Nearsoft Academy

The Nearsoft Academy is a program for college seniors and recent graduates. It’s an opportunity for talented students to learn from seasoned software engineers.

Our aim is to turn recent graduates into world class software engineers in six months.

One Intern at a Time

Nearsoft’s noble goal is to create a competitive software development ecosystem in Latin America. We contribute to this vision by training the software developers of the future, today. Young and talented software engineering students find a home at Nearsoft to grow and learn, then go outside and pursue greater heights.

Here’s how we do it in steps,

1.- Reset their mindset

Nearsoft Academy participants are the best of their class, and this mindset can be harmful for their careers if taken too seriously. Thus we begin by resetting their mindset so they can develop teamwork, commitment and look beyond what they learned on school.
During the first phase of the Academy they must let go of their favorite programming language and technologies. Book assignments and projects are tasked to them so they can broaden their perspective and become “all terrain” software developers.

2.- Teamwork

Interns are assigned together to work in projects. They are left alone to fend for themselves as a team. This way they can face blockages that real developers deal with on their daily basis.

This phase is designed to teach them how to work as a self-managed unit. While they take the time to develop the leadership and commitment needed to fulfill their tasks.

3.- Open Source

Phase three comes in the form of Open Source Projects of trending technologies and programming languages our clients are sing. The goal is for them to understand other developers’ code and at the same time train themselves on technologies they will use on the future when they become full fledged developers.

Another focal point is to remind them it is important to contribute to the Open Source Community. It’s a win-win after all, while supporting others, they get to add worthy entries to their own resume.

4.- Real Clients & Users

The real world is up next, a real client or project. This can mean a Nearsoft client or an internal product from Nearsoft Labs.

The plan is to make the future developers notice mistakes an opportunities with real problems, and eventually, learn how to overcome them.

It’s also a a way to get them future opportunities with said clients.

5.- Get a Job

During the final stage interns improve their communication skills. We ask them to prepare for an interview with a Nearsoft client to see if they can get a real job.

They get a round of preparation and test interviews from our developers to provide them with useful feedback.

If everything goes well, at the end of this step our interns are hired and become part of the team.

Of course, Nearsoft is not the only place they can get a job. So as far as they are hired, they officially graduate.