Vladimir Dainovski is a current Computer Science student who completed his placement year at Amazon Web Services. This post will give you an overview of his onboarding experience and how easy it is to feel imposter syndrome.
When I think of myself a year ago, I would have never thought I would have actually made it into Amazon web services as an intern. I had only applied for a summer internship and instead I was presented with the opportunity to take a nine-month internship which has now been extended to 11 months to accommodate my placement year. At first, I was never planning to do a placement year but when this opportunity presented itself to me I decided to change my degree to include a placement year. After my first interview, I didn’t really think I would get the role because I had felt that I had made a mistake in that interview but nevertheless they decided to move forward with me as a candidate. Eventually I got to the final stage where I had spent a considerable amount time preparing for the final interview which ended up going very well.
When I first got the news that I was offered a position as an intern I began to experience an incredible amount of impostor syndrome, it felt as if had got in by pure chance and that any day now I would get an email from them reconsidering taking me as an intern. The day before my start date I still thought something was going to go wrong. After my first day, one of my co-workers recommended that I read a document that was written specifically for new joiners by recently hired employees. In the document, they talked about feeling impostor syndrome when joining AWS so I felt as if I was not alone and I was reassured that it would be OK. As the months went on, I settled more and more into my role. I began to accumulate official qualifications making me look like a true professional, at this point I can confidently say that I no longer feel like an impostor and I feel confident in my role.
In a year’s time I will be back studying computer science at Kings but with a plethora of knowledge that I have taken with me from my time as an intern where I look forward to going back to work for Amazon again.