Being a Software Engineer Intern at Kimola

Salute

Hello! I’m Semih Ada. I’m a Sophomore Mechanical Engineering Student at Bilkent University with a passion for programming and software development. This is the last week of my Software Engineer Internship, which lasted almost one and a half months.
In this post, I’ll talk about my internship at Kimola, how I found them, office life in the company, and what my gainings are.

How Did I find Kimola?

After my summer school, I wanted to do an internship in an area that I’m entirely interested in, programming! While looking for an internship at Cyberpark companies, I came across Kimola. At first glance, it was a breathtaking company for me when I saw their productivity.

I did not see an Internship post from Kimola, but I still wanted to give it a chance. So I wrote to chatbox on the bottom right of the website, indicating that I’m an engineering student looking for an internship. I was surprised when the COO responded with an email telling me to send my CV to her. After a few emails, they asked me for an online meeting.

First Meeting

I was so excited because this was my literally first meeting with a company. Kimola’s COO was there to attend. We started by talking casually, and I was relieved after 5 minutes when I saw their friendly, caring attitude toward me. 

I introduced myself. They asked me what I did before in programming, and I talked a little bit about my programming history and past projects. They asked me why I had chosen engineering, and I replied by stating my future goals and interests.

Then, the conversation took a new turn. They didn’t even ask me about my school grades or why I wanted an SWE internship in spite of me being a ME student. They started asking me questions to understand my personality. For example, they asked about my favorite movie, if I had the chance to meet someone from history, who I’d talk to, etc. At that point, I felt that they were really trying to get to know me, and this wouldn’t be a pointless internship. 

Life at the Office and Work Conditions

Kimola has two offices here in Ankara, one in Cyberpark and the other in Küçükesat, a historical building. They work for one week in Cyberpark and the remaining weeks at Küçükesat every month.

The office here is two-floored, and the development team works on the ground floor. Also, we have a nice balcony to get some fresh air. 

People work here from 9 AM to 6 PM and the first and last 30 minutes of the working time are devoted to online meetings in which people tell their daily plans for that day. We also have a one-hour lunch break at 12.30 PM.

I really like the independence here. For example, in the morning, you could get a coffee for yourself, mess around a bit, and get back to your laptop. Also, as long as you are with your laptop, you are not obliged to sit at the desk. And also, I love the pear seats in here!

What I Did in My Internship

The development team clearly stated their goal for me, that in the end, I would be introduced to and improved in web development. I had minimal experience in that field, so the first two weeks passed with me watching tutorials they recommended and people from the team showing me stuff besides them, just for my “boarding.” I completed the Frontend Development course from Patika.

In the third week, I received my first task, which was also my final project for the internship (You can take a look at my blog post titled Enabling Speech to Text on Kimola Gallery to learn more about it).

I worked on it for about one-third of my internship. The task was very informative to me; since I asked the team many questions, I googled around a lot. With the help of everyone, I completed my project. I learned lots of new stuff, such as styling with CSS, scripting with JavaScript, constructing a back end with .NET 6, connecting the front end with the back end, and more. I gained good knowledge in both theoretical and practical areas.

I also learned basic web scraping from the team using RestSharp in .NET and created a console app for our insight team to use.

My Suggestions to Candidate Interns

If you want to spend your summer developing your skills and improving yourself, Kimola is an excellent place for you. Here are my suggestions for the candidates. 

• Be prepared for the meeting. It is best to have good verbal communication. Explain yourself confidently and honestly. As I explained earlier, the interview is not tense, and the conversation flows naturally.
• Show that you are passionate. Express your goals and areas of interest clearly. This is good for the first impression.  
• Make sure that you have a GitHub account; create it if you don’t. Customize and beautify your profile so that it does not look like a bot account. In a Software Engineer Internship interview, they would ask you for your GitHub profile and want you to describe your past work.
• Remember that your own work and projects outside the company do matter here. Kimola cares about peoples’ interests and skills and guides them accordingly. They create a position for you, not the other way around.