17 February, 2020
Each year, we invite students from local universities who are keen to put the skills they have learned into practical and commercial use to gain invaluable, real-world experience working for New Zealand’s leading AI camera company.
It starts with the online application process where we ensure that all our candidates are eligible based on their studies and areas of interest, and progresses to a day of food, fun, learning and sharing at our ‘Intern Open Day’ in October. It’s not easy, and just making it through the door is an accomplishment, with only 14 of the over 200 applicants being extended an invitation to participate in our open day.
A bus trip from Auckland University brought prospective interns to our Albany office where they were addressed by our company founder and CEO, Ben Bodley. Ben talked about the history of the company and some of our awesome products, while our Delivery Owner and the VP of Engineering discussed how Teknique focuses on being Agile, current projects and our future prospects. This was also an opportunity for people to ask questions and voice opinions, a great chance to get the attention of our recruiters too – we like to see curious minds at work.
After the introduction, there was time to socialise with our staff and enjoy some food while hosting further brief interviews to further asses technical ability, and just as importantly, personality fit with our existing relaxed Kiwi culture.
This year, we were thrilled to select four developers for our paid internship: Nathan Bond and Utsav Trivedi, who are currently tasked on porting our face-recognition module onto Tensorflow Lite, Patricia Liu and Casey Wong, who are doing work around IR sensing. The practical nature of Teknique’s projects provides the interns with hands-on development experience. Working alongside experienced technicians in our open-plan offices means help is never further than a slide of the chair away and they are full immersed in the tech environment.
Delivery Owner Tim Owen catches up with them often and so far, they’re having a blast, learning a lot and getting good traction on some of our highly specialised projects. His advice to our new interns? “Congratulations guys, and remember: don’t panic!”
“Teknique has introduced me to new technologies through challenging projects. This has allowed me to improve my software development and engineering skillsets in a comfortable and culturally rich environment.”– Nathan Bond
Applications for Teknique’s 2019/20 internship programme are now open, follow the link to find out more: https://teknique.workable.com/j/08F4B75E64?viewed=true