How our student got an internship at VK. Artem Mazur's story

We follow the lives of all the guys who come to the CPM and participate in our projects. Every time we learn about their achievements, we are very excited and happy! Today we want to share the story of Artem Mazur, who completed an internship, attention, in VK!

Artem recently finished 10th grade at the private educational institution Gazprom School. During this academic year, he attended our machine learning course at the CPM.

How did it come to VK? In the 9th grade, Artem became a finalist in the programming Olympiad “Technocup“, of which VK is a partner. After that, various informational mailings from the company began to arrive, in one of which he learned that VK was organizing an internship for schoolchildren.

The decision to participate in the internship was made almost immediately, since for the future, an internship in such a large IT company is not only a cool line on the resume, but also invaluable experience.

There were 5 areas to choose from: backend development in Python, backend development in Go, frontend development, testing and machine learning. Artem applied for machine learning. In the application, he had to briefly describe his knowledge (tech stack), experience in the chosen field and achievements (Olympiads, competitions, etc.). After reviewing and approving the application, he was sent a link to the entrance examinations, which were held remotely. First, it was necessary to pass a test on knowledge of Python, machine learning theory and higher mathematics. The biggest difficulty was the very limited time. For example, in the Python test, 30 minutes were given for 23 questions – you had to answer quickly, and there was almost no time “to think”.

The test in higher mathematics was given 90 minutes, but the tasks there were more difficult. For Artem personally, this was the most difficult stage, since some topics were almost not covered.

At the final stage of the entrance examinations, it was necessary to record video answers to 5 questions in a limited time and number of attempts. The first 2 questions were related to motivation and experience in this field. The rest were about understanding various machine learning algorithms. Before passing the entrance examinations, Artem reread the entire theory from the CPM course to refresh his knowledge of ML.

And it was all worth it! Artem successfully passed all the tests and was accepted into the VK team as an intern along with 29 other guys.

The first day of the internship, July 5, began with a tour of the office, signing documents and all sorts of formalities. But on July 8, a full-fledged work week began. The guys were busy setting up the laptops they were given, formalizing access to corporate services, and studying documentation. An interesting fact: VK has its own internal currency – coins, which can be obtained for participating in various activities (speaking at conferences, writing an article, etc.). For coins, you can buy unique merch, available only to company employees and only for coins.

Artem’s journey is just beginning, but he is already very happy that he got this internship.

And we, in turn, are confident that this will be an unforgettable experience that Artem will remember for a long time!