Yassine is studying Graduate Programming at UCLL. He chose DNS Belgium from a list of internships offered by UCLL, because it enabled him to work on projects using Java, Spring and Javascript. And that’s something he wants to work with later on.
What jobs were given to Yassine?
Veerle & Dulce (internship supervisors): ‘Yassine worked on the project to restyle our internal application. It’s an application in which DNS Belgium monitors all aspects of the management of .be domain names. The app involves administration, but also cover the management of our registrars , plus legal and financial monitoring. He mainly did updates to the front-end (the user interface), as well as some functional tweaks. The purpose of an internship is to gain knowledge and that certainly happens here. After all, DNS Belgium uses the type of technology they don’t learn at school.’
Did you learn a lot?
Yassine: ‘What I did during my internship is totally what I would like to do later on. And I learned a lot here: how meetings are put together, how stories work and especially what it’s like to work in a scrum environment.’
DNS Belgium works according to the scrum principle. This means, among other things, that a colleague from Product describes each task or change in a so-called story. An engineer works on the story and implements what it describes. Then the story is tested and validated. When the story is ready, it is shown to all colleagues during a demo.
Has Yassine done useful work?
Veerle & Dulce: ‘Definitely. Yassine delivered a large number of stories, enabling significant progress to be made on the project. We now ask users of the application what they think about the changes. Next year, another intern can continue or refine this project.’
What makes DNS Belgium attractive as a place for an internship?
Yassine: ‘There’s always something going on here: employee meetings, introductions of new colleagues, demos of what’s been developed – and so on.’
What has DNS Belgium learned from guiding and supervising Yassine?
Veerle & Dulce: ‘Guidance and communication are very important. You are given a huge amount of information at the beginning of your internship. You sometimes need to repeat certain aspects and every story has to be discussed properly. The students don’t need to be afraid of asking for advice or opinions and communicating with the team. We want our students to do quality work. We are not concerned with quantity. That's why we monitor the stories closely, because sometimes an adjustment can affect other pages.'
Which students would you recommend an internship at DNS Belgium to?
Yassine: ‘Especially to students who would later like to work with Java and at the front-end. It’s a fun working environment where everyone is willing to help and where you can learn a lot.’
How was Yassine supervised?
Veerle & Dulce: ‘Initially, Dulce supervised Yassine. But if there were issues requiring major adjustments or decisions, he could of course turn to the most experienced colleague for advice. The stories that Yassine worked on were all written by the Product Department, so he could always turn to those the people there as well for any explanations he needed about the stories.’
What's next?
Yassine: ‘I’m doing another two-year follow-up course in Applied Computer Science.’
If you had to choose, what do you do: work at home/at your student digs or work in the office?
Yassine: ‘In the office as much as possible, because that’s where you learn the most.’
And would you go for French fries for lunch or something more healthy?
Yassine: ‘Something healthy. You can get sandwiches and salads in the building here. I would also recommend drinking lots of water after coffee.’
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.