Nurturing a Culture of Empowerment

Starting your career comes with its fair share of uncertainty. Which job will be the right one for you and how do you score a position anyway? Internships are a great place to start when you have an idea of which direction you want to go in but need a starting point. 

For Shehzer it was clear early on in his university studies as an Electronics Engineer that he wanted to pursue an internship. At first, the idea of joining the games industry was not something that crossed his mind. Working on games and being paid for it? What a dream career! On the other hand, the games industry is often associated with strong competition and long crunch hours, but Shehzer wanted to find out for himself if this holds true. 

Shehzer decided to look for an internship during his last year of university to find out if working in games was the right career path for him and what kind of company would fit his personal work style. In this post, he gives us an insight into his journey from a QA intern at Kolibri Games to his current position as QA Automation Engineer: 

When I was looking for an internship, it was very important to me that the position was compensated fairly, and that I would be able to learn as much as possible about Quality Assurance. I found Kolibri Games (back then, it was still Fluffy Fairy Games) through LinkedIn and immediately had a positive impression. To be honest, I was not planning to go into mobile gaming originally, but from their website and the description of the position it sounded exactly like what I was looking for, and it was a huge benefit for me to be working on a game as big and successful as Idle Miner Tycoon. I was already personally interested in gaming, especially in the QA department (because I just hate bugs…).

I submitted my resume and a very casual yet honest letter and quickly got my first interview with a recruiter at Kolibri Games. During this interview, I not only presented my professional experience, I also had the opportunity to ask questions, and we were able to have a very open chat. After that first interview, I was invited for a trial day to see if my skills but also my expectations match the position. 

I can definitely recommend asking a lot of questions during your trial days, just be open and try to get to know the team. It’s not about presenting a perfect result, but also to see if working in the team feels like the right fit. My number one advice is to really be yourself, and see if the culture appeals to you. 

During my internship, I not only learned on the job, I also had access to a variety of training resources, which was really cool and helpful. I have always been a big self-learner and taught myself coding through YouTube videos. At  Kolibri Games, I was able to access more professional learning resources. For example, I took a class on Udemy to improve my coding skills and also used the Kolibri Games library to read books on Python. 

The culture at Kolibri Games empowered me to advance my skill set and take over more and more responsibilities throughout my internship. So much so that I decided to do my thesis at Kolibri Games. As every student knows, writing your thesis takes up a lot of time, and it’s even more difficult if you have to combine your own work with the subject of your research. Fortunately, I was able to count on the support and understanding of my team.

As the result of my thesis, I presented a proof of concept for QA automation, which eventually turned into the automation department. I appreciated the trust my lead and the whole team put in me, and was rewarded by joining them full-time as a QA tester after my six-month-long internship had ended. Big thanks to Jonas H., Jonas K., and Yannick – they were great mentors and without their guidance, my thesis and my time at Kolibri Games would not have turned out so successful. 

After a few months as a QA tester, I was promoted to Senior QA tester and then took over the role of QA Automation Engineer. My responsibilities include writing scripts to automate manual tests. These automated tests can be run any time throughout the day, allowing our QA team to focus on more in-depth manual testing.

I’d say my biggest accomplishment so far, besides helping to build the automation department and seeing my thesis project coming to life, was being a coding mentor for other colleagues looking to learn. I went from student to teacher in only three years, which was great for my confidence and made me feel empowered. It’s fair to say that I am more than excited to see what the future will hold for me. 

If you feel inspired by Shehzer’s story, check out our open positions below. We continuously offer internships (not only in our QA team), so feel free to reach out to our recruitment team to start your career in games now.