Life at Proprium: Katarina Antolić

My Proprium Experience

I joined the Proprium team as a student of multimedia and informatics, which somehow logically placed me in the implementation team. At the time of employment, I was not familiar with any of the software that Proprium uses to provide its services. Nevertheless, upon leaving Proprium, I can say that I have mastered each of these software sufficiently to be able to work independently and offer the best possible solutions. The team I belonged to led by Laura was responsible for this. Every day was challenging, it required constant new learning and mastering of new parts of the system, and the team always helped me calmly and quickly master what was needed. As the days passed, I became more and more familiar with the project that was assigned to me. I went out of my comfort zone, I cooperated with other teams, and worked together with them to finish the project as soon as possible and ensure high quality so that our client would be satisfied.

A Typical Working Day

Considering the dynamics of the work and the complexity of the project I was working on, no day was truly the same. This was at the same time an advantage, but also sometimes a disadvantage, or the demanding part of my job. The whole project was related to the improvement of our client's business using various software. Although I worked in a team whose task was to adapt only to the technical part of the project, the work still required communication with other teams, project managers and everyone else who worked on the same project. Given that Proprium enables remote work, no working day was strictly defined for me, instead, I adjusted my working hours to match my university and private obligations, which taught me that good organization is truly the key to success. My working day started with a short meeting with the team members where they would distribute the tasks, comment on any ambiguities, and define some time frames within which the assigned tasks would be completed. After that, I adapted my day to the tasks and the time that I had for work that day, and the next day at the meeting I would present the solutions to the tasks and correct any deficiencies.

Skills Development

At Proprium, every day consists of several meetings, given that all team members work from home, it is quite reasonable that meaningful communication is an important part of the job. To more easily convey my project ideas and solutions to certain problems, the communication skills I developed here have helped me in my daily work. I also developed organizational skills when taking on tasks and planning further steps in my work on the project. Considering that I worked on a project for a foreign client, I improved both written and oral communication in English, and I also learned how to organize my time well and how to approach tasks and potential difficulties meaningfully and calmly.

Conclusion

Working at Proprium marked my last academic year in the best possible way. I gained a concrete impression of the business and what needs to happen somewhere in the background, at various meetings, to deliver the best possible solution to the client. I also gained new technical knowledge and realized that technical knowledge alone is not enough. Technical and business knowledge come together and cannot work without each other. In addition to various skills, I also gained practical experience of working in a team and working on foreign projects. I am extremely grateful for all of this and will always fondly remember Proprium.