IT-INTERNSHIPS: HIATUS ENDS

A new competition for internships in the US’s IT startups kicks off September 25 after the approval from the foundation’s Board of Trustees. The contest was held last year for the first time.

— We received very positive feedback from last year’s winners, one of whom returned to Kazakhstan this July, which enables us to state all the winners completed their internships and with very impressive results, I’d like to add. Add to this the analysis of the program’s pipeline and implementation, based on which we proposed to the Board to continue the program in 2018 as well, — says Aiganym Malisheva, executive director for the Foundation.

Four out of the five winners continued their work for the startups remotely. One of them even set up a branch of the startup in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana. All things considered, the Board of Trustees approved the proposal of the foundation’s staff. Applications are accepted from September 25 to October 22 (23:59). The foundation will similarly allocate 5 grants to the most prospective students or working specialists in the field of information technology. The interns will be placed with US’s leading startups primarily located in Silicon Valley. The winners will undergo a two-stage competition, evaluation of applications and interviews. Details of the competition and program provisions are here.

— We would not be surprised if representatives of startups interested in the program join us at the interview round of the competition. This could speed up the visa process and enable the winners start their internships as early as in January 2018. For instance, it took 4 long months for the winners before they could travel to their destination after the competition wrapped up last year. This year we adjusted and are launching the competition much earlier. By November 8 we plan to announce the names of the five Kazakhstanis, who will hone their skills at the American startups, – explains the foundation’s coordinator of the program Ilzira Aldagarova.

A research by the Shakhmardan Yessenov Foundation reveals the most in demand working areas such as front end developer, back end developer, system level programmer, data scientist, mobile developer, and database engineer at the Silicon Valley’s startups.