What has been the greatest added value for you as a company in taking on LIA students?
–Being able to test candidates in practice before possibly hiring them, similar to a trial period. As a company, we have focused on having longer LIA periods, around five to six months, with the aim of being able to recruit the students afterwards.  This semester, we plan to take on four students on LIA (Learning in the Workplace, University of Applied Sciences internship).  

How have LIA students been involved in the business during their internship?
– The goal is for LIA students to function as regular employees. This often works well, even though they cannot be held accountable in the same way as employees. If a student is given a task that does not work, it is usually possible to switch to a task that works better. The students quickly get into the work and after three or four days they can start fixing real bugs in the systems. Tasks that might take an experienced developer an hour can take a student up to three days at first, but then the student learns and gets better and better. In the future, it will be more difficult to find typical junior tasks, as it will be more about managing and quality-assuring AI solutions, where someone needs to validate the results.

Have you been able to adapt or influence the content of the programs through your collaboration with YH?
– Yes, absolutely. The company is part of the steering committee for the program from which they primarily recruit, which means that the content can be tailored to the needs of the business and vice versa. This work is largely carried out through the steering committees.

Michael Westerberg has been involved in the program’s management group for over 20 years and would like to see more representatives from larger companies in the groups. Several of them take on LIA students but do not participate actively.

– The existence of these programs is largely determined by the industry, and if companies take on more LIA students, more programs will be created. I find the process of taking on LIA students to be straightforward, with very few requirements other than putting the LIA student to work.