CGI respond to Covid-19 – Remote internship program

The SARS-COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the market. People are afraid of the changes in these unpredictable times. We fear remaining in lockdown forever but there are also hopes to get back to normal life. Every crisis harbors opportunity. As we continue our fight against the COVID-19, we need also to focus on recovery and rebound phrases.

As the leader of the Insurance Competence Center at CGI, I would like to share my point of view on the current situation. Thanks to our global expertise, we are committed to providing service continuity and working very closely with our Clients. We are supporting a number of large insurance companies using world-wide known core insurance solution called Tia. Knowing that digitalization is a process that creates efficiency on the revenue model we offer new solutions and functionalities. We are also helping our clients cope with the latest trends in technology such as intelligent chat-bots, video analytics and many more.

Basing on our experience, we have created a recruitment model focused on knowledge sharing within our members. We continue to hire new members in the insurance domain. A large percentage of the new hires is through the member referral program. The majority of the new hires are juniors who join our program through internships. Eighty percent of them continue as CGI members adding efficiency of substitutability and costs to our clients.

How do we respond in these uncertain times? We follow these simple steps in the hiring process. In the first step, we identify the prospects via the CV’s uploaded on our recruitment platform – Njoyn. The shortlisted candidates will be met via video conferencing to evaluate the skills such as logical reasoning, analytical thinking, creativity, and English language proficiency. The conference platform enables us to share the screen on line and to verify skills through computer-aided games and tasks.

What is next? The CGI crafted internship program begins shortly. Our interns get started with training on the basics of the insurance industry, agile methodology and various other technical training including Oracle SQL, PL/SQL, ADF, etc. They will also gain access to training on CGI solutions that are relevant to their job function. These training will be conducted over a period of two months and the interns would then get started on simulation projects for deeper understanding. After these training, the interns are fully equipped to participate in projects and are placed as junior developers and testers.

The internship programs are conducted thrice a year in winter, summer and autumn seasons. Each season brings us approx. 5 to 10 young talents with open minds and fresh thinking. We bring together the new talents from Lithuanian and Latvian offices and help them to adapt to the new environment. We also provide them with the necessary access for remote working.

The key benefits of our internship program are as follows:

• Direct access to live projects for better knowledge and growth
• Customized programs that are tailored to specific business requirements. Experts within our company help train the new interns to learn the necessary skills
• Our global perspective and local expertise allows the new talents to explore the rich knowledge and experience
• Almost 80% of the interns are retained as CGI employees.