Past and Present Students Connect in the Industry

Recently Viliami (Vili) Finau, one of our current Level 7 Cloud Management students has been working for Rentokil, as part of an internship programme.  The programme was organised by our Industry Pathways manager Phill Spear and former Techtorium student Liam O’Shaugnessy, currently an IT Support Consultant at Rentokil. We sat down with Vili to discuss how the internship has been going.

His time at the company has consisted of observation and tasks given out by Liam. It was great hearing from Vili about how impressed he was by the breadth and depth of Liam’s computing knowledge and how he applied it in his role. We thought it was fantastic to hear how well our current and former students got along, illustrating the importance of soft skills in the workplace.

Vili was able to get hands on experience with entry level jobs such as resetting devices or building machines for users in the company. For more advanced jobs, Vili observed the technicians. He got the opportunity to view the company’s IT infrastructure, observing Liam and the IT team as the worked. The team was very willing to work with him and he told us how interesting it was working with the front desk while learning about the back end.

Liam, Vili’s supervisor at Rentokil, has also given very positive feedback. When we spoke, he told us that “Vili has been performing very well and I’ll be happy to recommend him for any first line role he applies for”. Liam feels a special significance with Vili being at Rentokil because of his own relationship with Techtorium. He told us “I have a desire to pay it back due in part to my friendship with Techtorium but also I was helped a lot by Mike, Rohan and the careers team.”.

Vili has done a great job of representing both himself and Techtorium and we’re incredibly proud of him. He has had to put both his technical and soft skills to use. It has been great seeing such positive interaction between current and past students. We’re delighted to see both past and former students establishing their presence in the industry.

Internships like these are a great way for students to build experience and references for when they begin looking for full time work. Many of them lead directly into a job. Those that don’t though, will help to build contacts and leads that can help land a full-time position.