What is Shadow day?
Shadow Day is an initiative by an organisation called Junior Achievement – Latvia. It gives students the chance to have a look into the daily work of various professionals and then decide if that would be something they would want to do in future.
It is not binding in any way – if the students see that they don’t like the profession after all, good for them – they won’t need to experience this discovery later on. And the other way around – if the profession still seems appealing to them, the students might have more knowledge and experience when choosing what to study in the university, where to have the internship, and etc.
Mearra has welcomed shadowers already 3 years in a row, but this year turned out a little bit different, as most of the shadowers (11 out of 14) chose to shadow developers. And it came as no surprise – a developer has been the most popular profession chosen by the shadowers for already 2 years. Happy to see that this profession is becoming more and more appealing for the new generation!
Why we participate
Mearra is always looking for new talents (check out our careers section) and we believe that some of our future Mearra people are now sitting at the school or university desk, so it seems logical to participate and invite them to come and see that Mearra is a great place to work. Who knows, maybe we will actually meet in a job interview after some 2 or 3 years.
How it is organised
Year by year students can apply on www.enudiena.lv, where they see all the professions that companies have listed and what they can offer during the Shadow Day. Additionally, at Mearra we still work very closely with schools in the region and accept applications by e-mail.
We believe that the best way how to work with students is to not only give them information but to also give the chance to do something practical, so this year we included a little demo activity, where each shadow received a simple coding task. Step by step and we ended up with an actual domain made by Mearra & the shadows. Go check it out -> enudiena.Mearra.io
Other than that, here is a brief overview of how the Shadow day looked like at Mearra:
- 9:45 – 10:00 – arrival & introduction
- 10:00 – 11:00 – presentation about Mearra and professions
- 11:00 – 12:00 – demo activity
- 12:00 – 13:00 – lunch and discussion / questions
- 13:00 – 14:00 – quiz with small motivational prizes, group photo
- 14:00 – … – leaving / opportunity for individual discussions with employees
The results after this day were pretty inspiring. The shadowers had a chance to submit anonymous feedback about the day and the average score was 4.7 out of 5!
To sum up…
All in all, it was a great day also for the Mearra team, as we had a chance to have an actual dialogue with the new generation. We helped them to learn if working for an IT company could be something that they want to do in their future, and showed that it doesn’t have to necessarily mean that you sit behind your computer all day long with zero communication with colleagues. We believe that IT can be fun and we hope that now 14 more people believe so!
If you are interested in visiting Mearra and learning about IT career, you don’t have to wait until the next Shadow day. Just drop us a message and let’s arrange you a visit.
