MK5 Golf GTI
General => Random Chat => Topic started by: rdfcpete on August 02, 2012, 10:04:56 pm
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Guys,
Keen to find out the best approach to increasing chances of landing employment at 'bigger' companies, say more than 100 employees?
My last three employers including the current one have all been companies with less than 35 staff. I'm a little fed up of the small business mentality now.
I want a new challenge and a larger company appears to consistently give better opportunities and overall better employee benefits, in my short experience. I'm experienced in the IT industry.
I know many of you are employed or contracted with house hold names and brands.
Where should I be looking?
Appreciate any hints or tips.
Thanks :happy2:
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Erm its fairly easy, keep an eye open on the job market, perhaps get the help of an agent, and generally be proactive in consistently checking for openings in the companies you want to work for
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I guess it depends on the industry, but in my experience the grass isn't always greener on the other side.
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^
What he says. :happy2:
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Coming from a recruitment consultant. Albeit, for the white collar rail industry. Your cv needs to be absolutely direct and to the point.
Just tangible evidence of where you have worked in the past and what you brought to the company before hand. No one, and I mean no one reads the bit about been a good team player, punctual and waters your mum's flowers at the weekend. Just keep it short and sharp :)
Perhaps look at getting your cv advertised with a specialist IT recruitment firm. They always aim to get you the best job for the best money, as it's in their interest :happy2:
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Big companies get the same politics and mudslinging as small I've found. Just easier to hide in big companies though.
Fish
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no experience myself, but my gf is an accountant and she used an agent to switch jobs from a family practice to an industry job for a large retailer
i would probably echo the statements above about the grass being greener tho. i don't agree that bigger is always better
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Having worked for large international companies for the last 13 years (Virgin Media, Arqiva, IBM and a provider of Automotive software) earlier this year i made the decision to resign from a stable job and move to a smaller company, in this case a small yet highly profitable software reseller with less than 50 employees in the UK. Given the state of the economy the move was a gamble but i can say that after three months i'm glad i made the jump.
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The CV comments are spot on take that advice, to add to it I would say don't be worried about applying for every single job in your area of expertise and certainly aim higher than you think you can go. Several friends lately have applied for jobs higher than they would normally go, the companies did not give them the job but instead offered them other jobs on the back of the interview. Jobs which had yet to be advertised, larger companies have the ability to do this.
The grass is not always greener - As mentioned, larger companies can certainly leave you feeling like just another worker. Smaller companies tend to look after staff better, more a family so it's a bit of give and take.
Get your phone out, or laptop, and call or email the companies you are interested in working for.
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Have to echo, a lot of the comments on here, having worked for some of the larger financial companies (LloydsTSB, AIG, RBS, as well as 2 of the largest independant offshore brokers) the grass is deffo not greener, with larger companies the benefits do tend to be better, but they work you much harder and its expected you will do way MORE hours than contracted for the same money and at the end of the day your just an employee number, smaller companies tend to reward you better "Emotionally" and generally a nicer enviroinment to work in, I am self employed now and would recommend that route to anyone.
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I work for a major company and would swap it for a smaller one any day!!
your just a number at the end of the day, I wont prefer to work in a smaller company with 20 odd employees!
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I work for a massive UK bank, and the same BS still goes on. Mid year and end of year reviews are a con. Everyone is rated according to a "curve" and even if nobody in my team of 10 (in IT Service Delivery) deserve a low performance rating, at least 2 people "have" to get it. Which affects everything including your bonus and payrise.
Benefits are good though. 4% of your salary to spend on what you like, some tax free, some ni free, some free from both. I take Cycle2Work as it suits me.
However, due to the state of the economy and massive headcount reductions. In the 5 years i have worked here, there have been 0 promotion opportunities in my department. Due to a rather large merger, all our payscales were restructured. Now i would need 2 promotion grades to even get a sniff of a half decent payrise, yet if i moved to the wider business, i could get a job with about 5% of the responsibility for more money and a better pay grade.
Personally, i look after 300 servers including systems of Citrix, VMWare, Fibre channel SAN, all server patching. But i am paid the wage of someone working on level 2 desktop support.
This is the big thing stopping me moving to another company at present. I get good overtime on a monthly basis and im On-call 1 in every 5 weeks for 24 hour support. It helps me bring home another £10k a year on top of my salary.
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Currently working at a pretty big company but will be moving to a much smaller one in the near future so am looking it at from the other way.
Can only echo a lot of a comments from guys above, but I would say, depending on the type of role, it can help in rounding some different skills working at a bigger company and it doesn't hurt to have a big name on the CV either :happy2:
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For me the crunch came when i changed departments and was told by my line manager that my face didn't fit so i took the opportunity to leave. Where i work now may not be perfect but no two days are the same and you are encouraged to suggest ways to improve processes, and challenge the way things are done. You also have to wear many hats. For instance i am currently Project Managing our £1.2m office move, the logic being I am a Software Project Manager therefore i should be able to PM an office move. I have eight years experience in building telecoms installations for the Vodafone, O2 and the Emergency services so it isn't exactly new to me but its a completely different box of frogs to what i do day to day.
My salary has increased by £10k but i only get 21 days holiday and no perks what so ever but the training package is pretty good.
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I worked in IT for BT for 14 years - through the hayday of £15/share and all the Bolly you could eat, to where it is now, which is completely on its arse.
On one hand, you get to mess with a network on a scale you can't really imagine being in small business. Not only their's, but their customers too. You learn at a staggering rate of knots and gain huge experience. I worked all over the UK, travelled abroad and had a lot of good times. Private healthcare and a final salary pension weren't to be sniffed at either.
On the other hand, you are indeed a number, and when they slash and burn to offshore, you're just a wage bill and out.
Luckily I escaped, some of the lads I worked with are pretty much being either left to rot or bullied out of the company (because they can't do compulsory redundancy due to an old clause in the contracts). It's rotten to the core. Of course this happens elsewhere, as Deako alluded too - many places are stagnant, fine if you want to tick over for a decent wage, no good if like you you're looking for opportunity.
I now work for a big bank, I've been exposed to more in 18 months than I did in the previous 5 years at BT and I'm really getting on well. I had over £10k of training last year, and the culture is very much 'if you want to learn and progress, we'll push you on'.
My advice, if you're in IT, then there's pretty much all the contracting you can eat in London at the moment. Ignore what the Daily Mail says about the downturn, it isn't affecting London and IT. I've been tapped up a fair bit recently and a lot of others I know too by agencies offering jobs. Easy £500/day for bread and butter stuff. Get in with a decent employer and get experience. If you like the big bad world of Blue Chips, then hop on and ride it!
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The place I worked for outsourced it's IT to a bigger company last year and I was transferred across to the bigger company.
I was happy, thinking it would mean more training and more career opportunities.
How wrong I was.
Pay has been frozen.
All the training I was promised has gone down the drain.
You don't feel involved in the company at all. Decisions are made and you just have to obey them.
Echo the above in regards to being an employee number and nothing more.
I'm vey demotivated right now, if it wasn't for the fact I get good pay for the work, and 29 days annual leave (and that's only because of my previous contract which was subject to a TUPE transfer, which the bigger company doesn't really like but can't do anything about) I would seriously be looking at leaving this place and going into contracting.
The only thing that puts me off of contracting is the fear that I will have large gaps between contracts. With a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed, I can't be in that situation.
At the moment, I'm playing the lottery and hoping for a breakthrough! :grin:
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I worked for BT for 19years and as prev mentioned I wouldn't recommend them as future employers, recently went back as a contractor and left after a few months as the contracting company and bt were both rude term for female bits :fighting: Most big companies now use agencies to sort the wheat from the chaff so its worth registering with one that specialises in the field you want to work in. I currently work self employed for a small company and it has draw backs no holiday or sick pay but when I am finished thats it home no sitting about waiting until 5pm and then tax is favourable. Unfortunately big companies use this climate for all sorts BS I have heard of some weird strings attached to jobs. self employed/contracting will be the future big co's dont want staff :jumping:
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I worked for a small company for 12 years (12 employee's) till we got taken over by a larger company (over 100 employee's) in 2011 and I hate it :sick: Its all politics, managers and your not in my department you don't exist!
Possibly if we hadn't been taken over and I had chosen to work for this company I might not feel this way, as previously said beware of "the grass is always greener...."
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Thanks all for the useful replies.
Interesting around the consensus and feedback on the bigger companies.
I guess after 8 years of having extra roles dumped on me for no more salary and zero upwards or sideways opportunities, I was hoping the situation would be slightly different at a larger and good employer. Obviously it depends on which one in particular as mentioned.
Any reliable friends always seem to paint the picture of bigger companies ensuring your future skills and experience with more interest through formal training.
As Mike (tony_danza) says, that kind of 'push you on because you want to learn' won't be present in smaller businesses, particularly in time of decline or recession. I don't think I've had £10k of formal training invested in me in the last 5 years, let alone last one or two. This was also part of my thinking.
I work for a massive UK bank, and the same BS still goes on. Mid year and end of year reviews are a con. Everyone is rated according to a "curve" and even if nobody in my team of 10 (in IT Service Delivery) deserve a low performance rating, at least 2 people "have" to get it. Which affects everything including your bonus and payrise.
Benefits are good though. 4% of your salary to spend on what you like, some tax free, some ni free, some free from both. I take Cycle2Work as it suits me.
However, due to the state of the economy and massive headcount reductions. In the 5 years i have worked here, there have been 0 promotion opportunities in my department. Due to a rather large merger, all our payscales were restructured. Now i would need 2 promotion grades to even get a sniff of a half decent payrise, yet if i moved to the wider business, i could get a job with about 5% of the responsibility for more money and a better pay grade.
Personally, i look after 300 servers including systems of Citrix, VMWare, Fibre channel SAN, all server patching. But i am paid the wage of someone working on level 2 desktop support.
This is the big thing stopping me moving to another company at present. I get good overtime on a monthly basis and im On-call 1 in every 5 weeks for 24 hour support. It helps me bring home another £10k a year on top of my salary.
This is more or less where I'm at, at the moment Luke (in terms of software support & experience) too and am looking to move into a second line support role or something similar to that.
Sounds like you've got a neat setup there.
The other big thing generally is a lot of older working people I speak to are advising not to jump ship at the moment and not to do it until the economy picks up - this obviously could be more than five, possibly ten + years away.
Is it a calculated risk to think about changing employment to a stable and profitable business given the 'condition of the market'?
Thanks again :happy2:
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Training within a small company has to be justified. They need to know that paying for it will have some return for their business, not just for the individual. I'd say it's far more difficult to take a proactive role and to make a difference in a larger company. The pay off for better pay, and more benefits is that you aren't loved as much. I'd also imagine grievances with a small employer are far easy to resolve. I'd think they'd place far more importance in keeping hold of good staff.
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Training within a small company has to be justified. They need to know that paying for it will have some return for their business, not just for the individual. I'd say it's far more difficult to take a proactive role and to make a difference in a larger company. The pay off for better pay, and more benefits is that you aren't loved as much. I'd also imagine grievances with a small employer are far easy to resolve. I'd think they'd place far more importance in keeping hold of good staff.
Agree with the first few bits.
Highlighted section - Hmm, I wish that were true AP. Unfortunately at all the small businesses I've worked at, we've lost some very good people due to mismanagement, bad micro management or poor project management that has meant people have headed for the door. A lot of that, I've found in my experience, is because the one or two persons in the senior management position/at the top (MD, Tech Dir etc...) bypass or ignore process too frequently thus rendering them out of touch with a lot of operational activities and the reality at ground level, perhaps just like a big organisation. However, there's no board of directors making a collective decision with a small outfit, just one or two owners often following only their own experience what they think is best. Too many classic examples of that unfortunately where it's not always for the right outcome.
You're normally loved more in a small(er) business, yep I agree - but, that's usually because you'll be doing 2 or 2.5 peoples jobs (cost saving, over utilisation of skills to benefit the business, not necessarily the individual) where the feedback from friends on the other hand is in your bigger places is that there's a hierarchical structure and stronger personnel process to protect you much more from being in that position.
That may be inaccurate in a lot of situations for bigger corps, but I've found it in every small outfit I've ever worked for or with. On the other hand, it's job security in essence. Works both ways I suppose.
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I think you need to find a better small employer!
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I do agree with what Tony danza said about larger employees offering training, LloydsTSB put me through most (all bar one) of my qualifications and it was the high level of training and qualifications that got me head hunted to go working offshore :happy2:, was a good couple of years and great life experience (as well as high earnings), but after 2 years I was missing friends/family, any single chaps/ladies that get the opportunity I would recommend it to them as there is more money to be made offshore dealing with high net worth clients (lots of them are arrogant pr...ks but they will listen if you know your stuff!).
Good luck with whatever you decide
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Dont get me wrong, the company i worked for previously would never have put me through the training that i have had since i joined Lloyds too. But the politics are an absolute nightmare.
On the upside, i have had 7 hours overtime this weekend just doing simple stuff by renaming a load of mailboxes. It could have been scripted (if the data capture had been better), but i like my overtime! ;)
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Fellas,
Bit of an old one now I appreciate but which are the better job websites to be checking?
I've shortlisted
- reed.co.uk
- jobsite.co.uk
- fish4jobs.co.uk
- totaljobs
Any other apps or sites I should focus on for jobs in IT and/or business support?
Thanks.
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indeed.co.uk
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www.jobserve.co.uk
www.jobsearch.co.uk