“Lithuania is a great country, it is good to live in Europe, where you can find a job in an international company with the motivating working environment”, says Kamoliddin Mirzoev, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) student of informatics. This summer Kamoliddin spent working as an intern at Nasdaq’s Technology and Business Support Competence Centre in Vilnius. This was not the first internship for the KTU student from Tajikistan.
Now in his final year, Mirzoev smiles when remembering his first year at KTU: “The first semester was tough – we were studying a lot of maths and programming, but the next semester was already better. We’ve got to know the city better, learned how to plan our time, how to manage studies and leisure, and the second year in Kaunas was really great”.
He says he has never regretted choosing the IT field of studies, as today virtually every company needs an IT specialist. Kamoliddin found the internship offer at KTU’s job fair Career Days, where more than 150 companies offer job and internship places for students.
“I think that the main reasons I was chosen for internship were my ambitions and great motivation to work at Nasdaq. As it happened, I was the only international student among the 11 chosen interns”, says Mirzoev.
International Team Is Stronger
“We are an international equal opportunities employer, with English language as an official working language”, says Ramūnas Stankevičius, Senior Director-Software Engineer at Nasdaq.
He says that cultural differences do not surprise anyone in Nasdaq as the communication in English with colleagues from different cultures is an everyday experience for everyone working here.
“In the modern IT development projects, different experiences of the team members make the team stronger”, says Stankevičius, who was the supervisor of the intern group at Nasdaq.
The Interns Developed a Game on Financial Markets
Kamoliddin tells that the internship was also a good way of meeting new friends, and insists that Lithuanian language is not a problem to him – he understands a most of basic conversations.
“Sometimes during the breaks people talk in Lithuanian for a while, and then suddenly realise that I am with them and offer to translate. Then I reply that there’s no need – I understand most of what they were talking about”, says KTU’s Tajikistani student.
The interns were assigned to perform different functions and all of them, as a team, had to fulfil one task – to develop a game on the topic of financial markets. According to Kamoliddin, learning to work together as a team was the most useful experience; although the interns had to work independently, the consultations from mentors were always readily available.
“Although three weeks were given for us to develop the game, but we finished it sooner. We were really pleased, and also we had one spare week to improve the game, to introduce new features to it”, says the student.
Internship: Ten-Week Job Interview with a Potential Candidate
According to Kamoliddin, a successful internship is the first step towards future career; he is planning to stay and work in IT in Lithuania. KTU’s student from Tajikistan says that the process of preparing all the documents needed for a foreigner to be employed in Lithuania is becoming easier.
“I am hoping that all goes well and I will stay and will work here. I like being in Lithuania, Europe, where you can find a job in an international company with an interesting job and a motivating work environment. For example, in Nasdaq we had table football, a kitchen with fresh fruits; it is important to work in pleasant surroundings”, says Mirzoev.
According to Stankevičius, a company hiring the interns fills two needs with one deed: students are introduced to the company, its policies and work ethics, and to the job itself, and the company can select the potential new employees.
“We think about internship as about a ten-week job interview with a candidate”, says Nasdaq’s Senior Director-Software Engineer.
Stankevičius explains that the main criteria for selecting both interns and employees in Nasdaq are their logical thinking skills, competencies in accomplishing tasks in and loyalty to the company.
There Are No Unachievable Goals
Kamoliddin, who has been living in Lithuania for three years now, says that the biggest challenge in the beginning was… survival.
“I had problems in every step: as I was only 17 when I came, I needed my parents’ permission for everything – starting with opening a bank account. Also, I did not like Lithuanian food, so I needed to learn cooking myself”, confides Tajikistani student, who is graduating from informatics this year at KTU.
He is convinced that if one is motivated enough, there are no unachievable goals: “Many students applied for an internship at Nasdaq, but only 11 succeeded. I wanted this internship very much, so I did my best to make my CV as good as possible, and to excel at the interview – for this I consulted with people from KTU’s Career Centre”.
He is encouraging international students to be pro-active, to reach out to student organisations for help, both when solving studying problems, or when looking for job. There are many possibilities, Kamoliddin, who left his home country barely at 17, is convinced, but you have to work for your future.
