Our Summer Trainee's experience at Circles

About me

Hi! I’m Tony, 17 years old, and a Summer Trainee at Circles Consulting. I’m also studying at Helsinki High School of Natural Sciences, going into my 2nd year after this summer.

How I came to Circles

I initially discovered Circles through LinkedIn. It’s quite handy-dandy. Most of my previous experience has come from B2B SaaS companies, so I wanted to learn more about consulting!

I applied in February through an open application and next thing I knew, I got a call from Jaana, Circles’ Head of People Operations inviting me for a Zoom interview. I was really excited to finally get a call from my job search, because looking for a summer traineeship still in the midst of a global pandemic wasn’t the easiest of feats to pull off. The whole interview process went smoothly, and I was informed during all stages.

Then I got the call that I’ve been offered the traineeship, oh the feeling of joy and excitement! After a long job search where some companies didn’t even reply to my applications, all the efforts finally paid off.

The experience

My experience at Circles has been nothing but amazing. I was warmly welcomed when I first joined. Circles has an amazing work environment and awesome people. The barrier of asking for help is almost nonexistent, and hierarchy is really low, which I’m a big fan of! When I’m stuck on something or want to ask, there is always help available.

One of the most intriguing things about the company is the Circle system. There are circles based on employees’ interests, and everyone can start one, a slice of company’s profit is then used to fund the circles, pretty awesome! For example there’s gaming, sports and wilderness circles!

I’ve gotten the chance to learn more about software development, and how software consulting works. And I’ve developed some features for Circles’ internal software, updated the website and helped around the office with misc. tasks. React has been especially interesting, how it can be used in a variety of use cases, and how the syntax is quite unique.

Overall, my experience at Circles has been absolutely rewarding and giving!

–  Tony Lam, Summer Trainee