Finn's Work Experience at Novicell

Working at Novicell, I have learnt a lot of new things I had not been taught before, which has been a real joy. This includes seeing how a CMS is used to build a website, and how back-end and front-end developers can work on it at the same time without much hassle. The people at Novicell are some of the nicest I have worked with so far, and I hope their attitude to their work and to each other never changes. The kitchen area of the office is also great, as it gives easy access to water and other drinks, meaning there is no need to go to a different floor for basic amenities.

I have also been able to shadow people while they work, and while they are in meetings, to learn more about each part of the company (front-end, back-end, marketing, etc.) and to see how they work together to make the company great. I have also enjoyed the company lunches (which I helped collect and bring back to the office) and the early finish on Fridays, which keeps team morale up. The team is led by their CEO, Anders Holt, who is a great leader.

Being able to use tools like Umbraco, Webflow and Hootsuite has been a joy. It is great to see all the parts of the company, even though the UK team is small – which is quite remarkable. Learning to use these web apps and pieces of software has been an educational experience, as each one plays a different part in how the company runs, such as:

• Webflow for front-end design
• Umbraco for back-end CMS and website control
• Hootsuite for social media
• Monday for setting out tasks for the team

The best part of these two weeks has been the tasks William has given me on the back-end, which have let me learn to use the terminal far more than I would have at school. This has been a valuable experience for me, as I never had the chance to explore it before, and I have now learned how to do things like use Playwright and set up local hosts for websites. Dylan has shown me how marketing works and which platforms the company uses for marketing and social media, such as Monday and Hootsuite. Lauri showed me front-end tools like Webflow, which let the company build websites easily with minimal coding required.

Amarinder and Nisha helped me get to grips with these tasks, which made it much easier to understand what I would be doing during my time at the company. They also made great conversation at lunch, which was thoroughly entertaining – likely because they hold two of the most important roles in the team: Project Manager, who manages the projects assigned to them, and Chief Operating Officer, who oversees daily operations and is second to the CEO, Anders.