Huawei TT graduates 3rd cohort of interns

Huawei graduated four of its interns from the third cohort of Huawei TT’s internship programme.

This is a three-year-old initiative designed to help young, newly graduated STEM students upscale their skills and gain hands-on work experience in readiness for employment in the ICT sector.

The internship programme places new graduates as paid interns together with mentors to gain industry experience full-time, for a period of six months. After this time, the company may recruit the top performing interns to work at the local office as it becomes necessary.

“It is intense, hands-on, and the interns have full involvement in the work and projects of the company,” Tamara Gorrin, Human Resource Business Partner at Huawei TT, said as she proudly described the company’s internship programme.

Successfully launched in 2019, Huawei’s internship programme is one of four components of Huawei’s ICT Talent Development Plan, a signature initiative which draws together universities, institutions and Government authorities into a comprehensive effort, targeted to prepare young local talent to lead ICT solutions and contribute to the country’s digital development.

Gorrin described it as the company’s goal to help TT develop a sound human resource base in the growing ICT sector and said the programme was a critical intervention in bridging the manpower gap in the industry, while also enhancing local capacity.

On Monday March 27, the 2022 cohort of freshly graduated university students beamed as they received their Huawei graduation certificates at the company’s head office in Port-of-Spain, having completed the six month internship programme.

The 2022 interns – Amy Ramesar, Aidan Singh, Safiyyah Mohammed and Trevon Phillip – who majored in Computer Science with Management, International Business, Industrial Engineering and Computer Science at university, respectively, found themselves fully immersed in the fast-paced, ever-evolving technological ecosystem of Huawei.

This was done through real-world experiences as wireless product marketing assistant; product sales assistant – enterprise; fixed network sales assistant and radio frequency engineer assistant, respectively.

Huawei mentors Valene Rampersad, Tudor John, Lorrenzo Francis and Samir Hosein received high praise from their interns, who credited their astute guidance, willingness to share knowledge and allowing them, as interns, to share their ideas and suggestions for company improvement, as key to making the internship programme an excellent opportunity for youth in the ICT field.

Commenting on the idea behind implementing the Progamme, Evan Zhou, Huawei TT CEO noted, “Colleges and universities are the cradle of talent. But business also has a role to play in providing the additional support to efficiently train talent.

“Here in Trinidad and Tobago, we at Huawei want to support the growth of the local ICT sector and increase local digital talent development. That’s why we do programmes like this internship for fresh graduates, in order to give them hands-on work experience and knowledge in the ICT field. “We hope our internship programme can help develop young people to drive the growth of the digital economy in TT. We are also proud of the fact that Huawei remains focused on Women in ICT and we are always encourage female graduates to apply for the Programme.”

To date, the company has recruited almost 40 per cent female interns, with the view to increasing that number to 50 per cent over the next two years. Ten new interns will participate in the 2023 internship programme.