Grads ‘spring’ into action for the Standard Bank CIB IT Challenge Finals

[Standard Bank Graduate team]

‘Some bumbling idiots trying to code’, made up Graham Manuell, Gwylim Ashley, Jacobus van der Merwe, and Shu-Yu Hsu did more than just ‘try code’, they took top honours in the Standard Bank IT Challenge Finals, in a time of 10h39m. The competition was fierce and the UCT team was followed closely by Stellenbosch who completed all seven questions in a time of 11h29m.

In the end it was a fantastic opportunity for young students to showcase their expert IT skills. Nine university teams competed alongside two Standard Bank teams with the winners taking home R170,000 for their Computer Science department sponsored by Standard Bank Corporate & Investment Bank (CIB) as well a Dell laptop for each of the participating team members.

The competition was a great example of multi-stakeholder engagement with Computer Society of South Africa setting and judging the questions posed to the aspiring developers. The quality of the submissions and ability of the young grads was reiterated by the fact that the 11 teams submitted 90 solutions, and not a single one had a compilation error!

The awards dinner held on 22 August 2013 was aptly themed ‘Standard Bank is going green’, which tied in the changing of the season, to spring, as well as celebrating the recent opening of Standard Bank’s 5 star certified building at 30 Baker Street, Rosebank. The impressive facility boasts a number of innovative sustainable design features including the tri-generation energy centre, which will reduce the buildings carbon footprint, while others will increase energy efficiency.

In order to facilitate the 5 star certification, the building has been built as an ‘intelligent building’; one that sees technology and sustainability converging to deliver an optimal environment, enhanced functionality and cost savings. Grads were left with the exciting message that now that Standard Bank has an intelligent building’, it needs to fill it with intelligent IT graduates!

Standard Bank is sure to have found some real talent in this the 9th running of the IT Challenge. But no doubt there is more talent out there. If you didn’t make it to the Finals then check out the website for more information on opportunities for IT graduates: www.standardbank.com/graduates