Please meet Sofiia Lazarenko, a student at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv in Ukraine,  who recently completed an Erasmus internship as an Administration and Billing support intern

While Sofiia's primary responsibility was invoice validation in two separate systems, her internship offered more than just technical tasks. She found the most valuable aspect to be interacting with colleagues from diverse backgrounds. "I believe that the most valuable thing during my stay in the company was communicating with colleagues of different nationalities, ages and with completely different experiences in life and work. Before this internship, I had no experience dealing with so many different people," Sofia explains. "The most interesting thing was finding an approach to each of them."

Despite a change in her manager's position towards the end of her internship, Sofiia always felt supported. "He always introduced me to colleagues from other departments whenever possible and tried to help when I had questions," she says. "My colleagues from the very beginning helped and answered all my questions. It was difficult for some of them to get used to me due to the fact that I was the youngest in the team but performed the same work as my colleagues who were older and had much more experience. ," Sofiia adds.

Finding solutions for her team and contributing to the teamwork was the most fulfilling part of Sofiia's experience. She highlights that ``The feeling of contributing something to the teamwork motivated me the most.``

The most pleasant part of the internship for Sofiia was the possibility to work and spend time with people from different countries and with various backgrounds. ``I also had an opportunity to see from inside how the corporation works and be part of it.``

Like many students, Sofiia had her concerns before the internship however they disappeared very quickly. ``Before the internship, I was worried that I didn't have enough knowledge or experience to work in such a company. After the first few weeks, I understood that I was able to learn everything during work by cooperating with my colleagues.``

She shared with us a pretty valuable recommendation for new coming trainees to use their time during the internship as much as possible for `` travelling, getting to know new people, and networking at their workplace. Bratislava has a great location, so you easily reach other countries by all types of transport.``

We wish Sofiia every success in her future career and believe that this Erasmus experience will help her achieve great results.