Here at CONCETO, we offer various opportunities for newcomers to start their career. In addition to starting out as a student trainee, the opportunity to work with us during an internship semester and subsequent supervision as part of a Bachelor's or Master's thesis is very promising for students. We asked Sebastian what made these offers attractive to him and what might also be helpful for others who are currently looking for a career. Until recently, he was a working student himself, wrote his bachelor's thesis at CONCETO and is now a permanent member of one of our teams as a professional.
Hi Sebastian! You are now a full-time consultant and developer in the Cloud Solutions and Development department, focussing on SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform) and our CIS/4 Cloud. How do you like the transition from student life to everyday working life?
The biggest change for me is actually the fixed working hours as an employee. In student life, the workload always fluctuates greatly, depending on whether it's exam time, lecture period or the semester break. In addition, I no longer have to take work home with me (or at least not from my home office).
I also like working in a fixed team. During your studies, your work partners change frequently, for example because you attend different courses, progress at different speeds or are assigned to different groups. This makes it difficult to work together effectively. For me, I therefore tended to work on my hard skills during my studies. Working as a student trainee, on the other hand, paid off for my soft skills in particular. It's also a good feeling that the work no longer has a purely didactic background, but really adds value.
On the other hand, I also miss the freedom to experiment that I had as a student. For example, a friend of mine is currently working on a VR game in a web browser as part of his master's programme to investigate the applicability of VR in modern web browsers. I would still like to be involved in that.
As a working student, you experienced working at CONCETO at first hand. What aspects and considerations that go into the decision in favour of a particular employer convinced you personally? Was there one topic or skill that was particularly decisive for you?
What was your everyday life like as a working student?
During my time as a working student at CONCETO, I worked almost exclusively on my bachelor's thesis. After all, this was also the reason why I came into contact with CONCETO. During this time, I wasn't involved in many other projects. However, I regularly took part in team meetings and occasionally provided some support, which gave me a rough idea of the relevant topics and the fields of activity of my colleagues.
From time to time, I worked more intensively with individual colleagues when I needed help with SAP-related topics, such as the BTP, or when we exchanged ideas and suggestions for my bachelor's thesis. Apart from that, I worked independently most of the time. My work phases alternated between programming, writing texts and working through documentation and specialist literature.
"It's also a good feeling that the work no longer has a purely didactic background, but really creates added value."
What subject area did you deal with in your bachelor's thesis? Were there any references to specific CONCETO products and areas of work that were important and helpful for your bachelor's thesis?
My topic was a feasibility study on whether and how we can migrate our own CIS/4 cloud applications from SAP BTP to Microsoft Azure. To this end, I developed a sample application based on the use cases and technology stack of our CIS/4 cloud applications. We hope to be able to benefit from the significantly better price-performance ratio in relation to application hosting with Azure in the future.
It was particularly important to identify the dependencies of our applications on the SAP world and to resolve or replace them in the best possible way. After all, despite migrating to a different cloud infrastructure, communication with the SAP systems that are necessary for the applications to function must of course be maintained. This process also allows us to place our products on a more open foundation, making us less dependent on individual hyperscalers, including Microsoft and SAP.
Did you find the topic on your own, did the professor make a suggestion or did the idea come about through working with colleagues at CONCETO?
What kind of support did CONCETO provide? For example, were there team colleagues who were able to provide useful tips for your Bachelor's thesis based on their own (university) experience?
I had a colleague as my supervisor who had also studied at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences and was therefore quite familiar with the procedures there. This regular exchange resulted in helpful suggestions regarding the focus and structure of the thesis.
When I needed specialised help, such as setting up an authentication system in the BTP, I turned to colleagues with the relevant expertise.
Towards the end of the editing period, I shared my finished text with three colleagues and discussed and implemented their feedback. This went through two iterations before the final text was finalised.
How would you rate the process compared to fellow students who were left to their own devices?
My fellow students, who were pursuing their own projects, had a much greater degree of creative freedom in their choice of topics and approaches. In my case, of course, the connection to CONCETO was in the background, with all the technical and architectural specifications and conditions resulting from our current application landscape.
However, my fellow students were usually on their own when it came to problems that arose during their Bachelor's theses and had to spend a lot more time familiarising themselves with new subject areas and figuring out the best way to proceed. As I was able to draw on the experience of my colleagues for such things, such processes were much more straightforward and relaxed for me.
Of course, I also had enormously stressful phases in which I questioned the quality and meaningfulness of my work, as is typical for the creative process of a final thesis. But the dialogue within the company gave me a certain amount of support, so that in the end I was able to go into the final exam with a lot of confidence and get a very good grade.
Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us about your experiences, Sebastian. We hope you continue to enjoy your work!
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Become part of the team
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