Thanks for dropping by and thanks for your informative comments. As a graduate of the University of Limerick, I’m glad to hear they now offer some instruction on preparing CVs. I’d love to know more about the content of this. Are you saying this is an optional course in UL? I can’t see why a few hours of training on CV preparation isn’t mandatory on all courses. I understand that 3rd level education isn’t solely about preparing people for the jobs marketplace but a few hours of such training surely wouldn’t go amiss.

If, by soft skills, you are referring to verbal and written communications skills and a good attitude, then I agree they are very important for a job and particularly important for a customer facing position such as consulting. The reality is though, if you’re apply for a technical position and you’re trying to demonstrate an enthusiasm for technology — then we expect you to be able to give us details of your exposure to technology from either your academic or personal activities.

For our 2008 Intern program (http://www.aplpi.com/jobs.html) we have received a large number of CVs comprising a wide variety of different skills profiles. All other things being equal, we probably will be inclined to give preference to candidates that can demonstrate some significant programming experience from their course-work, previous work experience or open source projects they have participated in. Between these three avenues of experience, we don’t see how any programming enthusiast could not gain reasonable exposure to some programming technologies.

As to how we approach training students on internships – we fully recognise that throwing a graduate in a corner with a programming book is unlikely to reap good results. We normally have our interns work first on a significant internal development project – either working on a system to be used internally by the company or possibly prototyping software which will be commercialised at some stage. Our interns will always be working on “real projects” – not throw-away code. We are also open to contributing some of this work back to the free software world where the work is of high enough quality to be accepted.

Interns are closely mentored by 1 or 2 mid-level staff members who have extensive real world experience in projects. We’ve found this mentoring to be of great benefit to both our staff (you’d be amazed how well you learn something from having to teach it to someone else!) and our interns who get exposed to current industry best practices and techniques (since we recognise that even the best college courses are inevitably going to lag industry in some areas at least).

If this sounds interesting, we’re still taking applications for this years internship program until the end of the month, best of luck if you decide to apply.

My personal view is that I my college experiences have given me the information I need to learn the skills I need within the environment I will work in after graduation. My areas of interest are more in the line of a systems analyst than a developer. Focusing on understanding business processes, collecting requirements and testing. But I also have a passion to expand my development knowledge in order to better understand each stage of the lifecycle. I would however say that I have a better understanding of the high level object oriented concepts than implementing these concepts within java. I believe the most important thing for a graduate to have after leaving college ( could be biased here as I am graduating soon ) is not specifics on projects done but do they have the soft skills required and the drive to learn the required information to work in industry as these cannot be thought ( lots of body language courses may say otherwise ).

If a company’s approach to training a graduate is to hand them a Programming book give them a desk away from the “real programmers” and tell them not to interrupt, the company will suffer in the long term. Continued formal training is required coupled with informal training, this is especially important in the early part of a graduates career.

I believe applepie are aware of this as you do mention that an interest in technology is the most important thing with respect to applying for summer jobs and you will be thought the specific skills required on the internship. So a written technical interview covering the required technical concepts is the best way to know if the candidate has the basic grasp of concepts required. Also work experience is the best way to tell if the candidate has the soft skills and ability to learn on the internship in my opinion.

How do applepie approach training with students on internships?

I’m not sure an online hyperlinked CV would make reviewing it any easier – I mean the hard part is trying to build up a decent mental picture of what kind of person the candidate is, what motivates them and how well they’ll fit into your organisation.

As for mind maps – I dunno. I still find a whiteboard far more natural for “mind-mapping” than any of the tools I’ve come across.

Or maybe a one sheet mind map? 🙂