My internship experience

Thales de Lima Silva is one of the many SEDA College students to apply for SEDA’s internship programme which helps students find work experience in Ireland. Thales got a placement in a Dublin IT start-up called Suntico.

“I did my internship in Suntico, an IT start-up company based in Dublin’s East Wall Road, near Fairview. Suntico is developing a communications system for companies using Sage software and I was an intern in their Marketing department. My duties were: assisting in customer prospecting as well as investigation and application of Business Intelligence through Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Office 365 tools using a combination of different data sources.

The company provided all the support I needed when I started, there was a good atmosphere in the office and the people were very friendly. I had a meeting with my supervisor every Monday where I could talk about my progress and difficulties at work. Besides, the supervisors were available all the time if I had any questions.

It was an experience outside of my professional area, but I learned to work with some tools which can be very useful to my career in the future. Some of the new things I learned in this internship were: Business Intelligence, Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Excel 2013 and of course, English!

Since I arrived in the company my English improved dramatically. I think it’s because of the contact with the people who can’t understand my language – this made me talk and think in English. I just thought they could correct me a bit more when I made mistakes, but they were too polite to do this!

I was very satisfied with the internship – it turned out just like I imagined. The only negative thing is that the work experience is unpaid. I live near the company office, so for me it’s not a problem, but some of the other interns weren’t so lucky and they had to spend money for transport to come here and do some excellent work.

I would definitely recommend Suntico to other people who want to do an internship, especially if they work in IT, marketing or design. It’s a wonderful place to learn and develop skills. The supervisors are very friendly, calm and patient. They know about our condition as students and support us all the time”.

All SEDA long-term students can apply for an internship free of charge – just send your CV to internship(at) seda.ie. More info on www.seda.college/internship

Originally published in SEDA News