9 Mar 2022
At Bolt, we’ve always believed that women can be a breath of fresh air for the tech field — an industry that has traditionally been heavily male-dominated, with women holding just 25% of jobs in tech. Through our paid internship programme, we aim to help improve those figures dramatically.
Meet our role models — Oluwakorede and Onyekachukwu who took part in our internship programme in 2021. To get a better overview of how the internship looked, they shared their thoughts, worries, highlights and words of encouragement for other women who want to land their dream job tech.
Oluwakorede is a third-year software engineering student at Babcock University. She believes that tech can support her mission to make the world a better place.
Oluwakorede heard about the internship opportunity right on time — she didn’t want to spend her summer break at home. Instead she wanted to gain professional experience.
She became a marketing intern at Bolt — in a department she had no idea about. Oluwakorede is the perfect example of an intern who wasn’t scared of diving into a new field. In just a month she learnt about the importance of selling your brand properly through social media channels and which strategies to use to make your product stand out.
Oluwakorede also improved her time management skills and wasn’t scared to take responsibility for what she was doing — at Bolt no one is looking over your shoulder and you’re the one who’s responsible to deliver your tasks on time.
Oluwakorede believes that there’s no gender-based occupation: “Don’t let anyone use your gender as an excuse for you not achieving your dream. There is really no gender based occupation or vocation. As far as it’s legal — the sky’s the limit!”
By following her dream, Oluwakorede is already inspiring the younger generation. Her little cousin has already decided to become a software engineer when she grows up.
The stereotype that the tech industry is a man’s world can be discouraging for many women. Onyekachukwu always wanted to study tech, mathematics, or computer science. However, growing up, she didn’t have much of a choice because all of these fields are so male-dominated.
Luckily, that changed in 2018 when Onyekachukwu discovered data science. She took a three-month python for data science course and then heard about the internship at Bolt. It was a great opportunity to work within a real tech environment and kick-start her career.
Onyekachukwu’s internship was in Bolt’s Operations department. The biggest fear she had was not being good enough, or not knowing if she would fit into the work environment. She also had a fear of being overwhelmed and underperforming. Fortunately, none of these fears were justified — the internship was extremely insightful and fun!
Currently, Onyekachukwu works as a Product and Strategy Officer at Hygeia HMO. She’s met a lot of women who would love to make a career transition but fear that they won’t be able to learn how to code or acquire other technical skills. To those people, she says: “You can be anything in tech — a writer, a designer — whatever you want to be! You don’t need to learn to code to be a woman in tech, so don’t let your fears limit you!”
Pay attention to your strong and positive sides, look for opportunities and jump on them!
We’re happy to announce that this year the internship program is returning! Thanks to the great feedback we received from last year’s interns, this year we’re calling all women who’ve been dreaming of a career in tech to apply.
The application process is easy — all you need to do is dedicate 10–15 minutes to answer 5 questions. We accept responses up until March 30th, 2022.
