Three months before getting his Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics, Civil Engineer Esben Kolind posted his resume in a number of job databases. Already within a few days he had arranged his first job interview. Today he works as an IT consultant for Netcompany IT and Business Consulting in Copenhagen.
"Back in high school I knew that I wanted an education in natural science. I went to open houses at the different schools for higher education, which helped me decide where I wanted to go, in terms of both the student environment and the courses that were being offered. I started taking the Informatics courses at IMM. I found the courses interesting and the structure highly flexible because it allowed me to combine the courses with courses from other areas of specialization. This gave me the opportunity to try different specialties before diving into the one that I was most interested in”, says 24 year-old Esben Kolind who got his Master’s degree from IMM in November of 2006.
Student Jobs Yield Professional and Practical Qualifications
"Generally, there is a shortage of people who have the right qualifications in the IT consultancy business. I was somewhat ahead in the competition for the good jobs because I have had student jobs all through the course of my education, and this has given me both professional and practical qualifications. So by the time I got my Master’s degree I was offered a job with Netcompany where I have been working for three months now”.
Esben Kolind has held student jobs at the Defense Research Services (Forsvarets Forskningstjeneste) and as a research assistant at IMM in the Section for Operations Research (Sektionen for Operationsanalyse) which was where he did his thesis. Furthermore, he has worked as an assistant teacher at the Department of Mathematics.
"Operations research in particular intrigued me, which was why I chose this as my specialty. However, today I am not able to directly apply the courses from my education in my everyday work. On the other hand, I feel well-equipped because of my vast basic knowledge, a strong analytical ability and great experience in programming, which will definitely be useful to me in the work I do for Netcompany today”.
Netcompany supplies IT solutions and offers advisory services to companies of all sizes, e.g., company systems that are often based on web technology. These are, e.g., portals, e-commerce, CRM, workflow, intranet and the integration of new and existing systems.
The First Project
"Today I work with IT in the broad sense of the word. I am currently participating in my first project for Netcompany. The project runs over a period of ten months, during which we are to develop a web portal for one of our major clients. I have been part of the project all the way from the very beginning, the analysis phase, where we uncovered the client’s needs and up until the design phase where we design the sites of the portal based on the underlying business logic. After this, we start the construction phase of programming and setting up the portal and the integration with a line of external systems. Then the portal is tested, launched – and ready to use”.
"Being part of such a project is an incredibly diverse job. It is exciting to take part in all the phases of the project, meet with the client and collaborate with the different professional capacities that are included during the running of the project. At the beginning there was six of us working on the project, currently we are ten, and at some point our group will probably shrink again, depending on the phase we are in and the competences needed for the project at any given time”, says Esben Kolind.