We caught up with Gemmy, who just secured a software specialist job after completing our internship at Industry Connect.

So firstly Gemmy, massive congratulations on the new role. Tell us before coming to Industry Connect, I know you applied to a bunch of places after moving to New Zealand. Do you want to explain to us a bit about your history before coming to Industry Connect?

Yeah sure. Before I came here I came from Vietnam, and I moved here three years ago. I studied in Southland, Invercargill, in IT, and after that I moved to Auckland to try to find an IT job. But after a long time applying for IT jobs, I couldn’t find any and then a friend of mine, they recommend Industry Connect, so I think maybe it could help me so I decided to try Industry Connect. After joining I gained a lot of experience and I tried real-world projects.

So in terms of the experience you got here I’m guessing you picked up some technical skills along the way. Do you want to just run us through some of the technical skills that you picked up while at in Industry Connect?

Yeah sure. I studied about .net development and some in SQL Server as well other things.

Then alongside the technical skills obviously being in a live project environment you would have picked up some soft skills as well. Do you want to tell us about some of the soft skills that you’ve found helped you the most?

Yeah, I think the soft skills that helped me the most were speaking skills and teamwork skills. It made it easier for me to get more interviews when I applied for jobs. Yeah that helped me a lot.

I supposed for anyone else who is in a similar position to you, they’ve done study but for whatever reason they were struggling to land a job in the industry, what would your advice be to them if they were considering doing Industry Connect? What would your advice to them be?

I think Industry Connect is the place for you to get real-life experience. You will learn a lot of soft skills and technical skills as well.

Awesome. Well thank so much Gemmy, and huge congratulations on your new role as a software specialist.