Computer programmer finds ‘sweet’ internship with Chicago Cubs

Internships are often crucial to landing good jobs after graduation, so Adnan Dossaji made sure to enroll in a university with strong connections to Chicago: DePaul.

“Recruiters and interviewers see DePaul and understand our elevation of standards and culture,” says Dossaji, an alumnus who majored  in software engineering through DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM).

Upperclassmen told Dossaji that, thanks to CDM’s rigorous program, he was prepared to begin applying for internships as a sophomore. He started scouring job postings on the CDM and DePaul Career Center websites.

When he saw the posting for the Chicago Cubs, his first thought was “Sweet!”—and that’s before the team began its stellar winning streak in 2015.

The application development internship was a perfect fit for Dossaji (well, except that as a South Sider, he and most of his family members are White Sox fans.) He wanted experience working in a company with more than 250 employees. He wanted a paid internship. And, he wanted to fulfill his experiential learning requirement.

“When I was interviewing, I saw a huge parallel between what they needed and what I already learned at DePaul,” Dossaji says. His primary project was to create the first iteration of a new internal ticketing platform for the Cubs. By the end of summer, he handed the completed project off to the team’s application development staff, which implemented it for the 2016 World Series season.

His supervisor told Dossaji to figure out how to do the project and which tools to use, which he’d already learned to do through CDM. DePaul teaches students to be lifelong learners so that they can continuously adapt to changing practices and tools.

That’s particularly true in software engineering, which changes so rapidly that “you need to take a lot of initiative to go and learn things,” he says. “In the corporate world, your boss might tell you to become the expert on some software.”

As a junior, Dossaji interned with AT&T BIG DATA, working on artificial intelligence and machine learning in the fraud department. He says the two internships will make him a stronger job candidate after graduation as well as giving him strong references and professional connections. They also may inform the tech business he’d like to open someday.