The Wave5 Academy
Posted on 16.11.2022
To start off we asked our founders Roeland Jimenez and Marcel Lucker a couple of questions so they can explain in their own words why we decided to start the academy, and how it’s going so far.
To answer that question we must go back to the summer. We we’re looking for a new engineer to strengthen our team in Vietnam. But when we were interviewing for the position we realized that most of the candidates showed amazing potential and each of them could add something to our organization. And since the labor market is tight worldwide we needed people with the potential to keep growing our project- and platform teams. So, in the end, we decided to hire all the candidates we interviewed.
But even though they are all very talented, most of them just finished their studies and were missing some of the specific skills we find important at Wave5. That’s when we thought: why not teach them those skills ourselves in our own Wave5 Academy? That way we can get everyone up to speed and bring them to our desired level of technical knowledge and experience. That’s what we ended up doing, and the results exceeded our expectations!
With the Wave5 Academy we support and encourage young and promising talent to grow and to develop, embedding them into our organization. Wave5 wants to be a great place to grow, and we think the Wave5 Academy is a great example of our dedication to be just that.
Before we started we defined a curriculum that matches our needs as a Microsoft partner and our ambition to develop professional software and data solutions of high quality. All in all, the program takes three months. The first six weeks are all about the fundamentals: the Academy members study for the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Certifications, Data Fundamentals Certifications, and AI Fundamentals Certifications exams. That’s the foundation needed for a broad vision to create smart cloud-based solutions.
The next six weeks are focused on passing the Microsoft Associates exams and hands-on experience. Two thirds of this period are made up of studying, one third is used to gain hands-on experience while working on one of our projects, learning on the job. This way we ensure that we always work using the same Wave5 method, guaranteeing stable results.
We use multiple educational resources at the Wave5 Academy: courses offered by Microsoft, online learning platforms, and workshops & modules we developed ourselves. In these self-developed workshops and modules we teach how to build professional software- and data solutions that are up to the Wave5 standards.
It’s going really really well. Since we started in September, 20+ certifications have been obtained, quite a lot of them by achieving the highest score of the test centers. We take great pride in that!
But what is also very cool to see is that our participants are recommending the Wave5 academy to their friends and acquaintances who they think would make a great fit. That’s about the best compliment you can get!
Gaining experience! Their development does not stop after the academy. We design an individual growth path for each of our graduates to make sure they get the best out of their potential, improving their skills where needed. They can now use everything they’ve learned at the academy to build solutions and products we can be proud of and that match the wishes and needs of our customers.
In February a new group of students will begin in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Right now, the curriculum is mostly focused on software and data engineering, we are looking to expand this to include DevOps for example. And depending on the feedback we get from our participants we want to keep consistently improving the Wave5 Academy to be the best it can be.
So even though we have just started, we are convinced the future of the Wave5 Academy looks bright and we are very happy with the results so far. And before we finish the interview, we would like to say we are very proud of everyone who has participated in the Wave5 Academy, you all have done an amazing job and we look forward to all the projects we’re going to work on!
Would you like more information about the Wave5 Academy? Or about Wave5 in general? Get in touch! We’d love to tell you all about our mission!
