This year’s SNITS dinner at Karlstad University was more than fully booked, not surprisingly since employment in the IT industry was on the table – a mouth-watering dish which tempted both businesses and students.
On 19 September, 130 students from the different IT study programmes at the university gathered to meet representatives from eleven local businesses in the IT industry. According to the organisers, more students would have liked to participate if only there had been room.
Even though this was just a first contact with the industry for some students, the prospects are clear: SNITS, which stands for cooperation between the business sector and IT students, leads to employment. The annual SNITS dinner functions as a kickoff for a number of other activities during the academic year.
Jonatan Lind, a first-year student in the Computer Engineering programme, was hoping to find out more about what businesses might be interesting for him in the long term.
“This seems like a good way to get in touch with the business sector. A straightforward connection between the university and the industry,” he said while mingling before dinner.
Practical qualifications
A constant procession of interested students lined up to visit the CGI table. Thomas Rosvall particularly lauded the mentoring programme associated with SNITS, where he himself has been a mentor of many students. Within the framework of this programme, businesses and students are often able to identify shared interest in a degree project, which may later lead to employment.
“What makes a difference after you graduate from university is if you have been able to add practical qualifications to your CV,” Thomas Rosvall told the students.
He also emphasised some of the qualities that he is looking for in particular:
“Social skills and ambition, since knowledge can always be acquired later. You have to be able to talk to and communicate with clients about the problems that they want you to solve.”
Businesses are interested
It is obvious that SNITS offers an important recruitment opportunity. The number of partners participating in SNITS is eleven at the moment, but more companies are interested in joining.
“It is great that so many businesses would like to join in, and an obvious sign that SNITS is a well-functioning collaborative project which benefits both students and companies,” says Johan Eklund, the initiator of SNITS and a senior lecturer in Computer Science at Karlstad University.
