For a year and a half in support of DIRECTUM, I solved more than a thousand calls, including those related to system setup and working with application code. “So what?” - a logical question arises. And the fact that I am a student from the Department of Economics, who two years ago did not understand why the server part in the architecture of mobile applications is needed, and that the site interface in the browser is actually html-markup. And I will tell you how I got into an IT company without any experience and skills in this area.

Where did i start

Hi, my name is Oleg, I am a DIRECTUM support engineer. Our company develops, promotes, supports ... in general, provides the entire life cycle of electronic document management systems and related products.



I suspect you thought that I was very far from the IT world. And it is true. I was as far away as my education allowed. He studied computer science at school: basic theory, programming on Pascal ABC, etc. He studied the subject of information systems at the university: again the theory and a bit of programming in Delphi. In short, I knew only the very very foundations of the theory, which are rarely useful in practice.



After the first and second courses, I and a couple of guys defended the practice where they developed mobile applications. More precisely, one person wrote them, and I and another guy did the rest. For example, we calculated the cost of rent for some reason (then) for what necessary servers.



By the third year, the IT field was quite interesting to me. I already tried to master the C # language. I installed the development environment and solved the problem of constructing triangles from triangle symbols (▲). Such problems are found in some university programs. A classmate - the one who wrote our mobile applications - reacted to my development something like this:







And yet I liked programming, though it didn’t always work out well. I felt the pleasure of immersion in a sphere that is in constant development and surrounds you everywhere. It was then that I learned that in Udmurtia there are many good IT companies. Some of them are leaders in their fields.

Practice device

I was informed about the vacancy at DIRECTUM in the fall of the third year. A university teacher said interns are needed at the company. And although university practice should take place in the summer, I decided that I would take it in the fall. In the summer, I expected to rest all three months. Spoiler: I have been working for the second summer in a row.



Initially, I submitted a resume for practice, of course, for fun. I didn’t imagine what I could give IT companies when I practically did not know the basics in this area. HR manager Lena wrote to me at VK. She said that she received my resume, and called for an interview. And again, for fun, I agreed.



I thought that they would ask me for knowledge of programming languages ​​and stuff like that. But at the interview they asked something completely different. For example, USE scores and participation in subject Olympiads in school time. I said that I often won in district tours, and in mathematics and economics I went to the level of the republic several times. Then they learned my knowledge of the basics of programming. For example, they asked how bubble sorting works. As it turned out later, I knew about her. At university, we wrote sorting in Delphi, but I didn’t remember that it was called that way.



In general, there was a twofold feeling from the interview. It seems to have shared achievements, but it seems to have failed in basic knowledge (I could not remember and tell what we studied there on Delphi at the university). The basics seemed to me to be more important at the interview. I informed Lena about my impressions after graduation. She reassured me and gave me hope that I would come here again.



Three days later, Lena offered to practice at the support service. In response, I asked a rather logical question for me - "something will need to learn, since I screwed up ?". But there was no need to learn something.

Company practice

For a whole month I wondered why I was taken to practice, and what will I do among the abstruse people who write code all day (what are they still doing in these IT companies?). I never formed any personal expectations from the practice, because I simply could not imagine it.

When I arrived, it turned out that everything was pretty clear and interesting. For practice, feasible tasks for the student-economist were prepared. I was assigned a mentor who supervised the solution of two tasks assigned to me.

1. I was engaged in the administration of content on the community site DIRECTUM - this is a company forum with thematic branches (questions, articles, ideas, etc.). There I moderated a thread with questions.
2. In addition, I became acquainted with the DIRECTUM system. This went through two stages: first you had to install it on a virtual machine, and then go through the health checklist and make sure that the basic operations are being performed.

I tried to fulfill the tasks of website moderation and getting to know the system in good faith - I asked a lot of questions to my mentor (at times it seemed that there was too much), I was attentive to every detail of the process. I wanted to be sure that I was doing everything right. 80 hours of practice later, I completed both tasks in the form in which it was required.



The mentor drew up a review of my work, and the supervisor analyzed it. To a greater extent, the fact of completing a task is not evaluated. The components of this process are much more important : the person’s motivation to solve the assigned tasks, the approach to solving them, the trainee’s mentality, interaction with colleagues and the way to find answers to complex questions. After weighing all these aspects, the head made me a job offer. Starting next month I got a job.

Work in a company

I decided to close my ignorance of the basics. In the new year, I studied at work and at home. At work, these were internal training courses and certification on a category. At home, I studied Python and MS SQL administration. I tried to fix all my weaknesses: reading code, administering Windows and MS SQL, and, of course, administering the DIRECTUM system. I proved to myself that I can work in the field of IT, and I intensively overcome the impostor syndrome .



At the same time, I solved various requests from customers. With the growth of my knowledge, conversions became more difficult. A year ago, these were simple requests to perform standard operations: generate a key for the system, issue access to the support site, etc. And now more and more often these are various incidents in the system of clients / partners that their administrators and developers are contacting us with. At times, to solve them, you have to independently understand the application code and change it to the specifics of the client.



In general, this is a good option for immersion in the sphere - to solve appeals . You must first understand how to answer the client’s question. Then you must be 100% sure that your answer is correct. Clients / partners will not understand you if you do not understand yourself.



Simultaneously with work, I had to study for 1.5 years in undergraduate studies. I chose the topic of diploma at the end of the third year, when I became interested in the development of artificial intelligence in our company. I formulated it as a business development based on artificial intelligence. The link to IT and the economy killed two birds with one stone.



As I said, it was at this time that DIRECTUM Ario was being introduced into the support service . Ario is a solution based on artificial intelligence algorithms that classifies documents in various sections, extracts a text layer and facts from them, and does many more interesting things.



The supervisor gave me the task of setting up the rules for extracting facts from letters of appeal. To do this, I went through internal training courses on setting up these rules. And in the end, the rules I developed are about to begin to be implemented in the support service. This will help the department automate the filling of the Description field in the call cards. Now support engineers read the entire letter from the customer, and then fill out the "Description" with their hands. After implementation, they will immediately see the error text in this field, which will be automatically extracted from the letters based on the written rules. In university graduate work, I used this development and defended perfectly.



So 1.5 years passed, the impostor syndrome disappeared, and I already entered the magistracy in the direction related to artificial intelligence. At work, I recently certified for the next category. I want to continue professional growth in the field of IT.

Life hacks

Now I can write my personal observations on the issue of how to get into an IT company without having sufficient competencies:

1. Look for companies in your city, region, country. Decide where you would like to go and what position.
2. See vacancies in the company. Find out if there may be an open position in the department where you are accepted for practice. Lifehack: IT companies always recruit people, even if they don’t write about it on the site . The market is growing all the time -> you need to expand your company and strengthen its position.
3. Find HR contacts. Give it a try! In any case, they will communicate with you, even if you are a student economist with little understanding in IT.
4. Remember that you can start with practice - expectations for such candidates will be lower than for employees. During the practice, you will have time to get acquainted with the company. At the same time, show yourself and gain support for further cooperation.
5. Read how to behave in an interview, be wiser than me in this regard. Explore the company, remain yourself, honestly answer questions. Managers and HR managers love these guys. There are many cool guides on this topic, one, for example, was written by Lena .
6. If you are accepted into the company, prove yourself, ask questions, try to figure everything out carefully in order to do your tasks as well as possible.
7. Do not forget that the IT industry is quite extensive and constantly changing. It’s faster to catch up on the basics if you do it at home. In general, you should always devote time to self-study - it does not matter if you are a student or an experienced developer.

Summary

During my work at DIRECTUM, I realized that in the IT field, geeks who are closed only in their work do not work, as from stereotypes about programmers. I have never seen such. There are cheerful, friendly guys who are ready to help newcomers and support them.



In my work there are quite boring tasks, but much more often I solve interesting problems. Often I find some new challenges for myself and take the initiative to tackle their solution. It is easy to guess how I got to Habr with this article. This is exactly what I like about my work - I can influence whether it is interesting for me to work here or not. I myself am responsible for this.