An internship at Endare, what to expect?
Pieter Willem
Monday 18 May 2020
If you’re a student reading this, you’ve probably heard this multiple times during your academic career. “Do an internship, you’ll learn so much more than by sitting at a desk, listening to some teacher promoting his own knowledge”. Well, I, among my fellow trainees at Endare can tell you from experience, it’s true. An internship at Endare gave us much more than expected!
An internship does not only give you more real-life experience with what you’ve learned in your books, but it gives you an insight into who you are in a stage of life you haven’t been before. You’ll go through a personal growth where you can see and feel yourself change.
“My communication skills improved a lot. In the past, I would never have taken on a leadership position. However, during my internship, this happened almost automatically because I felt confident during the talks with my colleagues.”
You'll get to know parts of yourself you didn't know before. You might discover your ability to handle more responsibility than you thought, or you'll get to confirm that you're a night person. If the latter is the case, the flexible work hours during an internship at Endare will suit you! If you start your internship, you’ll probably enter the place with an increased heartbeat. The nice thing is that all that stress leaves you once you kick things off because you notice you can ask or say anything - even in quarantine, as Corona joined us during our internship.
Jay Van Mook
Jay built a CMS web application that allows administrators to change the content of the WMS (Web Map Service) of Endare’s ‘Brandweer MDT’ application. At the moment, Endare has to adjust everything manually in the database. With the new application that Jay built, Endare, and in extension the fire brigades themselves, will be able to do that more efficiently.
“My application consists of frontend, backend, design, and database. Because of this, I can say I really learned a lot.”
Navaron Bracke
Making a proof of concept for the integration of a mobile assistant in an application of a project we can’t tell you about - yet, Navaron's mission was to lead the customer to the app through a dialogue with the Google Assistant. An extension of this task was making the recommendation system of this application smarter and more personalized with the help of machine learning.
“At the start, I had doubts about the assignment itself, because it didn’t fit my expertise, but it was truly a nice challenge to learn how to work with things you don’t already know.”
Robbe Dekien
Robbe needed to pick up an old internship project from a previous trainee at Endare. This means he had to rewrite and update a two-year-old app. The app also had to be provided with new functions. It's an app of Brewery Of Ideas (BOI), where you can see their events, buy tickets, make your own agenda, network with people, etc.
“Your project is your own, something you can be proud of.”
Isabeau De Jaeger
Writing this blogpost, with thought for my fellow trainees, was one of my tasks I could do during my time at Endare. Yes, a software business full of boy-geeks, knows how to handle a communication science student as well. The biggest part of my internship at Endare consisted of renewing the website. This went from really designing my ideas to writing website content. I also had other diverse tasks like developing wireframes, or testing applications. Because of all the brain exercises I had to do to get good results, I really see that I’ve grown.
The most valuable experience of an internship at Endare?
These were our answers:
“The weekly tech talks. During these presentations, you learn about the different projects of Endare. This means you are dragged into all the things that happen within the company and you’re not only busy with your own project. Oh, and the free fruit.”
“The atmosphere and the welcoming of trainees, you immediately feel at home.”
“The office life where personal jokes are allowed in a relaxed yet formal setting. At Endare you really get the opportunity to take advantage of a work experience, which isn’t something you can replace that easily…”
“Being the only woman in a team full of men. I'm not a girly lady anyway, so I knew beforehand that it would suit me. But it was actually really nice, all the co-workers are super friendly and social, so arriving there every morning with a smile happened automatically (even though I have an angry face).”
We describe the team of Endare as ‘family driven foodies’. Well yes, food is something precious at Endare, take it or leave it!