Recently, we were joined by the lovely Laila for a week’s work experience at Storm. Getting the full ‘Storm experience’, she was immersed in everything we do from Development right through to Marketing. Here’s what she got up to:
Laila
“This week, I had the pleasure of interning at Storm. Alice, the Projects and Operations Manager, compiled a jam packed plan for me to ensure I received the full Storm experience, and the team certainly welcomed me with opened arms, but definitely managed to keep me on my toes.
The full business experience
At the start of the week I received an in depth introduction to CiteAB, one of Storm’s creations and now ‘partner company’. I attended a planning meeting between Storm and the CiteAB team which served as a window into the big, wide world of Antibody Search Engines. This was my first time experiencing the business side of Storm, so used this opportunity to let the world of estimated arrival times and projects in the pipeline wash over me – though I did feel much better acquainted with it by the time I was sat in on a meeting with a client on Thursday.
Digital design
Out of all the processes that take place here at Storm, designing was the aspect I looked forward to the most. I worked with Senior Designer Tom. Tom spent some time showing me around his current projects which varied greatly from functionality to style and talked me through the software he had used. Tom showed me step by step how he takes something such as a sketch on paper right through to being an advanced wireframe that was client presentation ready. We used the wireframing tool Balsamiq to partially redesign what we both found to be an outdated and inefficiently structured website.
Coding and development
Senior Developer Barry took me through how he and his team were developing websites with ‘Ruby on Rails’, and showed me a vast project he was working on, joking that in hindsight he had probably picked the most complicated project to date in order to show me what he does. He also guided me around Codecademy to improve on the basic html coding I’d previously learnt at school and earlier on that week.
Marketing
I took on the role of a Marketing Executive for the day with Holly, resulting in me considering where marketing can be found, which unsurprisingly is everywhere, common marketing methods and also how brands could improve the ways they go about marketing their products.
Getting ready for the world of work
Storm is unlike any other company, Adam and Dave have done a wonderful job of creating an environment in which people want to work in and I am no exception.
I am about to start my A Levels in September so I still have a little while to decide on what I’d like to do, however, it has a been a great introduction to the world of professional employment. Having the opportunity to work in a multi-faceted technology agency has given me a lot to think about for my future career.
A massive thank you to everyone at Storm for having me, it has a been a great experience.”
It has been a pleasure to have Laila work with us over the past week. For someone so young, she was very mature, intelligent and a real asset to the team. Plus, she provided some fantastic banter to keep up with the rest of the office!
We believe she has a great future ahead of her and we wish her all the best for the future. Good luck, Laila!
