Intern's Journey - Exploring Automation at Digital Workforce Solution
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Trellis Stewart: Hello, I'm Trellis Stewart, project manager and business analyst for Digital Workforce Solution, and welcome back to our podcast. On today's podcast, Matt Gustitus, CEO, Founder, and Lead Advisor for Digital Workforce Solution. We'll be speaking with Shyam Patel, intern automation developer and current student at the University of Indianapolis on his internship with Digital Workforce Solution.
Welcome to you both!
Matt Gustitus: Hello. Thanks. Happy to be here.
Shyam Patel: Hello. Thank you for inviting me here.
Trellis Stewart: So let's jump right in. Shyam, what degree are you currently pursuing and what drew you to that course of study?
Shyam Patel: So currently I'm pursuing a computer science degree, and what pursued me is I always had passion for technology.
Even when growing up during my school time, I would spend hours of my summertime on the computer. And just trying and messing with new things and just trying to learn new things. So that, that's what really made me interested in pursuing the, my career in technology. And later down the road in my high school once I took some coding classes, I was able to understand that I am really deeply passionate in technology.
Trellis Stewart: As a kid I used to get the number one thing I used to get in trouble for was taking things apart because I was curious to know what was inside them and trying to put them back together before my parents found out. I think I was only successful once. As a kid Science always interested me in technology.
And you want to learn just what things, how they work. You wanna see what's in the inside. So I can completely relate to that course of study and why that interests you so much. I would like to know At this point, when you were looking for an internship, what requirements did you feel that you had to fulfill for an internship when you went looking for one?
Shyam Patel: So specifically when I was like looking for internships what I was really looking for. So at that time I had somewhat experience in working in an office and working in an environment. I was looking for somewhat similar environment, which was like very inclusive environment, which is very supportive.
And everybody that would help me grow and I could pitch in whenever somebody would need help. I was looking for that kind of environment and when I, just found Digital Workforce Solution, the job posting there, that made me really want to apply to the job posting.
Trellis Stewart: Which leads me, right into my next question. What drew you to our posting on Handshake?
Shyam Patel: As I said before I wanted to have an inclusive and very supportive work environment which Digital Workforce Solution provided me with and also the job posting itself. I'm always curious about learning new things and I wanted to try like new fields, like what can I do more other than just coding? I wanted to try something more and I found the position, robotic process the automation developer intern. So I applied to that position. I didn't know anything prior to it, but the experience was very interesting. The skillset that I would gain from it was very interesting and it aligned with what I wanted to do in an internship.
Trellis Stewart: That's excellent!
I would also like to know what were you hoping to learn from your internship with Digital Workforce Solution?
Shyam Patel: There was a lot of things that I wondered that I was hoping to gain, and I have gained a lot more after being there and after learning. Specifically I wanted to know how it feels to be working in an internship environment in like a robust and in like fast paced environment.
I wanted to experience that myself, and also the skillset that it helped me develop. I became more analytical. Then my mind became like more analytical and like I was able to like think critically after doing the internship which really helped me with a lot of my classes at that time and after the internship experience.
Trellis Stewart: That's wonderful to know. Thank you!
Matt Gustitus: A couple other questions Shyam that I'd like to ask you. So can you tell us about the projects or any projects that you've worked on for the company?
Shyam Patel: Yeah.
Matt Gustitus: That you would like to share with us?
Shyam Patel: Sure. I'm excited to share my projects that I've worked with Digital Workforce Solution I have done an analytical project over there while I was working there which was to analyze two different tools and suggest which tool could be better in terms of when you have like specific needs.
So that was a very good project that I've worked on. The other project which I worked on was to scrape the data from the pdf, using Blue Prism as a tool. That project was very exciting because it taught me a lot, it challenged me to think critically because I thought at first that it would be easier, but the different screen resolutions and OCR can be challenging at times. I also did another project which was to write a PowerShell script to automate using PowerShell and that was a very code-based project, but it definitely taught me some skills and helped me build the logic behind any tool like Blue Prism or UiPath.
I can go on and on about the projects.
Matt Gustitus: Yeah no, that's great. That's great. No, that sounds exciting. You'd mentioned building out an RPA intake form that power app form that can be really powerful to be able to use that as a front end to ultimately, produce the list that's gonna drive automation for organizations. That's great and very valuable.
Can you share a little bit about your accomplishments? Obviously you mentioned some projects, but what are you most excited about or proud of that you've delivered with the team?
Shyam Patel: The thing that I was most proud of was scraping the data from a PDF and export it to Excel and that turned out to decrease the workload from half an hour to probably five to eight minutes. That makes me feel like it's the most valuable achievement and that the internship is successful.
Matt Gustitus: That's great. Thank you for sharing that. It's nice to feel those accomplishments as part of as part of the team learning from each other. So that's a great example. What would you say you've learned the most in your internship opportunity?
Shyam Patel: Besides Blue Prism and RPA I would say learning to work with the team because working in tech I would be mostly working with teams and yeah, it could be challenging, but, it is very rewarding.
Matt Gustitus: Yeah, it is nice to learn from each other, right? Just because somebody's been doing it for years and years there's still something to learn. One of the last questions I wanted to ask you is what's maybe been the biggest challenge for you in your work with Digital Workforce Solution? Can you share a little bit about what's been the biggest challenge and how you overcame that?
Shyam Patel: The biggest challenge for me while working at DWS was learning RPA and trying to build the logic. It was very challenging like sometimes I would understand part of it, and some of it seemed off. But whenever I worked on the projects, I shadowed my peers who helped me learn a lot more, shadowing with Lourdhu definitely helped me learn and like I could ask questions to her whenever I felt like I needed help. Also the developer meetings were very helpful in that I could resolve some of my queries.
Matt Gustitus: That's great. Very informational I'm sure for everybody. Thanks for taking the time to share your experience. You've been great to have on the team and you've really helped deliver quite a bit, really important items to the teams and for a lot of the important work that that we're doing for clients. So really appreciate all your effort and I'm glad things are going well in school. Keep up the great work and look forward to more opportunities together.
Shyam Patel: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to work with DWS.
Trellis Stewart: Thank you Matt, and thank you Shyam for sharing your intern experience. Great information. I would have to say it was definitely inspiring for future interns. Everything you learned you definitely rose to the challenge and not only met it, but exceeded it. And we thank you for that. You've been a great person to work with and I wish you a wonderful future in your chosen career. This has been very insightful and I thank everyone for listening in on today's podcast. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at digitalworkforcesolution.com or feel free to message us on LinkedIn. At Digital Workforce Solution, we create work that humans love.
Until next time, have a great day.
Thank you for listening to speak with our team. Please contact us through digital workforce solution.com and until next time, follow us on LinkedIn to stay up to date on the latest information around intelligent automation.
