Datacom offers up scholarship to technology wizards

One of New Zealand’s largest technology development companies, Datacom, is once again supporting the emerging software design talent in New Zealand’s tertiary institutions by offering an internship to one of the talented young students competing in the Microsoft Imagine Cup – the world’s largest technology competition, challenging students from around the globe to develop technologies that help solve the world’s toughest problems.

The winner will have the choice of a paid six month internship or a three month holiday internship and three months mentoring in Datacom’s Microsoft team and in doing so, have the opportunity to contribute to real-world customer solutions.

The Microsoft team delivers solutions using Microsoft technologies such as SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, BizTalk and .NET.   The Microsoft team provides leading edge solutions for a large number of New Zealand’s leading brands across a range of sectors including insurance, finance, FMCG, power, building and agriculture. 

Greg Davidson, CEO of the Datacom New Zealand, said the Imagine Cup is a great way to celebrate the world-class software design talent coming out of the New Zealand tertiary institutions and the Datacom Scholarship award recognises this talent.  Every year the company has hired a large number of graduating students into permanent roles with around 60 graduates joining the software division alone in the past 24 months.

“The scholarship is a great opportunity for a student to put their theoretical learning into practice in real-world situations”. “From day one they’ll be working with our talented staff and our customers who want us to make a significant difference to their business. They will be heavily involved in designing, building and delivering solutions.  This is a chance to spend time in a leading company and work on real projects – and get paid doing it,” said Mr Davidson.

Scott Wylie, Director of the Developer and Platform Group for Microsoft New Zealand believes the opportunity for the scholarship winner to work with industry-leading technologies delivering big business solutions will be excellent exposure to the industry.

“Datacom is offering one lucky student a fantastic break into the industry and a great kick-start to their career,” says Scott.

Last year’s inaugural scholarship winner, Dmitry Selitskiy, said the six months he spent at Datacom were hugely beneficial to his career and personal development. “It gave me the chance to work with a group of very smart people who have decades of experience in IT as well as in other fields. This was invaluable in terms of learning how the industry works and gaining some strong connections in the industry.”

Dmitry went on to apply his newly found practical skills to his personal start-up company Thought-Wired.

The Datacom Imagine Cup Scholarship is open to all students who are members of the Top 20 teams in the 2012 Microsoft NZ Imagine Cup.

The winner of the Datacom scholarship will be announced on Datacom’s New Zealand website on 22 June 2012.