Since the company’s humble beginnings when Mohamad Sibai founded it back in February of 2019, Autoly has been working itself up to develop one single app for everyone’s automobile needs. However, with any start-up company, funding was tight and alternative actions were required to ensure approaching milestones were completed within a timely manner.
This is where a win-win situation could be achieved. Sheridan College was contacted, after learning about their co-op program, to enlist students trying to reach the newest step on their career path. The result was these students’ dedication and hard work building the backbone to the project.
Some of them were able to retell their experiences with the company.
Akrish Sripada, a marketing management student who worked as a marketing and communication manager for four months at Autoly, stated that he’s had nothing but positive experiences coming out of his time in co-op.
“I learned new concepts such as ASO and mobile app marketing strategies,” he said.
Working in marketing and communication, Sripada made some real waves for Autoly. During his co-op, he was an integral part in gathering a social media following, noting that they had reached over 500 followers on LinkedIn.
However, there were still challenges for him. On top of his regular duties of scaling up social media presence, developing target markets and creating blog posts, he also had to stretch his designing muscles.
“The greatest challenge was when I was required to create a customer journey chatbot using HubSpot for the website,” said Sripada. “I enjoyed designing marketing collaterals using Canva, as I am not a designer. Moreover, if the mobile app was ready, then I would have loved to perform some SEM advertising using Google Ads.”
Akrish has since moved on from Autoly, having joined Accenture only a few days after wrapping up his co-op term. Moving forward, he plans to become an RTB specialist for ad agencies and advertisers who use full-serve and self-serve DSPs and SSPs.
Some of the co-op students have continued to work for Autoly even after their internship had completed.
Eva Jaworowski, a former freelance graphic and web designer, has been working as a senior product developer at Autoly for the past nine months. During this time, she has created the concept gamification designs and final look for the app.
As a senior product developer, Jaworowski worked closely with the design team and overlooked the creation of all creative assets and graphic materials. These assets and materials included, but not limited to, digital advertisements and style and branding guides.
Interestingly enough, Eva was nearly not part of the Autoly team because she had another opportunity she had labelled “her dream job,” but the pandemic made short work of that. While she was initially disappointed, she eventually received a phone call from Autoly, accepting the position.
“Because of the pandemic, the project got [put] on hold, and that left me without an internship and with limited time to look for another placement,” she said. “Start-ups have a specific, friendly, family-like feeling, and I was drawn to Autoly because of that. From the first interview, I felt like the culture of Autoly is great, has good vibes and it’s going to be a great place to work.”
Statistics have shown that there is an underrepresentation of women in STEM programs (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), with only 44 per cent making up first year STEM students aged 19 or less. Here at Autoly, we are determined to support women in following their desired career path and close the gender gap.
Eva stated that she’s learned so much from her internship, adding that the outcome was excellent, and continues to work for the company today.
Autoly has a strong belief in diversity and equal opportunities for everyone and we strive to have an inclusive culture for all.
Moiz Khan, one of the first to be brought on the Autoly team as a mobile developer, is an international mobile computing student with Sheridan College. He has continued working for the company part-time and will complete his co-op program and graduate this coming summer.
“The objective for me was to learn the latest technology, Mohammad wanted to use Flutter,” he said. “I basically came in and started from scratch, I was brand new.”
From the start, Khan was tasked with researching all of the available features and if they were possible with the technology the company was using. He was also in charge of designing the basics and front end of the app.
During his full-time co-op period, Khan admitted that his day-to-day was none too complicated due to the easy-going leadership and routine schedules easy to follow.
“We would have daily meetings and we would basically go over the objectives of the day, what we’re trying to figure out and what we’re trying to learn,” he explained. “If what we were trying to achieve wasn’t achieved, then how far did we get? And what we were trying to achieve at the beginning was learning.”
Funny enough, when Khan was trying to move forward in his co-op program, he was not having a lot of luck in that department. According to him, he got nothing within his first month, he didn’t get one interview, or even an email. So, within that time, he made the most of it by updating his resume.
Autoly came in as the only company willing to give him a real chance, which really paid off in the long run. Khan was able to be a real driving force in getting the app ready for launch through his ability of learning new materials necessary to complete a goal.
There have been a number of other Sheridan College co-op students who have been an important part of the Autoly journey from the drawing board, all the way to the app store on launch day. We have appreciated all the hard work that these students have brought us, without their determination and spirit, we never would have made our launch date of Feb. 9.
We are extremely grateful for everything Sheridan College’s co-op program has done for us, and whether these students are continuing to work for us or move onto new experiences, we wish them nothing but good fortune for their career path.