Unleashing potential
Meet the dynamic young minds at spotit
August 12 is International Youth Day, an opportunity to engage young people and listen to their voices. At spotit, we are very welcoming towards graduates and ambitious youth. Born and raised in a digital world, driven by a positive mindset and lots of energy, they are our future. Meet three of our high potentials.
Jens (22 years) is currently our youngest cub. He met up with Steven, CEO at spotit, during the Cisco Young Graduates Challenge and was charmed by our culture and ambition. He started his internship and never left the premises. Thanks to his study in MCT IOT & Infrastructure Engineering, he could count on a great base to quickly get his hands on an interesting project. After finalizing his Spotit Academy track and specializing in networking, he secured his spot at the spotit NOC.
“My education provided me with the necessary background and understanding of overall IT related business, but I lacked the required certifications and experience to actually work in a client’s environment. That gap was relatively quickly closed during the spotit Academy, and afterwards, on the job during the day-to-day operations. I notice my growth curve goes up way faster now, than when it did in school, because of that hands-on experience and the trust I get from my colleagues and spotit in general. They don’t see a young guy, but someone hungry for challenges and knowledge, and they give me the freedom to educate myself and deep-dive in the client’s environment. The trust spotit has in their people still stands out the most to me.” – Jens, Network & Security Engineer
Farbod (26 years) followed a similar pattern, starting with his internship. His school has a close partnership with spotit and knew Farbod has a passion for networking. He ended up working on a project for one of our biggest clients, and stayed on the team during his summer job, giving him the opportunity to implement everything he researched during his internship. Farbod started at the Spotit Academy during the COVID pandemic, which challenged him to rely a bit more on himself. The perfect test, since entrepreneurship is a value we look for in our employees.
“After my internship and the Spotit Academy, I started at the NOC and quickly felt like something was still missing. I had a decent background from school and gained my first experiences at spotit, but the customer I’m working for requires high-level skills. Together with our spotit coaches, we developed a personalized improvement plan filled with studies, workshops, and certificates to reach my goal. They really value a hands-on mentality and entrepreneurship and expect you dig in and continuously improve yourself. It’s an ongoing process, with regular follow-up coaching. When I look back now, I have grown immensely, both on a technical level as my soft skills. Part of this plan is to define your goals and future at spotit as well. Me personally, I’m aiming to get more in-depth expertise in certain technologies, to become the reference and provide our customers with excellent service and skills.” – Farbod, Network & Security Engineer
Keanu (25 years) is leading example that just because you started your career in a certain area, doesn’t mean you can’t switch up everything and go another direction. His impressive trajectory started in the Spotit Academy, took him to a position in the NOC, a switch to the SOC, to end as an ethical hacker and penetration tester, now evolving into a more leading role in offensive security.
“While I have always been interested in cybersecurity, my education was more focused on networking due to the lack of decent cybersecurity courses. Given my background and interests, spotit seemed like a great fit. After the Spotit Academy, I started in the NOC team where my technical and soft skills quickly evolved. During monthly coaching sessions, I expressed my passion for cybersecurity, and when a place at the SOC became available, spotit gave me the opportunity to make the big switch. It took a lot of training, studying, and getting the required certificates to join the team. Luckily, I could count on my acquired experience at the NOC to move teams swiftly. I started as a SOC analyst, investigating and responding to security incidents of our customers. Over time, I slowly specialized in penetration testing and red teaming, where I instead simulated attacks to proactively identify gaps in the security posture of our clients. Recently, I took the lead of our offensive security team, which we are now looking to expand even further. When I look back on the past 5 years, I’m very proud of everything I achieved, all the support I received from spotit and my colleagues, and where I ended up now. Although I’m definitely not done yet. My current goal is to take our offensive security team to the next level. I want spotit to be known and renowned for our excellent services.” – Keanu, Offensive Security Lead