Late last year I found myself thinking that it was time to move on from my current role. I wasn’t unhappy but I wanted to further my career, to explore newer technologies, to have new challenges. I spent months thinking it over, it’s a big move and felt daunting starting at a new place, especially in the world of remote working. I made my decision after a big family holiday in Easter, it felt like the right time to look.
I started my career working for a small company in a desktop and server support role before moving to larger companies such as Accenture and Capita. I’ve been a Windows Server Engineer, Database Administrator, Application Team Lead and most recently a Senior Database Administrator. I’ve always been motivated by my enjoyment of the role and the people I work with. My previous company had both; a family appeal and enjoyable work with the correct work-life balance. However, I wanted to work with a bigger team of people performing the same role, to have a hybrid working pattern and to play with new tech.
Fortunately, I love the interview process! Coeo’s interview process consisted of three rounds and a technical test. It’s one of the most comprehensive interview processes I’ve experienced and made me think this company is certainly not messing around on getting the right staff. Once I got the job, I had a three-month notice period before starting. This extended timeframe was a new experience for me. I understand why, but it does feel like a very long time. I wanted to leave my current role in a good state, so I focused on the best handover I could do and thankfully got to train up my replacement.
The timing of starting my new role couldn’t have been better. A week before I started, Coeo held their yearly kick-off, and I was invited to join. It was certainly a worthwhile experience, meeting everyone before I joined, looking back on the previous year and looking forward to what’s in store for next year. I remember thinking, “Wow, this is a company I can get excited about”. I usually get more excited about a role rather than the company, so this is definitely a bonus for me.
Coeo’s new joiner experience was well thought through. The first week was your standard meet people and do the usual HR training. The nice thing was that I was given the time to do this (and complete it). What struck me straight away was how friendly everyone is, with lots of people sending me welcome messages in Teams. Being in the office for the first few days a week was nice too. I definitely get that family vibe from people, which I love and is frankly one of my most important criteria for working for a company.
The following weeks were all about learning how to connect to 60 different client domains; a task that is more complex and takes more time than I thought. This was accompanied by reading up on our extensive wiki, shadowing fellow team members and then reverse shadowing. The process has been great. It’s been nice to work with people and to be given the time to digest all the information given.
I was then let loose on diagnosing issues by myself, and man, did I need this. I didn’t realise how much I missed doing technical work, after the large amount of documentation I had been writing for my previous roles’ handover. I still need to get my comms approved (as I’m still building up the background knowledge on each company), but it’s certainly nice to be looking at issues again.
Coeo have Pay Day Drinks and quarterly events organised by the One Coeo social team, which is a nice way to meet people, I don’t have the opportunity to communicate with in my day-to-day role. I’ve now been to one and look forward to more.
Coeo are very supportive and I’m looking forward to developing my technical skills; especially in areas of cloud-based technologies that I am not familiar with. Having a scheduled personal development day where you don’t have to log into work is just superb.
All in all, it’s been a positive experience and I’m excited about what comes next.
Mark
P.S. On some days we have a dog in the office – this is simply amazing