MSIM student Yashas Prashanth discusses his internship at the multinational software company SAP. The experience helped him to better understand the development and management of applications and information systems in an industrial setting.
Where did you work, and what was your role?
I interned at SAP as a developer.
How did you find out about the internship?
I found out about this internship through the SAP careers page.
What new skills did you acquire?
The internship gave me the opportunity to learn the development of back-end applications using the Java-based Springboot framework. I was also able to enhance my understanding of how large information systems receive and process requests across their various layers, and how it can sometimes be challenging to incrementally add features in such a system, as the impact of the changes on every component needs to be analyzed.
What did you like best about working at the company?
I loved the work culture at SAP—the autonomy and empowerment to make decisions regarding the features I was developing; how warm, welcoming and transparent everyone in the organization was; and how team members closely worked together to solve problems, which echoes SAP’s value of “build bridges, not silos.”
What would you advise current students who are interested in an internship opportunity?
Self-awareness is powerful. Know and be confident of your strengths and—highlight them when applying to companies and speaking to recruiters. A part of your previous education or work experience that may seem insignificant to you might be the factor that makes you unique to an employer and can become the reason you get hired!
Know your weaknesses too—both personal and professional—and continually use opportunities within your degree program, the iSchool, and the University of Illinois to work on these and become a better version of yourself.