Placement student, Nirav Ganju-Cass talks what he’s learnt from his time with Fisikal.
WHAT WERE YOU HOPING FOR FROM A PLACEMENT?
A variety of work was important to me. Over the course of my degree, I’ve worked on a very diverse range of projects, encompassing a wide range of design and engineering disciplines, but choosing a field of work means going deeper into a narrower area of expertise.
This placement is a huge part of that selection process and I didn’t want it to be too limiting, so that I could get a feel for what areas of the work best suited me and what areas I would prefer to avoid going forward. At the same time, this placement is the first time I have had to work regular hours based largely in one location with the same people, so the workplace environment was also really important.
WHAT DREW YOU TO FISIKAL?
Fisikal felt like it could be good fit for me because the work combines digital design with more technical elements, for both internal and external projects, ticking my box for variety and allowing me to continue developing skills that I have enjoyed picking up at University.
The job interested me because what Fisikal are offering felt unique, and the solution incredibly flexible. I was curious as to how it worked and how it had been developed. During my interview, Rob and Emma made it clear that they understood the placement was going to be a learning curve for me and were keen to accommodate that, which was incredibly reassuring to hear.
HOW HAVE YOU FOUND YOUR PLACEMENT WITH FISIKAL?
It’s been a great experience, and exactly what I was hoping to get out of a placement. I’ve been able to further develop my existing skills within a practical setting and learn new ones as well, and because of the small size of the team I have been able to experience most areas of the business – even spending a month in the office of one of our clients in order to better capture their requirements and support their operations team.
Learning the ‘ins-and-outs’ of the Fisikal system has been a fun challenge, and designing new functionality within the existing framework even more so. The team have been wonderful to work with and I loved the week spent in Minsk visiting our developers.
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'VE BROUGHT TO THE TEAM?
I hope that I’ve been able to bring a range of skills to the table both in the designing of new functionality and in troubleshooting and solving technical problems. With the former, I believe that being able to combine knowledge of design best-practices with an understanding of the feasibility to program specific features has allowed me to craft practical and intuitive additions to Fisikal’s current system.
When it comes to troubleshooting, being a fresh set of eyes at Fisikal means that I can pick up on user flows that leave more room for mistakes and work out where an error has occurred. Finally, because my degree also covers a wide range of supplementary skills at a foundational level, I have been able to expand some of what Fisikal can offer in-house; customising email notifications using HTML and providing real-time data analysis with Microsoft’s PowerBI are two good examples of this.
