions show more of who you are as a person compared to what degree you are doing.