The candidate pool has increased considerably over the past few months due to the credit crunch. As many of you may be looking for a new job, I wanted to remind you of a piece of advice I wrote about a while back. Whether you are looking to work at Lab49 or anywhere else, please keep in mind that most interviewers want you to get the job! They want you to do well in the interview and so, should, do their utmost to make you feel comfortable.
In some companies, interviews can seem somewhat nerve wracking because the interviewer does little to ease the candidates nerves. This can be due things such as looming project deadlines that leaves them little time to speak with you, the interviewer may be inexperienced and so over-compensates by coming across as overly assertive rather than confident. My point being, it’s not generally going to be an issue with your candidacy. Sure, it’s certainly NOT a good thing that some interviewers are this way as they, to the candidate, are the “face” of the company and so should do all that they can to attract you to the organisation.
Let me make this offer to you. If you are preparing for an interview (whether it’s with Lab49 or not), feel free to drop me a email with any questions about how to handle interviews/interviewers and I will do all that I can to help you in your preparations.
As you are no doubt aware, the so-called “credit crunch” has had a significant impact on the world’s economies. Gordon Brown says that the UK situation is “containable” but the US economy is teetering on recession due to the fall-out from the sub-prime problems.
A good deal of staff from the big banks are getting laid off in both London and New York and are no doubt finding that there are slim pickings within the financial world. It goes to show that working in a large company does not necessarily protect you from the economic turmoil that is currently being faced. Lab49 has always been conservative in its growth and expansion into other countries and quite rightly so. Sure, we’re not a huge company BUT we are run very very cleverly and with some smart thinking and careful recruitment, we will continue to grow and expand in the current climate.
Our company was actually started in New York in 2002. As a financially-focussed technical company, I’m sure alot of people wondered what on earth our founders were doing given the economic fall out from the events of the 11th of September 2001. However, Lab49 was not only established in that tricky time, we actually grew too.
My message to those technologists who are looking for a new role; don’t discount smaller companies or consulting; we’re strong, we’re smart and we’re committed – why not contact our recruitment teams to find out more?
So the .NET Meetup is tonight from 6:30pm at the Lab offices. We are very pleased to welcome Mike Culver from Amazon as tonights guest speaker. Please try to find the time to come along – it’s going to be a really cool event.
The best way to get a real flavour for what a company is like to work for is by speaking with its employees but ONLY if those employees feel able to say how things truly are and what they truly think. You can get a really good idea of our culture by looking at the Lab49 blogs but being able to ask open questions of an employee would, I would hope, enthuse you about our company and give you an accurate idea as to what life is like here as a technologist.
You can actually do this whether you know a Lab49′er personally or not. Most of our staff, as you can see, have blogs and you are able to contact most staff via those blogs. If you’re interested in what one of my colleagues has to say and you like the cut of their jib, why not ask them about what they do here and what it’s like to work here? The people we employee are decent, open and honest people – they’ll tell you were we excel and where we don’t (the key to the second part of that is that we carry out frequent one-to-one meet ups to find out where we are going wrong and then make the necessary changes).
So, if you are interested in working with us but want more information before making any form of commitment to us, contact a Lab49′er. They’ll tell it like it is!
