WIMTACH Student Profile: Jasleen Kaur

A student in the Software Engineering Technology program at Centennial College, when Jasleen Kaur was deciding on a career path, she imagined that she would become a programmer. “It was really something very fascinating for me as a child,” she said. But when she joined WIMTACH as a Student Researcher, she was introduced to the role of a Business Analyst (BA) and a new pathway opened up to her. WIMTACH, helped her to realize that there was another way for her to pursue a long-term career within the technology industry.

Wearing several hats, as a Scrum Master, Quality Assurance person and Business Analyst for WIMTACH project collaborations with Ortho Biomed and Xello Inc., Jasleen has had the opportunity to gain an in-depth understanding of all the various parts that need to come together for a project to be successful. During her internship at WIMTACH, she was regularly meeting with representatives from industry partners to gather information about the requirements for a project and communicated with her development team to ensure that projects were progressing according to clear objectives. “If you are not sure what the customer wants, the team wouldn’t [be able to provide deliverables] and the customer would be disappointed,” she said. She saw her role as key to maintaining the atmosphere and efficiency within the team, so she provided support in any way she could. This experience inspired her to build a passion for the day-to-day functions of a Business Analyst, and it helped her to recognize the key impacts of BAs in tech environments and how they could shift the course of a project by introducing new ideas. “It is mostly a leadership kind of job, and I’ve always wanted to work on that side of things,” she said. Jasleen also explained that working at WIMTACH sharpened her self-assurance. Some of that confidence was built from learning how to use Jira, create user stories, and sprint planning from her Student Researcher role. “Even though I had read about it, I wasn’t sure how to do stuff, how to divide tasks within a team,” she said.

WIMTACH was instrumental in helping Jasleen to build the foundational skills for professional employment at a time when she didn’t have any work experience. As a result, she was able to leverage her internship towards securing her current Business Analyst Intern role at Guide Wire, an American Software company. “This is the path that I chose after getting to know everything, and I am hoping to continue on this path,” she said. Jasleen enjoys her work very much, and she attributes her ease in settling into her position, to the experience she gained from WIMTACH. She notes that so much of her work at WIMTACH was directly transferrable to her current job, and she was careful in choosing to work with an environment that simulated her learning environment at WIMTACH. “WIMTACH gives an opportunity mostly to students like me, those who don’t have any experience before because here students are directly customer-facing or client-facing. You will talk to them, and you will learn more things,” she said.

Jasleen mentioned that her interview for her role at Guidewire went so well because she was able to expand on her work at WIMTACH and speak knowledgeably about how she would be able to assist her current team. She advises Centennial College students to build their professional work experience with WIMTACH to get the benefit of the boost she used to secure a job after graduating. “Getting so much experience so early in your college time is actually very good, and you can actually go into any company,” she said. “WIMTACH clearly gave me that push start.”

For more stories, please visit: https://wimtach.centennialcollege.ca/news/