Ajibola Jerome Imezerua | Swappie

Ajibola Jerome Imezerua discovered that doing his internship in a technology company Swappie, supervised by Marcelline Anwi, can enhance transferable skills like communication, problem-solving and digital skills.

I was lucky to do my internship at Swappie as a Warranty Specialist (a section of the customer experience department). Swappie is one of the leading technology companies in Europe that specializes in the refurbishing of iPhones with an online market in over 15 European countries. Swappie’s workforce is over 400 employees from different nationalities, ethnology-linguistic groupings, beliefs, and other forms of heterogeneous characteristics and they are all saddled with diverse responsibilities all in a bid to achieve the company’s goal and objectives while encouraging sustainability.

Jerome

By virtue of working at Swappie, there has been an upgrade in my communication skills and digital skills, for instance being a multicultural company, it helped me understand how to properly communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds, as well as communicating with the customer support team in resolving customer complaints, by deciding on the best approach to solving their issue, to create a good customer experience, and this has further enhanced my problem-solving skills.

On the other hand, working at Swappie challenged me every day, since I had to work with data and also maintain the balance between cost and the client’s expectation. Over time, I got a grip on the nitty-gritty of the challenges which in turn made me more confident and enhanced my decision-making ability.

As an anthropology student who is currently writing a research paper about digital nomads, my internship at Swappie gave me the opportunity to experience the difference between being a digital nomad (remote worker) and working in an office as I constantly shuffled between working from home and going to the office. 

Above all, the time spent at Swappie was wonderful, I enjoyed the whole experience, from meeting lovely people and working in a nurturing environment. I must confess that the program had enhanced my knowledge not just in academics, but also in aiding my soft skills (in terms of communication and building my cultural awareness of others) and getting used to solving problems using technology.