Marco is studying System and Network Administration at HOGENT. In his final year, an internship is a prerequisite to be able to graduate. He chose DNS Belgium from a list of employers who offer internships. ‘At the interview, we talked about Kubernetes, Containers, CI/CD pipelines, Terraform and AWS EKS,’ says Marco. ‘And I was also able to learn a lot about them during my internship.’
Specifically, what did you do? Was it what you like to do or what you’re good at?
Marco: ‘I was mainly involved with software development and the automation and scripting of the infrastructure as code to be maintained in the cloud environment. We used Terraform, GitLab, VSCode, Jenkins, monitoringtool k9s and others to do this. In the end, the tasks I carried out did not really fit with my background education, but it was interesting because I was able to learn a lot.’
Did you feel you were able to contribute something to our operation?
Marco: ‘I’m sure that my work helped the Platform team in particular make good progress. I received positive feedback from the people in my team.
What did you learn?
Marco: ‘I learnt a lot about how to work in a team and about the different tools in the technology stack. That will certainly be relevant knowledge for the future. Of course, an internship is a very appropriate way to put theory into practice and to gain insights into your own qualities and shortcomings. When you finish an internship, you know more about your own capabilities, wishes and ambitions.’
How was Marco mentored?
Tom (internship supervisor): ‘The whole team was available to assist and answer any questions. He worked a bit more closely with one member of our staff, though. As an internship supervisor, I mainly kept track of the overall training.’
What’s it like to work for DNS Belgium?
Marco: ‘During my internship, I learnt from all the staff that it is important to just be yourself. My colleagues gave me all the confidence I needed to come up with my own ideas and they were also really open to my suggestions. That gave me an enormous feeling of appreciation.’
What makes DNS Belgium interesting for an internship and to whom would you recommend it?
Marco: ‘At DNS Belgium, you’re given lots of opportunities and confidence as an intern. Your colleagues immediately consider you as one of them. They listen to what you want to learn and the types of other tasks you may find interesting. They take the time to explain things, but at the same time you also learn to work independently. An internship at DNS Belgium is both instructive and interesting, but you need to have good prior knowledge of programming. I didn’t know very much about it and so still had a lot to learn.’
What particular moment sticks with you? What was your most enjoyable experience here?
Marco: ‘The teamwork and friendly atmosphere will definitely stay with me. And it’ll be a long time before I forget the lunch breaks when we could all sit down together and talk about something other than work for a change.’
If you had to choose, what do you do: work at home/at your student digs or work in the office?
Marco: ‘At the office of course. I liked being in the office for its warm and friendly atmosphere. I don't like working at home.’
French fries or a healthy lunch?
Marco: ‘Fries. I love fries!’
What's next?
Marco: ‘My plan is to get a job after this internship using the additional knowledge I have gained here to help me.’
Internship
Want to acquire a first work experience as an intern? That's possible at DNS Belgium. We welcome students from a wide range of disciplines: computer science, economics, communication and commercial engineering, to name a few.
Let's explore together how we can make it a successful internship.