PentaStagiu, our IT training program in Romania, has wrapped up its activities for the year and is ready to open registrations for 2018. This program showcases Pentalog’s effort to engage young people passionate about IT by giving them the opportunity to learn and gain practical experience in the tech field.
This has been the program’s 6th year and our most successful one yet. The number of participants has doubled compared to last year seeing over 200 students from Iasi, Suceava, and Galati.
This was also the first year that we offered this IT training program in cities other than Iasi. We look forward to an even bigger turn in 2018 as we continue to build more partnerships with universities around Romania.
PentaStagiu can directly lead to employment opportunities as we are always eager to take on the best participants from our IT training program. In fact, Pentalog just employed 10 of the most recent graduates of PentaStagiu to work in Iasi on Java and PHP development and testing. We expect to take on more graduates soon as our client base grows and their projects become more complex.
Remote modules for Suceava and Galati
This was the first year PentaStagiu had students participate from Suceava and Galati. Because there are no Pentalog professionals available in these cities to provide on-site training, our mentors implemented a remote e-training program to accommodate as many students as possible.
The end result was a 4-module IT training program for our participants in Suceava and Galati lasting 2.5 months while the onsite program in Iasi lasted 5. This inaugural experience provided us with input and feedback to add and improve these modules for 2018.
Our 20 mentors are dedicated to this program – body and soul. They care about the participants and spend months working alongside them, encouraging, guiding and forming a bond that is sure to continue long after the program is finished.
Our mentors keep in touch with their mentees whether they find a job at Pentalog or another IT company.
The Future of PentaStagiu
Students from Bacau wanted to participate in the program this year but we did not have the ability to offer them a remote module.
However, these students should keep an eye out for next year as we expand our program.
Pentalog is currently strengthening its partnerships with universities in Suceava (the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), Galati (the the Faculty of Automatics and Computers, Dunarea de Jos) and Bacau (the Faculty of Engineering, Vasile Alecsandri University) and will work together with faculties to keep improving the learning experience of our participants.
We have prepared an even more immersive program for 2018 and those who participate can look forward to learning about Front-End, Java, .NET, PHP, Mobile, and Python development as well as the best testing techniques.
Our aim is to make our program as ambitious as the students who attend it.
The Proof is in the Results
Since 2012, more than 350 students have completed the PentaStagiu program and more than 85 percent have succeeded in landing an IT job afterwards.
The success of the program and especially that of our trainees has been the main motivator of our expansion. In order to extend the program’s coverage we will continue to partner with more universities and develop more features for the PentaStagiu website.
Check out feedback from Mentors & Participants
“I was really excited to be part of PentaStagiu this year. The biggest challenge for us, as coordinators, was to keep the interest in Android alive, so we offered maximum flexibility. Participants received practical training, asked questions whenever they didn’t understand something, and we were able to joke around as well. This year’s PentaStagiu was very successful, in my opinion. My biggest satisfaction was watching them grow with every training session and getting to know them as individuals. I still keep contact with some of our trainees to see how they are progressing and, who knows, we might end up working together sometime in the future.” Marian Gociman, Technical Lead Android, Pentalog
“This was the first time that we offered Python training. With the participants we went through the python syntax, the standard library, design patterns, data persistence, security concerns, and the Flask web framework. I was really impressed by the young people who joined Pentalog’s program and it was a great pleasure to have had the opportunity to interact with them. We ended up teaching each other and had a lot of fun together at the same time. I’m looking forward to the next PentaStagiu program in 2018.” Teofil Achirei, Python Developer, Pentalog
“I have a PhD in Biology, a Master’s degree in Computer Science and am currently a Java Developer at Pentalog. At the beginning of 2016 I took a free Java course offered by my university. After a while, I decided to apply for a PentaStagiu because I thought it would be a great opportunity to kickstart my programming career. I took a test and I was interviewed and then I received the happy news: I was accepted to join the program. I learnt about GIT, Maven, REST services, JPA, Unit Testing and a lot of other important tools and process that are used to develop programs. At the end of the program I was asked if I wanted to joint Pentalog’s development team in Iasi. I gladly accepted because I wanted to learn from and work with great people in a friendly environment.” Ana-Maria Stratulat, 2017 PentaStagiu participant and now a Pentalog employee
“I am a 22 year old student at the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering. I applied to PentaStagiu with a focus in Front-end technologies because I am curious about web design. Besides acquiring experience with HTML5, CSS, CSS3, Bootstrap, JavaScript, jQuery, AngularJS, this program also helped me improve myself personally. I gained a lot more confidence, I became more determined and I developed more proactive behavior. My favorite part of PentaStagiu was interacting with the mentors. They had a very friendly approach, were very involved, and they answered all of our questions. Also the tasks they gave us were fun and challenging and solving them definitely helped us understand more about the technologies we were working with. The day I was offered a job in Pentalog was one of the best days of my life so far and everything has changed for the better since then. I have become more responsible, I am still learning a lot of new things and every day is a new challenge.” Alexandru Condurache, 2017 PentaStagiu participant and now a Pentalog employee
Visit PentaStagiu website and register to our new 2018 program!
Stay tuned for more internship opportunities at Pentalog!