<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">To celebrate International Women&rsquo;s Day, Lorien was delighted to take part in Impellam Group&rsquo;s annual International Women&rsquo;s Day panel! We joined our sister brands <a href="https://www.comensura.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Comensura</a> and <a href="https://www.guidantglobal.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Guidant Global</a> at this important event to celebrate women&rsquo;s achievements, raises awareness about discrimination and inspire everyone to take action to drive gender priority.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">2024&rsquo;s theme was inspire inclusion, with an aim of bringing people together in a gender equal world, free from bias, stereotypes and discrimination.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">This year&rsquo;s panel was led by a woman who is dedicated to advocating for gender equality and empowerment in the workplace &ndash; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenneal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lauren Neal</a>, author of Valued At Work. Lauren&rsquo;s experience in working in male dominated STEM environments and her expertise in championing women&rsquo;s rights in STEM is very much aligned with Lorien and our client&rsquo;s ED&amp;I goals. We hope you can take some valuable insights from our summary. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Lauren was joined by:</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -18.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&middot;<span style="font: 7.0pt 'Times New Roman';">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayleyklaff/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hayley Klaff</a>, Director of Projects in STEM. Hayley is incredibly passionate about this topic and heads up the ED&amp;I Unity Council across Impellam in the UK.</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-indent: -18.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&middot;<span style="font: 7.0pt 'Times New Roman';">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hoa-ngo-5b96a74/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hao Ngo</a>, Managing Director at Comensura. Hoa was named as a leader on the 2022 Global Power 150 Women in Staffing list from the SIA.</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-indent: -18.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;">&nbsp;</p>
<h3 class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Why do we need to inspire inclusion?</span></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Lauren:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;For me, it&rsquo;s about making sure that each person feels valued when they come up with new ideas &ndash; making sure that they are heard and recognised for their input. That could be in the workplace, or outside the workplace. If we don&rsquo;t have the ability to have everybody take part, and be valued for taking part, we are going to miss things.&rdquo;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Hoa:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;Sometimes there&rsquo;s a misconception that <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>you need to be a historical leader or a business leader to actually inspire inclusion. For me, it&rsquo;s actually about everyday inclusion &ndash; the things that we do, the way in which we interact with our peers and have respect for each other &ndash; that&rsquo;s really vital.&rdquo;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Hayley:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;I totally agree, everyone has a part to play in this and we all know hearing the same voices from people with the same backgrounds, we&rsquo;re going to get the same answers. It&rsquo;s important that people feel they&rsquo;ve got an opportunity to contribute, and their voices will be heard. That&rsquo;s why we need to ensure we have an inclusive environment.&rdquo; </span></p>
<h3 class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Experiences as a woman in STEM</span></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Lauren:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s get to who I am, and why I was invited to speak to you today. I wrote and released a book last year, but I&rsquo;m not here today as an author. I&rsquo;ve worked in the energy sector for 18 years &ndash; offshore, onshore, and onsite. I&rsquo;ve experienced positive behaviours and some negative behaviours in the workplace &ndash; the negative behaviours really outweigh the positive ones.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">In the last six years, I&rsquo;ve openly been told &ldquo;the company wants you because you tick the diversity box&rdquo;, no one thought that was an issue. I had a situation once where someone working for me had forged my signature on their timesheet, and when I brought it to my manager, he responded by saying &ldquo;well, no one has ever done that to me, so you need to look at yourself&rdquo; These are terrible things &ndash; I say it with a smile now because it became a &lsquo;laugh or cry&rsquo; situation, but these are my examples.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">What I found last year when I wrote my book is, when I started interviewing women in STEM, I was hearing the same stories. A woman speaks in a meeting, and it&rsquo;s suddenly silence &ndash; then they carry on like you didn&rsquo;t say anything. What&rsquo;s worse is when someone then goes and says exactly the same point later on and you think &ldquo;what just happened?&rdquo;. When it happened to me, I thought &ldquo;was it me? Did I not articulate it properly?&rdquo;. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">It wasn&rsquo;t until much later in my career when I realised that I always felt the problem was me. I spoke to women older than me, and women younger than me, and they said exactly the same thing as I did. There was a girl in her 20s who had experienced the same thing, and I thought &lsquo;that&rsquo;s wrong &ndash; you shouldn&rsquo;t be feeling like you shouldn&rsquo;t come to work because it makes no difference&rsquo;. That really spurred me on to actually do something about the situation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">I talk about the negative experiences, but I&rsquo;ve had positive ones too. When I first joined a company and became a Subsea Engineer, I had a male boss who must have been mid-60s. He came to me and said &ldquo;Lauren, we don&rsquo;t have any inspectors to go and witness this power cable joint qualifications. Go to site and witness it&rdquo;. I packed up my stuff, went six hours down the road, went to site, came back, and reported on it. Then the next time there was a test, he sent me down and I ended up going back and forth for about six months &ndash; and then ended up going offshore and installing it myself. It was my manager who took a chance on me and thought &lsquo;what&rsquo;s the worst that could happen?&rsquo;. He put the trust in someone who was different from himself, and I believe we need to do more of that.&rdquo; </span></p>
<h3 class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Behaviours in the workplace </span></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Lauren:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;What behaviours are most damaging or detrimental to women, or others from unrecognised backgrounds, and what can someone who is experiencing those behaviours do?&rdquo;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Hayley:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;I think one of the most damaging things is not listening to someone. Someone in a meeting speaking, and not even being acknowledged. And it gets to a point where they think &lsquo;what is the point of me being in this meeting? Am I even being heard?&rsquo;. That damages your whole enthusiasm to be doing your job &ndash; thinking you&rsquo;re there just to be seen, or a number, or a token. This isn&rsquo;t just a problem women face, and it&rsquo;s done on a regular basis by regular people. My advice to those people is to find someone to talk to. This kind of behaviour isn&rsquo;t okay. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Hoa:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;I urge people to not recruit someone like themselves &ndash; I know it can be comforting sometimes to do that or we subliminally don&rsquo;t quite realise it. I&rsquo;m probably quite lucky that there&rsquo;s not many people like me in the business, so I didn&rsquo;t have a choice.&rdquo;</span></p>
<h3 class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">The key to allyship</span></strong></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Hoa:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;I think the key to allyship is to be curious, be open to stepping in to somebody&rsquo;s shoes and just listening to their story. I have had this kind of conversation in the past, socially, with people saying, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think racism exists anymore&rdquo;. The reality is, unless you experience it, your exposure to certain aspects in life can be very different. I just encourage us to not be perfect, and you know whilst I tick a lot of boxes, I also carry a huge amount of privilege. Privilege isn&rsquo;t a bad word &ndash; you simply have more advantage than others. I&rsquo;m able bodied &ndash; therefore I&rsquo;m privileged. I&rsquo;d like to encourage more of that way of thinking.&rdquo;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Hayley:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;I think sometimes people are scared because they feel might offended, and I get that, but we need people to open the doors for people that can&rsquo;t necessarily get through. There&rsquo;s being an active ally as well, so you can listen and understand. That&rsquo;s being an ally. I think we all say &lsquo;oh, I could do more&rsquo;, but actually the fact that you care is really important.&rdquo; </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">Lauren:</span></strong><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;"> &ldquo;The very fact that those attending this event &ndash; both in person and online &ndash; are showing curiosity, it <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>shows that you&rsquo;re on your way to allyship. You&rsquo;re seeking to understand other people&rsquo;s experiences. I spoke to a man a few months ago, and we&rsquo;re sharing some experiences I had heard from women within his organisation. He said &ldquo;Lauren, I&rsquo;ve never heard this in all the years I&rsquo;ve worked here. I might just be sheltered&rdquo;. I said, &ldquo;why would you have heard this? You&rsquo;re a straight white man &ndash; why would you have heard these stories. Have you ever asked?&rdquo;. He said no, and said he started to feel uncomfortable. He&rsquo;s a senior leader. I said, &ldquo;the thing is, if you start asking these questions, speak to the women who you speak to every day and ask them &lsquo;have you ever experienced this?&rsquo;&rdquo;. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">&ldquo;One of the reasons I wrote my book is so that a man would read it and say, &lsquo;have you experienced this?&rsquo;, because that&rsquo;s how the conversation starts. Maybe asking about experiences in meetings, asking if your voice hasn&rsquo;t been heard. The path to allyship starts by seeking to understand.&rdquo;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">We&rsquo;d like to thank Hoa, Hayley and Lauren for taking part in our annual IWD panel, and a huge thank you to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurabrowne2017/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Laura May Browne</a> for hosting. It was a truly inspiring panel discussion, and I think everyone would agree, we learnt a lot and took away some key thoughts and actions on how to improve and adapt in the future.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'DIN 2014 Light',sans-serif;">For more insights from Lorien, click <a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/insights" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>. For further information on the panel and Lorien&rsquo;s ED&amp;I culture, contact us <a href="mailto:info@lorienglobal.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a> or visit <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/lorien/?viewAsMember=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">our LinkedIn</a>.</span></p>

International Women's Day is something that's very important to us at Lorien. Read the highlights from our annual IWD panel, alongside our sister brands at Impellam.

A Look Back at Impellam’s International Women’s Day Panel 2024 

<p>The number of job applications in the UK remains on the rise, with&nbsp;59.5 million applications in 2022&nbsp;&ndash; up 19% from 2021 &ndash; but with more opportunities out there and so many different ways to work, how do you know what&rsquo;s the best fit for you? In this blog, we&rsquo;ll break down the basics of temporary and permanent roles, and the key differences and benefits for each position that will assist you in choosing the best kind of role for you.</p>
<h2><strong>Perm Vs Temp Working - The Differences</strong></h2>
<p>Temporary roles are ideal for candidates who need flexibility and prefer short-term work, whereas permanent roles are perfect for candidates who want to commit to a long-term position.</p>
<p>Some other key differences include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Temporary positions are undertaken for a set amount of time, with specified start and end dates in your contract, in contrast to permanent roles that have no set end-date until you leave the workplace or receive a promotion</li>
<li>Permanent roles offer a yearly salary paid to candidates on a regular basis, with temporary workers paid an agreed hourly rate</li>
<li>Benefits packages for the two role types significantly vary, with temporary work benefit packages and holiday allowances being based on the hours you work and permanent work typically offering a set amount of holidays per calendar year, a workplace pension and other benefit schemes that workers have full access to</li>
<li>There is room for progression in many permanent roles whilst temporary contracts are exactly that &ndash; temporary, and often last up to one year</li>
</ul>
<h2><strong>Perm Vs Temp Working - The </strong><strong>Benefits</strong></h2>
<p>Permanent and temporary work may be very different, but they both offer many positives which provide candidates with a better picture in selecting the best type of role for them. Some benefits of the two role types are:</p>
<h3>Permanent working positions</h3>
<ul>
<li>Remaining with an employer for a long period of time allows candidates to develop working relationships and connections</li>
<li>Benefits packages are clearly outlined from the beginning of employment</li>
<li>Greater stability and less time spent learning the ropes in each new role</li>
<li>Investment in learning and development supports with climbing the career ladder</li>
<li>The pandemic has paved the way for flexibility within permanent employment with flexitime and hybrid working regularly on offer</li>
</ul>
<h3>Temporary working positions</h3>
<ul>
<li>Highly flexible and allows you to fit roles around your schedule, with breaks between positions</li>
<li>Possibility to pursue a variety of interests and gain valuable experience in multiple sectors</li>
<li>Temporary roles can help fill employment gaps for candidates in-between roles</li>
<li>Helps in developing new skills in niche, new areas</li>
</ul>
<h3><strong>Choosing what work type right for you</strong></h3>
<p>Based on the above, you&rsquo;ll be able to narrow down what is the best fit for you right now. It&rsquo;s worth mentioning that temporary work contracts can be extended, or subject to change, depending on the nature of the role. Similarly, even though permanent roles are allowing more flexibility, it will not offer the same freedom that a temporary role does when it comes to taking time off and long breaks.</p>
<p>With factors such as the cost of living crisis leading many candidates to search for roles with better pay and more flexibility,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.zawya.com/en/world/uk-and-europe/jobs-in-london-recruitment-of-permanent-staff-continues-to-drop-o34p84af" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interest in temporary roles has continued to grow</a>&nbsp;with a total of&nbsp;1.69 million temporary workers&nbsp;from September to November 2022. It isn&rsquo;t just temporary roles receiving interest though, with the number of permanent roles advertised in 2022 accounting for&nbsp;69% of all jobs.</p>
<p>It's clear that both temporary and permanent roles are on the rise, meaning that there has never been a better time to find a role that fits your needs. Check out our&nbsp;latest<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/jobs"> Tech jobs from Lorien Recruitment</a> to find the best jobs in technology, digital and change now. You can also discover more<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/insights">Tech Recruitment Industry Insights</a> in our&nbsp;insight section.</p>

The number of job applications in the UK remains on the rise, with 59.5 million applications in 2022 – up 19% from 2021 – but with more opportunities out there and so many different ways to work, how do you know what’s the best fit for you?

Permanent vs temporary work

<p>How can HR and talent acquisition harness technology for better results?</p>
<p>That&rsquo;s the question that I wanted to know the answer to when I sat down with some of the most prominent names in talent acquisition technology, including:&nbsp;</p>
<p>- Spencer Hurley &ndash; Resourcing Leader at Nationwide Building Society<br>- Adam Gordon &ndash; Co-Founder at CandidateID<br>- Hayley Bakker &ndash; Co-Founder at Diversely<br>- Jason Kennedy &ndash; Director of Digital Commerce &amp; Innovation at Impellam<br>- Toby Heales - Sales Manager at Adway<br><br>Watch the discussion to learn about recruitment technology strategy and how leading tech partners are working with talent acquisition teams to improve efficiency, introduce innovation, and drive adoption. In particular, discover:<br><br>- How to select the right tech partner for your organisation and what questions you should ask before you implement a solution<br>- How to use technology within talent acquisition without losing the human touch<br>- Navigating and integrating with large, clustered, and fragmented recruitment technology stacks<br>- The best way to gain adoption of new technology &ndash; and the surprising commercial model to help<br>- How to use your technology partner to make a business case for change<br>- How you can work with tech partners of different scales and maturities<br>- How to match the tech challenge to the tech solution to get the best return on investment<br><br>Whether you&rsquo;re a scale-up or an established business with a fully-fledged recruitment technology strategy, this webinar covers everything you need to know to build, grow, implement, and succeed when using technology for talent acquisition.&nbsp;<br><br>If you would like to connect with any of the above speakers, or if you would like to receive an obligation-free review of your existing recruitment technology stack with recommendations, please contact&nbsp;<a href="mailto:solutions@lorienglobal.com">solutions@lorienglobal.com</a>.&nbsp;</p>
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</div>

Join Director of Solutions and Insight Darren Topping and guests to learn about the state of tech and people technology in 2022, the best practice for choosing and implementing talent tech, and the future of recruitment technology.

Technology in Talent Acquisition: How to choose, implement and partner to maximise hiring success

<h3><strong>What has your journey at Lorien been like so far?</strong></h3>
<p>Life changing. Things are very different to when I first started in 2018. I&rsquo;m very grateful that Lorien have been very supportive throughout COVID, lockdowns and going on maternity and coming back. They&rsquo;ve been amazing in terms of support and have let me continue working from home even after restrictions lifted, which has really helped me. I love the work environment and the culture. I believe that it&rsquo;s important that your employer understands the importance of a healthy work-life balance &ndash; and Lorien certainly does.</p>
<h3><strong>What is a career highlight for you or your team?</strong></h3>
<p>I work in our middle office Contracts Generation Team, and I was involved in our recent system changeover. It&rsquo;s been quite challenging, especially with many new team members, but it&rsquo;s been a highlight for me because of how we&rsquo;ve responded to the change. Everyone has been very collaborative, patient, and willing to improve. We&rsquo;ve really pulled together as a team, and our hard work has been recognised by the wider business, which is always nice.</p>
<h3><strong>What is the Lorien workplace culture like?</strong></h3>
<p>Everyone is very family-oriented and supportive, not just in lifestyle but also in outlook. When you go into the office everyone is warm and friendly, and there&rsquo;s a lot of respect for work-life balance. The culture is relaxed, and I love hanging out with everyone in the office areas. I was used to quite a different environment, so it&rsquo;s really refreshing to work at a company where everyone gets on and your employer looks after you.</p>
<h3><strong>What are your top tips for anyone going for an interview?</strong></h3>
<p>Know the goals and values of Lorien and be yourself. It&rsquo;s important to show your true self so your employer understands you who are and what you want to achieve. Interviews are as much about you finding out more about the company as they are about the company finding out about you, and it&rsquo;s good to be up front about what you want and expect from an employer. With Lorien, when you&rsquo;re clear about what you need, they will always go the extra mile to make sure you get it.</p>
<h3><strong>What does a typical day at work look like for you?</strong></h3>
<p>Very challenging and fun &ndash; working at home and in the office. It&rsquo;s nice to go to the office and see people, chat, and catch up. But I also love working at home as it creates a balance and helps with your mental health. Has changed a lot over the years, company functions based on people&rsquo;s needs, good balance. More time to spend with family and look after yourself.</p>
<h3><strong>What is it that drew you to Lorien?</strong></h3>
<p>When I started back in 2018 it was just a temporary contract. It was great opportunity to try something different, and I am pleased I took the plunge - I love it. Lorien is full of passionate people, and there&rsquo;s lots of help and support, whatever your needs. Flash forward four years, and now I help manage a team of seven, with more joining us throughout the year. There&rsquo;s no doubt that I made the right choice in 2018.</p>
<p>If you're looking for a role in recruitment, join Lorien. <a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/about-us/join-us">Click here</a> to learn more.&nbsp;</p>

After being with Lorien for four year, Vienice Carr details her love for Lorien and what it's done for her career.

Q&A with Vienice Carr

<h3><strong>What has your journey at Lorien been like so far?</strong></h3>
<p>My journey has been entirely positive. I&rsquo;ve been so supported from day one and I&rsquo;m surrounded by people who have encouraged my learning as I&rsquo;ve progressed through the ranks and grown as a person. I&rsquo;ve been here for over a year now and nobody has held me back, I&rsquo;ve only experienced encouragement.</p>
<h3><strong>What was the best quality of the academy?</strong></h3>
<p>The learning sessions were very thorough. We had different Lorien employees come in and give session on different parts of the recruitment process, which allowed me to take away so many valuable lessons. Being able to pick a person&rsquo;s brain outside of the training was also a great quality. Everything, as a whole, was very thorough from start to finish which put us in a good position to succeed immediately.</p>
<h3><strong>What is the Lorien workplace culture like?</strong></h3>
<p>The culture is supportive, patient, and autonomous. There are no egos here &ndash; everyone is approachable and happy to help with anything you need. You can speak to anyone about anything and it&rsquo;s not pressuring in any way.</p>
<h3><strong>What are your top tips for anyone looking to apply for the academy?</strong></h3>
<p>You need to come in with an open mind and a willingness to learn. You need to apply yourself throughout and not hold back, whilst putting in the effort during the learning sessions to develop habits that can lead to success early on. When you join a team coming out of the academy, the above will help you.</p>
<h3><strong>What does a typical day at work look like for you?</strong></h3>
<p>On an average day, I&rsquo;ll be taking care of admin, looking after my candidates and focusing on actively sourcing any roles that I am working on. I also do an hour of business development which involves going on LinkedIn, getting on the phone, and finding people to reach out to. I&rsquo;ll also typically have a few client meetings mixed in throughout the week.</p>
<h3><strong>What is it that drew you to Lorien?</strong></h3>
<p>The chance to learn in that academy environment was a huge opportunity as I had no previous recruitment experience. The chance to learn &ndash; without being thrown in the deep end with no training &ndash; was invaluable and elevated Lorien ahead of some other recruitment agencies. The culture also attracted me as you are treated like an adult and people genuinely care about you and your development.</p>
<p>If you&rsquo;re interested in pursuing a career in tech recruitment, make Lorien your new home.</p>

Luke joined Lorien through our academy programme, and has risen through the Lorien ranks to become a Data & Analytics consultant. Read his career progression here.

Q&A with Luke Drage

<h3><strong>What has your journey at Lorien been like so far?</strong></h3>
<p>I started at Lorien back in 2007, so I&rsquo;ve been here for the better part of 15 years. I&rsquo;ve worked at various levels of Lorien, including within our Specialist Markets Teams, where I&rsquo;ve also had a role in creating some of the divisions. I&rsquo;ve also been lucky enough to attend multiple trips and I&rsquo;ve had the pleasure of bringing in new people from all walks of life &ndash; from those at the start of their careers to highly experienced recruiters &ndash; and I&rsquo;ve watched them thrive. It&rsquo;s been a great journey for me personally as I was hired as the first specialist recruiter. Since then, I&rsquo;ve moved up the ladder from Team Leader to Associate Director, to Director, and I currently manage a team of 10.</p>
<h3><strong>What is a career highlight for you or your team?</strong></h3>
<p>A few highlights for me would be the trips I&rsquo;ve attended, courtesy of Lorien. Each trip comes with an award, and I have been fortunate enough to win nine of those, including Top Salesperson and Employee of the Year more than once. My fondest trip was the first one I attended when we visited Antigua and I found it to be a different level of luxury than any I had ever experienced before. On a more professional note, I have worked in multiple top billing teams, as well as being part of the most successful Specialist Markets Team. 2021 was also the highest billing year for me personally, and my team are on track to overachieve again this year.</p>
<h3><strong>What is the Lorien workplace culture like?</strong></h3>
<p>The culture within Lorien is better than it has ever been &ndash; and it&rsquo;s always been great. The new hires we have made since the pandemic have been brilliant, and that is true of all levels. The senior leadership team are brilliant and always helpful. The environment itself is fun, honest, and hardworking and, if you&rsquo;re thinking about getting into tech recruitment, there is no better environment I have heard of or personally seen than the one at Lorien.</p>
<h3><strong>What are your top tips for anyone going for an interview?</strong></h3>
<p>Always do your homework! We are a proud business and anyone coming for an interview should understand what we have achieved, what we hope to achieve and our main goals. However, it&rsquo;s very important to be honest and be yourself &ndash; lots of people come in and say the same things but the best hires I&rsquo;ve made have brought a bit of character to their interview.</p>
<h3><strong>What does a typical day at work look like for you?</strong></h3>
<p>I involve myself in everything including operations, sales, resourcing, and strategy, so there is no typical day for me. Within my team, we have a short meeting each morning to set expectations and make promises that they will deliver on throughout this week. We have quite a grown-up culture and our people are in charge of their own agenda and workload, with the management team on hand to give assistance or support with prioritisation.</p>
<h3><strong>What is it that drew you to Lorien?</strong></h3>
<p>When I was applying for roles, I went for quite a few and received four jobs offers. I went with Lorien as I simply liked the people who I interviewed with, and that culture still resonates today with a family-feel throughout the business. The people who run the business care about their workers; it&rsquo;s not just KPIs and looking at the money. There&rsquo;s also a focus on wellbeing, flexibility and looking out for each other.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>To learn more about the roles we have on offer at Lorien, click <a href="lorienglobal.com/jobs">here</a>.&nbsp;</p>

After dipping his toes in each Lorien department, Oli Roberts became the youngest Director at Lorien. Find out his highlights over the past 15 years at Lorien below.

Q&A with Oli Roberts

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<h3><strong>What has your journey at Lorien been like so far?</strong></h3>
<p>I&rsquo;ve been at Lorien for eight years and have worked my way up from Resourcer to Senior Account Manager with a team of three. Lorien have recognised any development opportunities at every step, and I have been encouraged to think about my future career path.</p>
<h3><strong>What is a career highlight for you or your team?</strong></h3>
<p>When I was a Junior Account Manager, I ran an assessment centre for a project with a client. This was a great learning experience for me and threw me in at the deep end. As a result, we made around 25 placements and filled the whole service desk. Many of the people we placed were graduate level and I have seen many of them develop in their careers since.</p>
<h3><strong>What is the Lorien workplace culture like?</strong></h3>
<p>Lorien is a great place to work &ndash; it&rsquo;s all about the people. A lot of my colleagues have been with Lorien since I started, and people very rarely leave (and if they do, they always end up coming back). We have a very candid environment, and I can always be myself with my team and the wider business.</p>
<h3><strong>What are your top tips for anyone going for an interview?</strong></h3>
<p>Be your whole self and do your research. There are a lot of recruitment companies out there, but Lorien is definitely one of the good ones. We have such a variety of people in our teams &ndash; and that is how we like it!</p>
<h3><strong>What does a typical day at work look like for you?</strong></h3>
<p>My day can be very varied between project work for clients, market information and team/client meetings. I have been working with many of my clients for a number of years and have been able to build great relationships with them, which is a part of the job I love.</p>
<h3><strong>What is it that drew you to Lorien?</strong></h3>
<p>A friend referred me for the role after telling me it was a great place to work. When I got shown the office and also met with the team, I knew it would be somewhere I could see a future and here I am eight years later.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>If you're interested in Resourcer roles at Lorien, <a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/about-us/join-us">click here.</a></p>
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From Resourcer to Senior Account Manager, Yasmin Findlay takes us through her Lorien journey

Q&A with Yasmin Findlay

<h3><strong>What has your journey at Lorien been like so far?</strong></h3>
<p>Refreshing. Six years ago, I joined Lorien as a Recruitment Programme Manager to help with a new client implementation. Since then, I&rsquo;ve progressed my career to Implementation and Supply Team Manager, then to my current role as Director of Projects, covering all STEM brands (Lorien and sister brands SRG and Carbon60). I have enjoyed progressing through the company and I&rsquo;ve also loved being able to influence how we operate, like introducing our mentoring programme and setting up our internal ED&amp;I team. At Lorien, if you have a good idea, you are encouraged to run with it, and I&rsquo;ve really embraced that side of working for the business.</p>
<h3><strong>What is a career highlight for you or your team?</strong></h3>
<p>The mentoring programme that I brought in in 2018 is something I am proud of as I&rsquo;ve seen it flourish throughout the years. I have seen people at Lorien who have progressed in their career with help from the mentoring programme. A personal highlight was being chosen as the winner of the Lorien Values award in 2019, which allowed me to go on a trip to Barbados.</p>
<h3><strong>What is the Lorien workplace culture like?</strong></h3>
<p>At Lorien, we get things done the right way. We do the basics right, and when you get that right you can grow. It isn&rsquo;t a strict workplace &ndash; people are able to bring themselves to work, talk about their passions, and get involved. It&rsquo;s not just about doing your job, you&rsquo;re able to contribute as much as you want to our business outside of sales which is great. It&rsquo;s a very welcoming culture and is approachable from the top down with no visible hierarchy of people who are hidden away in the office. People stay with Lorien for a long time, including myself. I&rsquo;ve been in the industry for 24 years and this is the longest I&rsquo;ve stayed at one workplace.</p>
<h3><strong>What are your top tips for anyone going for an interview?</strong></h3>
<p>You should always be yourself and do your research about who we are and what we do. Look at our business and what our key focus areas are. Think about how you will help people find great work with our clients before the interview too. Also, don&rsquo;t be afraid to talk about your passions &ndash; they make you stand out.</p>
<h3><strong>What does a typical day at work look like for you?</strong></h3>
<p>I am in a very client-facing role, as I manage all client projects and look after our Project Managers. My day could include anything from back-to-back client meetings to some free time to work on new projects. Each client requirement is unique, which means I&rsquo;m always working on interesting solutions and meeting new people. I also have a nice split between the office and homeworking, with members of my team choosing to work remotely full-time.</p>
<h3><strong>What is it that drew you to Lorien?</strong></h3>
<p>I knew of Lorien from when I worked at our sister brand Guidant Global and had met the senior leadership team before. I always liked the honest and straight-forward approach that Lorien had adopted. Lorien is a recruitment business through and through, and their values aligned very much with mine. In particular, once you have met the leadership team you think &lsquo;I want to work for these people&rsquo;, which was a huge draw for me.</p>
<p>If you're interested in making a difference by working at Lorien, <a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/about-us/join-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener">click here</a>.&nbsp;</p>

Hayley has made a huge difference within Lorien as Director of Projects, implementing useful and insightful teams along her way. To discover Hayley's six year journey, read below.

Q&A with Hayley Klaff

<h3><strong>What has your journey at Lorien been like so far?</strong></h3>
<p>I&rsquo;ve been with Lorien for 12 years, originally starting out as a Resourcer. I came in to support one of our clients, which was a big, high-profile account and was a great way to kick off my recruitment career. I worked in that role for three years and always aspired to do more, often asking my managers what I could get involved in. We picked up a small permanent account and I was asked if I could manage it &ndash; I of course said yes. A few years later, I received a call from our Managing Director David Gettins informing me of a new client and asking me to be the first on-site recruiter for them. Nine years later, I&rsquo;m still here supporting the client and have held numerous roles here, including Senior Recruitment Business Partner, Team Leader and now Client Services Manager.</p>
<h3><strong>What is a career highlight for you or your team?</strong></h3>
<p>I have a few highlights here &ndash; firstly, getting the role I am currently in as it was something I aspired to for many years. I enjoy the accountability and the trust that is placed in me to deliver the best for our clients. Another career highlight is the recognition I&rsquo;ve received from Lorien. Within the various teams I&rsquo;ve been a part of, we have won a number of Team of the Year awards and I was also awarded Resourcer of the Year and the first Onsite Person of the Year award, all of which I&rsquo;m hugely proud of.</p>
<h3><strong>What is the Lorien workplace culture like?</strong></h3>
<p>We have always had the close-knit, family-feel across the business. Everybody knows everyone and one of the pluses of Lorien is how accessible our Senior Leadership Team are, all the way up to our MD, David Gettins. Everyone is approachable, everybody gets along and we all chat. It&rsquo;s always been that way and it&rsquo;s a positive workplace. We get the job done and everyone works hard which is reflected by the clients we have, the new clients we win, and the renewals we get.</p>
<h3><strong>What are your top tips for anyone going for an interview?</strong></h3>
<p>You should understand the role you&rsquo;re interviewing for and the nature of our business. The type of work we do is completely embedded with the client and interviewees need to be aware of our various recruitment models. If you understand that, you will understand who we are and what we&rsquo;re here to do. You should also back your statements up with evidence and do so without being prompted.</p>
<h3><strong>What does a typical day at work look like for you?</strong></h3>
<p>A typical morning would be to catch up on my emails and attend any morning huddles that my various teams are having. This is followed by reviewing numerous reports that are generated by our MI team and analysing the data to see what actions need taking across the platform. Throughout the day, I will spend time on calls with my direct reports and clients, but my days often vary.</p>
<h3><strong>What is it that drew you to Lorien?</strong></h3>
<p>I was made redundant during the credit crunch of 2008 after doing three years of IT sales. I had, and still have, a love for technology and selling, so I decided to marry the two when searching for my next opportunity, which brought me to recruitment. I have always felt valued and appreciated, and the roles I&rsquo;ve had are exciting to me.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>If Bhavesh's journey interests you, consider joining us at Lorien.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/about-us/join-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Click here</a>&nbsp;for more information.</p>

Bhavesh talks us through his Lorien journey, from Resourcer to the first Onsite Recruiter for our clients.

Q&A with Bhavesh Patel

<p>Lorien are delighted to&nbsp;<a href="../../../../../../en/insights/lorien-to-sponsor-coding-classes-in-partnership-with-mamacodes?utm_campaign=mamacodes-pr&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social" target="_blank" rel="noopener">continue </a><a href="../../../../../../en/insights/lorien-to-sponsor-coding-classes-in-partnership-with-mamacodes?utm_campaign=mamacodes-pr&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social">working&nbsp;</a>with the award-winning coding school MAMA.codes, as they roll out their new app, Looparoo.</p>
<p>Looparoo will enable children aged three to seven around the world to learn to code, even before they can read.&nbsp;The innovative app can be accessed on any laptop or tablet and guides young children to develop digital literacy at their own pace, offering career-enhancing skills and educational screen time.</p>
<p>As Looparoo gears up to be launched, we sat down with co-founder and CEO Liane Katz to discuss all things coding, their new app and how important it is to bring coding to children around the world, particularly those marginalised by the &ldquo;digital divide&rdquo;.</p>
<h3><strong>Tell us about Looparoo and what it&rsquo;s designed for?</strong></h3>
<p>Looparoo is our brand-new app that we hope will help re-define coding education for Early Years children. The app is an important step in providing quality coding education on a global scale in a child-centred way and gives children the creative freedom to express their ideas, experiment and imagine coding adventures. It will be available to children as young as three, including pre-readers, and will be launching in Spring 2022 to children in the UK.</p>
<h3><strong>What inspired you to create Looparoo?</strong></h3>
<p>The idea for the app came about from customer feedback initially. Parents of children who attended our live taught classes were really keen for something for something to continue their learning and coding education journey outside the classroom.</p>
<p>Obviously, COVID-19 then came along, and it changed the landscape because, suddenly, 800 million school children across the world were being home-schooled and there was a huge uptick in appetite for educational technology products. Previous resistance to online learning disappeared overnight.<br><br>We realised there was a huge opportunity for us to build something that would work as a standalone coding course in children&rsquo;s homes &ndash; giving families the flexibility to fit in education around their schedules. We were able to transition all of our classes to be delivered online in ten days without the loss of a single customer, then set about bringing the app to market.</p>
<h3><strong>What made you take the jump from your previous role to co-founding MAMA.codes?</strong></h3>
<p>I have had quite a varied career, though always working in the digital sector. Initially, I was a journalist at The Guardian newspaper for 12 years and did all sorts of things; online travel editor, multimedia production and news and politics &ndash; but I always worked on the digital side, publishing content into the app and website.</p>
<p>I was then asked to work on a very technical project of re-designing and re-building the website. It was a totally different role for me as I sat between a technical team of 65 developers, the business, the content team and the design team. I had to be the diplomat that translated messages between stakeholders and weigh up their priorities and requirements.<br><br>On this project, I learned that coding makes the world go round and I realised how creative the developers were. There was a misconception of what coders looked like and who could become a coder; I was very struck by the fact that, out of the 65 developers, 64 of them were men. The Guardian did hire inclusively, it&rsquo;s just female coders were not out there at the time.<br>I then realised that I had been excluded from coding and these kinds of careers through various pressures and social factors, so the developers started to teach me how to code during our lunch breaks. I was steered away from STEM subjects at school and university, and studied languages and humanities, then went into journalism as a graduate.</p>
<p>I absolutely loved learning how to code, and I realised I was applying my skills as a linguist to the language of coding. I also realised that there was no reason why many people I knew couldn&rsquo;t pick it up. I had two young children at the time, and I started looking into how I could get them into coding.</p>
<p>I left my journalism career and started my own independent digital consultancy firm. All of these contracts further drove home for me how crucial it was to be able to code or at least be literate in it. At the same time, coding was being added to the school curriculum and I was thinking, as a parent, &ldquo;how can I help with this?&rdquo;. I began looking at the market for children&rsquo;s coding products and discovered a gap in the market; I couldn&rsquo;t find anything that I thought would engage my very creative daughter.</p>
<p>This gave me the idea to figure out a new way to present coding as something fun and creative that enables children to make things they want to make. I co-founded MAMA.codes with two other London mothers working in digital industries and started out trying to de-mystify coding to parents who were terrified of it, then launched live taught classes across London and online.</p>
<h3><strong>What do you hope the impact of the app Looparoo will be once it&rsquo;s released to children around the world?</strong></h3>
<p>We believe that every child deserves a quality coding education, but the problem is that, although it is on the English national curriculum from age five (and several others around the world such as Ireland and Australia) it&rsquo;s still quite a lottery as to whether your child will be given consistent coding lessons throughout an entire academic year.<br><br>We all know about the budget pressures schools are facing and being an ICT coordinator is often just one more role forced upon a busy teacher without any budget or guidance. This leaves a gap in the market for products such as Looparoo which are super engaging and develop intrinsic motivations within children to continue their coding journey without draining resources from a parent or teacher.</p>
<p>We always wanted to go international in order to bring a quality coding education to as many children around the world as we could, not only to those who can afford it but to those children who attend our outreach programmes. My business partner Rumbi Pfende is from Zimbabwe and, when she joined me in running MAMA.codes, one of her core motivations was to bring this life-changing skill of learning to code to children outside of the UK who simply wouldn&rsquo;t have that opportunity otherwise.<br><br>The app is designed so that the instructions are delivered in a child narrated voice via audio, so the child doesn&rsquo;t have to read to take part, learn and have fun. We have also seen that, as we intended, girls absolutely love the app and can identify with the main mascot character who is deliberately not male or female.<br><br>We hope that the impact will be that coding becomes a fun activity that children around the world ask to do on a regular basis, and that this benefits them in their future career &ndash; whatever that may look like.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.mama.codes/blog/how-mama-codes-closes-the-digital-divide" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Click here</a>&nbsp;to learn more about Lorien&rsquo;s partnership with MAMA.codes and look at our other incredible initiatives&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/about-us/csr-partnerships" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a><a href="http:" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">.</a></p>

As Looparoo gears up to be launched, we sat down with co-founder and CEO Liane Katz to discuss all things coding, their new app and how important it is to bring coding to children around the world, particularly those marginalised by the “digital divide”.

Lorien supports children to learn to code with MAMA.codes

<p><em>This interview originally appeared in the March 2022 issue of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.talint.co.uk/insights/talint-international-magazine/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">TALiNT International</a>&nbsp;</em><em>between Dawn Gibson and Lorien&rsquo;s Director for MSP and RPO Annelise Smith on how companies that adopt a holistic talent strategy can slash attrition and broaden their talent pool.</em></p>
<p>Talent solutions are evolving rapidly as the recruitment industry navigates the huge changes accelerated by the pandemic and digital transformation. Organisations are pushed to be more creative in order to attract and retain staff in a fiercely competitive market. Candidate expectations are also broader and more ambitious &ndash; while a fat salary will always be attractive, today&rsquo;s top talent also want to know they will have access to flexible and/or hybrid working arrangement, as well as ample opportunities for career growth and development. Shifting ground in what the workplace offers and heightened competition for top talent is changing how we go to market &ndash; and surfacing a new talent solution trend.</p>
<h3><strong>Why is total talent management trending?</strong></h3>
<p>The concept of total talent management (TTM) is attracting a lot of interest as a potential way to bridge the gap between traditional recruitment and new market realities. But what does TTM mean in practice? What are the challenges? What are the business benefits and how long does it take to see them?</p>
<p>Annelise Smith, Director of MSP and RPO at global digital, transformation and technology recruitment specialist Lorien, part of the Impellam Group, works with an increasing number of companies contemplating these questions. &ldquo;Total talent management has been talked about for some time from a conceptual perspective, but it&rsquo;s a topic that is now building momentum&rdquo;, she said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re seeing candidate scarcity getting more and more extreme, and organisations are realising that they have to think differently about talent in general.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;While total talent acquisition is more about how we look at the external workforce, total talent management is about having a more cohesive, holistic approach to acquiring, engaging and utilising talent in both the external and internal markets,&rdquo; Smith explained. &ldquo;A TTM approach draws from all sources of talent and, as a result, in theory, the talent pipeline is extended, enabling companies to keep up with shifting and aggressive business demands.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;The market is in an evolutionary place. We may start seeing a shift from the big &lsquo;one size fits all&rsquo; MSP/RPO programmes we have been used to. Customers are looking for more agility; they are looking for different solutions, different options and they want to work with providers who can support them with their talent agenda.&rdquo;</p>
<h3><strong>How does TTM work?</strong></h3>
<p>Traditionally, hiring has been organised into distinct silos according to permanent, contingent and Statement of Work (SOW) requirements. TA and HR are responsible for permanent recruitment, whilst procurement handles contingent and SOW.</p>
<p>The evolution towards total talent management is blurring these divisions. TA teams are increasingly playing a key overall role, taking on responsibility for contingent as well as permanent staffing. While SOW continues to primarily sit within procurement, TA leaders are becoming more involved in setting SOW parameters and total talent management does not necessarily mean that a company outsources all of its recruitment to one provider. TTM is more about improving service delivery than cutting costs &ndash; and that means working together and across borders.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not about saying it needs one team doing everything related to talent acquisition, because that is probably unrealistic; it&rsquo;s more about having an overall owner, cohesive ways of working and a unified approach,&rdquo; Smith said.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Within a TTM model, you may have an MSP, an RPO provider and a TA team working together to deliver a strategy that comes from above. Business buy-in and CEO sponsorship are absolutely key. If you&rsquo;re rolling out a new model, and trying to break down traditional barriers and silos, there has to be a clear vision and executive sponsorship.&rdquo;</p>
<h3><strong>What are the benefits?</strong></h3>
<p>For organisations that go down this route, the rewards look extremely enticing. TTM promises to deliver not only a wider talent pool, but also a more diverse selection of candidates and a more flexible approach to how works gets done. &ldquo;Any approach that broadens the potential pool of workers, taking away barriers to entry and opening up different types of engagement opportunities, should naturally have a positive impact on diversity,&rdquo; Smith said.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Total talent is about the optimisation of a workforce, and optimisation goes hand-in-hand with diversity. It&rsquo;s long been shown that businesses with a more diverse workforce and inclusive practices tend to outperform their competition. A truly cohesive approach can enable organisations to broaden their diversity aspirations beyond the permanent world, where we have tended to see efforts concentrated to date.&rdquo;</p>
<p>TTM also means looking more analytically at the internal talent pool and alumni candidates, as well as providing opportunities for upskilling and retraining to fulfil business needs and employee goals. Smith expanded: &ldquo;A true total talent management approach is bringing to the table graduates and apprentices, but also the existing workforce &ndash; talent that may well exist right under management&rsquo;s noses, but they don&rsquo;t necessarily have the means of classifying and understanding the potential of that talent, understanding those people&rsquo;s ambitions, what they want to do, what they could do.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;If you focus on that internal market, the external market will follow. Reskilling and retraining programmes are going to be fundamental to the importance of any solution.&rdquo;</p>
<p>TTM could also prove a much-needed solution to retention issues. Smith said a 20% reduction in attrition over two years was likely to be a &lsquo;reasonable target&rsquo;. &ldquo;Certainly, for any organisation struggling with attrition, you should see benefits from any approach that utilises the talent available to you in the best possible way,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You are looking at your workforce as a whole, you have greater access to data, and are better able to understand all the different interplaying scenarios that are happening, so you can make informed decisions that drive tangible benefits.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I think you will see cost benefits as well. In our current siloed market, we all know of may roles going through a high-cost consultancy or contingent route that should perhaps not be run in the way. Similarly, we see many roles being recruited on a perm basis when a shorter term, albeit higher cost, contingent option would probably be the better route. We all know that; we all see it happening; but it can be hard to break the habit.&rdquo;</p>
<h3><strong>What are the challenges?</strong></h3>
<p>For Smith, the evolution of TTM also offers significant opportunities for HR and TA functions to elevate people strategy as a key business priority but acknowledged this brought with it tough conversations.</p>
<p>&ldquo;The focus of Talent Acquisition functions has to be how best to broaden the net in order to attract and engage the best possible talent &ndash; and that means putting the focus primarily on the talent and what they want rather than what the hiring manager has in the past come to expect. This means evaluating every step of the recruitment proves from attraction strategy, assessment, selection, offer right through to onboarding, to ensure a positive candidate experience. Now more than ever it is the function of TA to educate the business in the role they need to play when it comes to securing the talent they so badly need.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Getting executive buy-in is the first and arguable the greatest challenge, considering TTM is new and largely untested. Employers have to be willing to experiment, find out what works for them and learn from their mistakes.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We need to be really clear about what the business benefits are, and how those business benefits go beyond costs savings,&rdquo; Smith said. &ldquo;What will the approach achieve in terms of access to talent? How will it drive greater diversity? What tangible improvements will your hiring managers see?&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;TTM is a long-term project requiring considerable change management, so, it is essential for the investment case to be sound. TA, HR, and the C-Suite need to really think about what they are trying to achieve and how to communicate their strategies.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s about starting small &ndash; building the foundations, focusing on data, process, capability and working from there. It may take years to get a full total talent talent management solution up and running, but you can make small changes along the ay that will have an immediate impact.&rdquo;</p>
<h3><strong>First steps to TTM</strong></h3>
<p>Smith recommends companies trial a total talent acquisition strategy; namely triaging roles to determine if they should be treated as permanent, contingent or SOW, rather than putting roles in the same silos as they always have. &ldquo;Put in a process which enable you to look at each role on its merits, so you are optimising your chances of getting the right talent for the right amount of time, the right price, for that specific requirement considering current market conditions,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You can start to see the benefits of those kinds of small changes quite quickly from a coast, quality, and timeframe perspective.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;However, it&rsquo;s vital that all stakeholder, from the TA team to RPO/MSP providers and staffing firms, are operating on an even playing field. &ldquo;The customer needs to set the right expectations and encourage a culture which supports collaboration; for example, not having suppliers being played off against each other. It goes back to setting a clear strategy of what we are trying to achieve.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;We are already seeing some organisations putting ownership of all the different routes to market in one place, and I believe we will start seeing a lot more demand for teams, either outsourced or internal, to work more closely together and to have more valuable discussions around the right route to market for each role,&rdquo; Smith said. &ldquo;Even if organisations are not thinking about adopting a total talent solution, many realise they need to optimise their operations. The market is changing and that means we need to change with it &ndash; we can&rsquo;t continue to do things the same way we always have done.&rdquo;</p>

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Total Talent Management - a Q&A with Annelise Smith

<p>The pandemic led many of us to reconsider our place in the world. Whether that came from a &lsquo;non-essential&rsquo; job classification, experiencing the benefits of greater work-life balance in a new remote working environment, or re-evaluating priorities during a pause period over furlough, many of us came to the realisation that we wanted more out of our working lives.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, this drive for purpose and meaning has translated into some interesting trends. One&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/career-changers-seek-better-balance-ahead-pay-flexjobs-survey/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">study</a>&nbsp;conducted in the summer of 2021 found that more than two thirds (68%) of people were debating changing careers &ndash; but only half of those were doing so for more pay. In fact, a similar proportion of people listed work-life balance (56%) and wanting a more meaningful or fulfilling career (49%) as key drivers for their job hunt. A significant 17% said they were looking to change careers in order to follow a passion or hobby.</p>
<p>But how could this need for purpose play out in highly technical industries like engineering and digital? Chris Barton, Director at digital and technology talent solutions specialist Lorien and Barry Jones, Principal Consultant at engineering recruitment specialist Carbon60, suggest turning your skills to the fast-growing sector of renewable energy.</p>
<h3><strong>Why is the renewables industry attractive for digital and engineering talent?</strong></h3>
<p>Chris: Renewable energy is one of the fastest growing commodity markets. You only have to look at recent current affairs to see why &ndash; on 1<sup>st</sup>&nbsp;April the energy price cap in Great Britain rose by around 54%, meanwhile the energy crunch felt by the ongoing war in Ukraine has raised the importance of self-reliance when it comes to energy needs. At the same time, there is mounting global pressure to invest in renewable energy as we all become increasingly more aware of the damage of climate change. All of this means great long-term career prospects.</p>
<p>Barry: Beyond the fact that there is clear demand in the industry (and the obvious benefits that come with that), the renewable energy industry is an exciting place to be. You&rsquo;re experimenting with new concepts, using the latest technology, and thinking outside the box. For people that are wanting to cut their teeth on the latest skills, you&rsquo;d be hard pressed to find a better industry. It&rsquo;s also a very rewarding industry to join because you&rsquo;re creating a world for the next generation. With so much investment being poured into the industry globally and so many government commitments, such as the drive to net-zero by 2050, renewables is fast becoming the &lsquo;industrial revolution&rsquo; of our times. Few industries have such a clear path for industry expansion laid out, and the chance to be a part of that movement is a key driver for candidates.</p>
<h3><strong>How has demand in the renewables industry changed over the pandemic?</strong></h3>
<p>Chris: Renewable energy weathered the pandemic pretty well,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/insights/the-turning-tide-of-energy-trading" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">overtaking fossil fuels as the largest source of UK electricity for a full year</a>, and the result was quite a buoyant job market. In fact,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2021/Oct/Renewable-Energy-Jobs-Reach-12-Million-Globally" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2020 saw 12 million people employed in the renewable energy industry worldwide</a>. And this change in direction is filtering into other industries. In my blog on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/insights/the-turning-tide-of-energy-trading" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">changing face of the energy trading market</a>&nbsp;I explored how the renewable energy boom was affecting other industries, like energy trading. On a personal level, I have definitely seen an increase in talent demand over the last year from renewable energy companies, but also from traditional energy providers looking to increase their footprint in renewables.</p>
<p>Barry: The pandemic has changed how candidates job hunt too. I think renewable energy has always been an interesting industry to be a part of, but over the pandemic people have renewed their values and really want to feel like they are contributing to something meaningful. There&rsquo;s also a lot of career security in the renewables industry, given its focus on the future. I&rsquo;m seeing increasing volumes of candidates choosing to turn their hand to roles in renewables over more traditional engineering roles.</p>
<p>Chris: It&rsquo;s an interesting one, because on the one hand a lot of candidates are drawn to the sector, but on the other demand is massively on the rise. As a result, salaries and rates in the industry are staying quite lucrative, which is another plus for candidates reconsidering their careers. It&rsquo;s not an industry where your value is going to decline, particularly because of the emphasis on specialism.</p>
<h3><strong>What jobs are created by the renewable energy industry?</strong></h3>
<p>Barry: You might be surprised by how transferable skills for renewable energy are. I typically work with clients for renewable energy jobs in project and programme management, site engineering, quality engineering, project development, construction management, civil/structural engineering, HSE, technical and design, and logistics. Experience in renewables will always be a selling point, but typically clients are looking for people with transferable skills in EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction), who will bring their experience and knowledge of the market with them. I would recommend staying up to date on trends in renewables in order to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.carbon60global.com/blog/top-tips-for-your-renewable-energy-job-interview" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">impress at interview</a>, but beyond that it&rsquo;s about keeping your technical and soft skills as sharp as you would for any other role. You can also check out my blog to learn more about&nbsp;<a href="https://www.carbon60global.com/blog/renewables-site-engineer-job-description" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">site engineering for renewable energy</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Chris: From a digital perspective, there&rsquo;s a huge appetite for data and analytics roles and for AI to develop more robust forecasting models, as well as for roles within infrastructure. Job creation in the energy market is growing and the ILO is predicting up to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2021/Oct/Renewable-Energy-Jobs-Reach-12-Million-Globally">25 million new jobs will be created in sustainability industries by 2030</a>, compared to roughly seven million job losses from traditional engineering &ndash; but that five million of those workers could pivot their skillsets. Thinking about turning your skills to renewable now is really just about getting ahead of the curve. IRENA believes that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2021/Oct/Renewable-Energy-Jobs-Reach-12-Million-Globally" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">by 2050 43 million people could be employed in the renewable energy industry</a>&nbsp;&ndash; considering that we&rsquo;re currently at circa 12 million that really shows you the direction we&rsquo;re travelling in!</p>
<h3><strong>How do I get a job in renewable energy?</strong></h3>
<p>Barry: Speak to Carbon60 and Lorien! We&rsquo;re working with clients in this sector every day across a broad spectrum of digital and engineering roles and we&rsquo;d love to have a confidential conversation with you about how to kickstart your career in the industry. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn to see the opportunities we&rsquo;re currently hiring for.</p>
<p>Are you interested in fighting climate change as part of your day-to-day life? Contact&nbsp;<a href="mailto:chris.barton@lorienglobal.com">Chris Barton</a>&nbsp;for digital roles in the energy industry and&nbsp;<a href="mailto:barry.jones@carbon60global.com">Barry Jones</a>&nbsp;to find an engineering job working in energy and renewables.</p>

The pandemic led many of us to reconsider our place in the world. Whether that came from a ‘non-essential’ job classification, experiencing the benefits of greater work-life balance in a new remote working environment, or re-evaluating priorities during a pause period over furlough, many of us came to the realisation that we wanted more out of our working lives.

Pivot your digital and engineering skills to the renewables industry

<p>How can procurement and recruitment partners work together deliver the best results for the business? Darren Topping is in conversation with Johnson Matthey, Close Brothers, and NHS London Procurement Partnership to find out!</p>
<p>In the video, I ask:</p>
<ul>
<li>Can you effectively manage a recruitment partner without suppliers?</li>
<li>Who should be involved with creating SLAs, and how often should they be reviewed?</li>
<li>How have you used SLAs to drive best value, continuous improvement and innovation?</li>
<li>How are RPO/MSP SLAs evolving?</li>
<li>Which SLAs have led to increased collaboration across the business, HR/TA, or your suppliers?</li>
</ul>
<p>Watch the video below to see the answers! Have a different opinion? Let me know what you think is the best way to drive continuous improvement between procurement and recruitment partners at&nbsp;<a href="mailto:darren.topping@lorienglobal.com.?subject=Thoughts%20on%20your%20procurement%20video">darren.topping@lorienglobal.com.</a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="flex-video widescreen">
<div class="VideoObject"><iframe id="widget2" class="optanon-category-C0004 " title="Lorien In Conversation 2022 - Procurement Leaders" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cNfZBTWOWsk?enablejsapi=1" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" data-gtm-yt-inspected-12="true"></iframe></div>
</div>

How can procurement and recruitment partners work together deliver the best results for the business? Darren Topping is in conversation with Johnson Matthey, Close Brothers, and NHS London Procurement Partnership to find out!

Beyond SLAs - Driving Innovation and Continuous Improvement from Recruitment Partners

<p>Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) recently revealed its annual Global Power 150 - Women in Staffing list, which celebrates the achievements and excellence of female leaders as influencers on the global stage in the staffing and talent solutions industry.</p>
<p>This year, we are excited to see four of Lorien&rsquo;s leaders make the list &ndash; Julia Robertson (Group CEO, Impellam), Annelise Smith (Director of MSP and RPO, Lorien), Claire Marsh (CEO, Impellam North America), and Kelly Morton (Portfolio CEO, STEM, Impellam).&nbsp;</p>
<p>This is Kelly&rsquo;s second commendation by SIA, having also been listed in its SIA 100 &ndash; Europe list of leaders earlier this year. To commemorate this occasion, we decided to put the spotlight on Claire, Kelly, and Annie to learn more about their careers and why visibility for women in recruitment is still important. &nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>Congratulations on being featured in SIA&rsquo;s list. Why do you think it&rsquo;s important to recognise the contributions of female leaders?&nbsp;</strong></h3>
<p>Kelly - Recognition of success is always important, but this is especially the case when it comes to visibility for less well represented groups. Seeing other females in leadership positions inspires women to achieve their full potential &ndash; you can&rsquo;t be what you can&rsquo;t see, after all. Visibility of female leadership helps other females to believe they can achieve the same success, and to find reasons why they can, as opposed to reasons why they cannot.</p>
<p>Annie - Within recruitment we are fortunate enough to be part of an industry that has always had a fairly even gender split, with perhaps even a leaning towards females; however, this is not reflected when it comes to leadership roles. For an industry with such significant female representation as a whole, I believe it is essential to address this imbalance at a senior manager level, and one way to do that is to recognize the contribution of female leaders. By celebrating female success, we can encourage and support future female leaders, and demonstrate the many and varied career opportunities recruitment can offer for everyone, regardless of gender.</p>
<p>Claire - Balanced gender representation and equality in the workplace is essential; women bring different perspectives and approaches to business, resulting in a more inclusive workplace and culture and better company performance. The staffing industry has done a much better job, as compared to the Fortune 500, in females achieving C-level status and that is something to be proud of. Recognizing the contributions of the female leaders in our industry increases their visibility as role models, and that visibility plays a key role in encouraging and advancing the next generation of female leaders. The SIA list also acts as a platform to highlight the organizations within our industry who are championing and developing their female leaders. There&rsquo;s still room for progress, but I&rsquo;m proud to play a part in driving ED&amp;I in our sector.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>What has been your proudest achievement in your career?&nbsp;</strong></h3>
<p>Kelly - I have had many, but what I feel most proud of is seeing people I have managed, coached, and mentored, go on and become great leaders by staying true to themselves, remaining authentic and real, and above all caring about the people around them.</p>
<p>Annie - The last 18 months have presented challenges none of us could have imagined before. But times of adversity often give you the best opportunity to demonstrate what you&rsquo;re made of. From a Lorien perspective, we have emerged as a stronger business and our teams have demonstrated resilience, agility, innovative thinking, and compassion throughout. Being a part of that and leading a team of such dedicated professionals has to be my proudest achievement.</p>
<p>Claire - Without question, my proudest moment was when I was appointed as the CEO for Lorien UK. I began my career in staffing with Lorien as a junior employee and I was thrilled and humbled when I was entrusted with the leadership of the business that I loved. Lorien supported and defined my career in this sector, providing constant opportunities for growth and development, which ultimately helped to pave my path towards becoming the CEO. In 2019 Impellam afforded me the opportunity to work internationally, leaving the UK to lead our fast-growing business in North America. It was a difficult decision to make, but I am proud of myself for making the leap out of my comfort zone to take on a new challenge and now realize that I should have never had any hesitation. My move created space for the UK team to step up and it has been extremely fulfilling to watch that team take the business from strength to strength. I work with a great team of people on this side of &ldquo;the pond&rdquo; and it is exciting to once again join a business at the start of an incredible journey!</p>
<p>As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community I am especially proud of the inclusive culture that we built at Lorien, and now as a leader here in North America, and believe I have the opportunity and responsibility to build a business that enables everyone to be the best that they can be.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>What has been the biggest challenge you have faced in your career, and what can people learn from this?&nbsp;</strong></h3>
<p>Kelly - Leading SRG out of the 2008 recession and then being appointed MD in 2009. I took a leap of faith and restructured the business into delivery and specialist. I think people thought I was mad at the time, but within two years, we had doubled the business. At the time I questioned myself many times but held on to what I believed was the right thing to do&hellip;it was a boom or bust situation. I am pleased to say my instincts served me well, otherwise I probably wouldn&rsquo;t be writing this now! Annie - Home-schooling four children whilst trying to do my day job! Obviously by no means unique to me, however it really did teach me a lot about myself and my own skills and was also a clear demonstration of the fact that you cannot be all things to all people&hellip;and that&rsquo;s ok!</p>
<p>Claire - I began my career in IT staffing in 1998, a time when the economy was prospering and demand for technology skills was high, particularly in the build-up to Y2K. Then, along came the Dotcom Bubble Burst which was an extremely challenging time for our sector. The next few years taught me the importance of resilience, determination, and the value of building relationships for the long term. This early career challenge put me in good stead for the ensuing financial crisis in 2008, and of course, the recent global pandemic. Progress isn&rsquo;t always linear and being able to quickly recognize and adapt to the internal and external factors that inevitably come along, and test even the best laid plans, is a great life lesson!&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>What can we do to raise the bar for diversity in recruitment?&nbsp;</strong></h3>
<p>Kelly - I think the recruitment industry has come a long way, but there is still more that we can all do in raising awareness and being more socially conscious around the decisions we make and the impact we have. We&rsquo;re in a unique position in recruitment to be able to influence inclusion and diversity from the top of the funnel and creating a bias-free hiring process is something we are speaking to our clients about more and more. We carry a lot of responsibility in recruitment for fair candidate treatment, and I think that makes us more introspective of our own processes and what we can all do better as individuals and businesses. To raise the bar, we need to think actively about whether the environment we&rsquo;re creating is one in which our people can fulfil their true potential, regardless of background. Diversity isn&rsquo;t, and shouldn&rsquo;t be, a tick-box exercise, but something that is part of our DNA and culture.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Annie - I am proud of our industry and the important role recruiters have to play when it comes to improving diversity in the market as a whole. I personally see the phenomenal work that is done on behalf of our customers every day and it inspires me. If anything, I think we all need to sometimes take a step back and ensure that our internal efforts and the practices in our own organizations are reflective of what we advise our clients to adopt as best practice.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Claire - Inclusion is not just about achieving strong diversity slates, but about building a culture that engages, grows, and fosters diversity of thought, ideas, and ways of working. Everyone at Impellam has a responsibility to ensure that ED&amp;I is front and center of everything that they do, but to ensure that we continue to raise the bar Impellam has recently hired its first Global Head of Culture and Fulfillment, Ann Bookout. Our investment in dedicated and expert resources will ensure that ED&amp;I is the golden thread that runs throughout our organization. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Looking for your next career move? Learn more about the people at Lorien here and find out what it feels like to work for us <a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/about-us">here.</a></p>

Four from Lorien recognised by SIA in  annual Global Power 150 - Women in Staffing list. We speak to Claire Marsh, Annelise Smith and Kelly Morton in this Q&A.

Spotlight on Lorien’s female leaders as SIA names its Global Power 150 - Women in Staffing list

<p><a href="https://www.cambridgespark.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cambridge Spark</a> is an education technology company that enables organisations to achieve their business goals by educating their workforce in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Here, Darren Topping speaks with Tom Phillips, Head of Business Development at Cambridge Spark, about the data science and AI skills gap and the importance of upskilling for talent strategy. You can learn more about our <a href="../../../../../../en/client-services/employed-consultant-model" target="_blank" rel="noopener">talent solutions with Cambridge Spark here.</a></p>
<h3><strong>How do you think the pandemic has changed people&rsquo;s approach to upskilling?</strong></h3>
<p><strong>Tom:</strong> The pandemic has helped a lot of organisations realise the urgency of upskilling and the importance of seeing a return on investment from upskilling initiatives. Ultimately, upskilling is about creating the technical capability to deliver on business objectives, and we have seen businesses focus on wanting to understand what measurable ROI their investment in the workforce has had. For data upskilling initiatives, this typically has been seen through reduced costs, for instance time saved through automation or reduced IT fees, but also can be seen through increased revenue. We have seen more organisations embracing virtual learning for more flexibility around business requirements and to create a higher level of accessibility and inclusivity to upskilling programmes. We are seeing more organisations embedding upskilling as an essential work activity for their workforce - thinking of upskilling as a standard part of their ongoing workforce development rather than a separate project and developing a culture of learning at work.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Darren:</strong> I think that a lot of people took lockdown as an opportunity to develop new skills and capabilities in line with an alternative career. In our &lsquo;What Tech Candidates Want&rsquo; research from early 2020, we were surprised to find that upskilling was an important factor behind contractors&rsquo; decision over what role to take. Going forwards, I anticipate that along with a demand for hybrid working as part of individuals changing roles, a defined upskilling, training, and mentoring plan will also be a major demand for talent in the market.</p>
<h3><strong>What can businesses do to overcome the skills gap? </strong></h3>
<p><strong>Tom:</strong> Businesses should look to their existing workforce to understand how upskilling can help overcome the skills gap. There are established routes and methods for upskilling workforces. We see a lot of businesses setting up internal Academies focussed on a particular skills area, for instance Data Science or Cybersecurity, which provide a variety of programmes of different levels that are open to all staff to apply for. For employees in the UK, delivering these Academies as apprenticeships is increasingly popular, with employees gaining a recognised qualification and the business able to fund the Academy using the Apprenticeship Levy.</p>
<p>An important starting point is understanding the skills needed to meet business objectives and making sure that the upskilling programme will deliver these skills. The proposed curriculum must match the identified skills gap and align with business needs. We also see greater success in closing the skills gap where businesses are able to tailor the content of the programme. This can be possible through sector-specific curricula or even tailoring the content directly to the business (one of our clients we are working with learners in more than 50 different business units ranging from manufacturing to HR to commercial finance). For instance, creating tailored assignments or case studies for employees to work on, or delivering hackathons working on a live business problem.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Businesses also need to provide the right level of support to each employee to ensure the programme is successful. This includes technical support that covers the content of the programme and also how to apply the skills to the workplace. It can also include pastoral and career support, for instance for employees who have been out of education for a long-time. Through providing the right level of support and tailoring, organisations can accelerate the time it takes for staff to deploy new skills in the workplace and overcome the skills gap.</p>
<p><strong>Darren: </strong>I couldn&rsquo;t agree more with Tom&rsquo;s points, and just to add, I think there is a huge opportunity for organisations to start mapping the skills of their workforce today, in order to accelerate internal mobility and upskilling programmes for individuals in roles that are in decline into high-growth roles such as in data and machine learning.</p>
<h3><strong>What are the benefits of bringing talent in to upskill your workforce? </strong></h3>
<p><strong>Darren:&nbsp;</strong>The main benefit of adding external, new, and diverse talent to your workforce is that it also brings new and neurodivergent thinking that accelerates the capability of your whole organisation. Earlier in the year I <a href="../../../../../../en/insights/diversity-and-inclusion-series---neurodiversity-with-arctic-shores" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interviewed Lara Montefiori, the Chief Scientific Advisor for Arctic Shores </a>who gave an excellent summary of why new thinking was essential for business. From across our client base we continually see that organisations are trying to achieve more with less resources, therefore increasingly the overall capability of your workforce is essential to stay ahead.</p>
<p><strong>Tom: </strong>Upskilling the workforce is a necessity but not the only way to develop your workforce. Hiring fresh talent can bring new perspectives and new ideas on how to apply technologies. Upskilling and hiring can actually work well together strategically, with technical talent often looking for new opportunities to develop their skills further - an attractive upskilling proposition can help differentiate from competitors and persuade top technical talent to join. For some of our clients, our programmes are offered to new hires as a way for them to gain a government-recognised qualification in data science through their work.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>Do you think the workforce will ever catch-up with the digital skills gap?</strong></h3>
<p><strong>Tom:</strong> Businesses need to continue developing the skills of their workforce to keep up with changes and developments in technology, particularly for specialist areas like data science. Businesses need to make sure that they are considering this ongoing development need when creating their upskilling programmes. Rather than being a one-off project, upskilling programmes might need to form part of their ongoing talent development strategy, with learning and skills development embedded in the workplace.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Social mobility will also be important for bridging the gap. Social mobility increases the talent pool available for businesses and therefore reduces the skills gap. We offer a full-stack curriculum for the data science vertical with an entry point into a data career for anyone of any technical background. For some clients, this has proven to be a way of opening up upskilling initiatives to a wider pool of people, as the prerequisites for courses become less restrictive.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Darren:</strong> I think we will eventually close the digital skills gap, but at the moment technology is moving faster than education. To speed this process up, I think action needs to be taken now. This action needs to happen in all facets of our society from schools and colleges to teach relevant technology skills, right the way through to organisations developing, promoting and being patient with internal upskilling and mobility schemes. Those companies that begin these programmes today will be the ones who benefit most from this approach.</p>
<p>Interested in upskilling your workforce? Check out our <a href="../../../../../../en/client-services">talent solutions</a> to learn how to invest in your future today, including <a href="../../../../../../en/client-services/employed-consultant-model">solutions with Lorien and Cambridge Spark.</a><br><br></p>

Read our interview with Cambridge Spark on the data science and AI skills gap and the importance of upskilling for talent strategy.

Upskilling to overcome the STEM Gap: an interview with Cambridge Spark

<p>After almost two years of instability, business is booming again.&nbsp; The ONS recently announced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58543554" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over one million vacancies were recorded between June and August&nbsp;</a>&ndash; the highest since records began &ndash; as well as that employee numbers had bounced back to pre-pandemic levels.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In July 2021,&nbsp;<a href="https://employeebenefits.co.uk/uk-employees-least-motivated-work-home/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">almost a third (31%) of people felt stuck in their role due to economic uncertainty</a>. But as the market becomes more buoyant, candidates are beginning to emerge from hiding. The question is: should you join them?&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Yes: what are you waiting for?</h3>
<p>After almost two years of deprivation &ndash; clamping down on spend, issuing furloughs and redundancies, and pressing pause on important projects, businesses are finally realising they can&rsquo;t stay static forever.<br><br>Recruitment went into overdrive in 2021. In May,&nbsp;tech hiring hit it a five-year high, with over 132,000 recorded vacancies. As well as businesses rushing to catch-up to strategy,&nbsp;almost 20,000 new tech businesses were created in 2020 &ndash; or two every hour. More vacancies naturally means more interesting opportunities and better odds to get the role you want (<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/jobs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">check out our live vacancies here</a>). After all, even though more candidates might be looking to move, the volume of opportunities still far outweighs supply &ndash; leading to that supply-demand imbalance which famously tips in the candidate&rsquo;s favour.<br><br>The pressure to find and keep talent, as well as the growth of digital strategy seen during the pandemic, means that businesses are also more willing to negotiate for the right candidate. Recent&nbsp;<a href="https://home.kpmg/uk/en/home/media/press-releases/2021/05/kpmg-and-rec-uk-report-on-jobs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">research from KPMG and APSCo</a>&nbsp;revealed that between a 23 year high for talent demand, and less available candidates due to concerns over job security, pay was accelerating. In fact, the report uncovered a 14-month high for starting salaries, and an 18-month high for temp pay growth.<br><br>But it&rsquo;s not just cash that&rsquo;s on the discussion table. Over the pandemic, companies were forced to adopt more flexible working practices. While many businesses are still finding their feet in the &lsquo;new normal&rsquo;, hiring managers will be more receptive to having conversations about flexibility, remote working, and benefits packages up front. Be prepared for an element of uncertainty &ndash; many HR departments haven&rsquo;t made their decisions on hybrid just yet &ndash; but there has never been a better time to have an honest conversation about what you expect in your next role.</p>
<h3>No: bide your time</h3>
<p>It&rsquo;s true that today&rsquo;s market could snag you a good deal &ndash; a better job, better pay, and better benefits. But it&rsquo;s also important to see the market for what it is at the moment: frantic.&nbsp;<br>The last two years has seen a significant amount of change for both businesses and individuals. Many companies will have lost talent (through their choice or someone else&rsquo;s), restructured, and re-strategized. That means a lot of exciting opportunities.&nbsp;<br><br>But we&rsquo;re not quite out of the woods yet &ndash; the UK&rsquo;s furlough scheme has only ended recently and there&rsquo;s already been talks of what a winter COVID-19 strategy could look like (including a last-resort lockdown).&nbsp;<br><br>Companies are currently playing catch-up after two years of hunkering down &ndash; if the market seems fast and chaotic, that&rsquo;s not necessarily a good sign. This is when rushed, desperate decisions are made (on both sides). This could end up affecting you in a new role if the rush to get people in isn&rsquo;t properly thought through. Naturally, this goes for culture too. While now is a great time to negotiate your contract, don&rsquo;t forget that many companies are in flux right now. Their excellent work from home policy might not stick, nor may the culture, people, department, or need.&nbsp;<br><br>Another reason to bide your time is internal mobility. You won&rsquo;t be the only one weighing up your options, and other companies aren&rsquo;t the only ones rethinking their strategy. If you&rsquo;re otherwise happy at your company but looking for something more &ndash; maybe progression or a change in direction &ndash; now might be the best time to bring that conversation up, when your business is conscious of the talent-crunch and in acceleration mode.</p>
<h3>So when is the best time to job hunt?</h3>
<p>How long is a piece of string? Moving jobs is never an easy decision.&nbsp;<br><br>The market at the moment is incredibly candidate-driven &ndash; there&rsquo;s no doubt that there are more opportunities out there than ever before, more flexible, and open-minded companies, and more exciting projects happening. But it&rsquo;s also true that we&rsquo;re in a period of change, and change can be unsettling &ndash; for everyone. Whether you stick or twist, job security is never 100% guaranteed.&nbsp;<br><br>So, with that in mind, the best time to move jobs is based on a number of things &ndash; whether you&rsquo;re being challenged, whether there&rsquo;s room for growth, and whether you enjoy what you do. Culture should also play an important role in your decision-making, especially as companies respond to changes in climate. You should also be aware of your situation, such as the importance of location, flexibility, work-life balance, and benefits in your life.&nbsp;<br><br>It never hurts to keep your options open and to see what&rsquo;s on the market. To get started, make a priority list of what&rsquo;s important in a role for you (taking your existing role out of the equation). Check against what you currently have, what you want, and what you think you can get. Then take a look at what&rsquo;s out there. At the very least, exploring options outside of your current company will enable you to benchmark your skillsets and understand what you should reasonably be able to ask for, even if you decide not to move.&nbsp;<br><br>If something catches your eye, don&rsquo;t be afraid to put your CV in and even attend an interview. Think of it like the step from window shopping to trying something on &ndash; you don&rsquo;t have to buy anything, and it might even help you work our whether you want someone new or if what you have at home actually fits perfectly. You might even find a role you would have never even considered before.&nbsp;<br><br><a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/jobs">Check out our live vacancies&nbsp;</a>to see what roles might suit you or read&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/insights/five-of-the-best-questions-to-ask-in-an-interview">our blog on interview tips</a>&nbsp;before you start applying.&nbsp;</p>

As the tech market becomes more buoyant, more people are considering swapping jobs. But is now the best time to take the plunge? And if not now, when?

How to know when it's time to job hunt

<p>As part of our Diversity and Inclusion Series, I am excited to talk here to Debbie Forster MBE, CEO of Tech Talent Charter, an organisation focused on driving greater equality, inclusion and diversity in the tech sector. Here, we talk about findings from Tech Talent Charter&rsquo;s newest report, the role of people and conversations (the positive and the uncomfortable) to drive change, and the shift from &lsquo;tick box&rsquo; exercises to belonging and inclusion. We also explore how COVID-19 has broken myths in workplace culture, and how we can use the shift to move forwards and create greater opportunities for everyone. Check out the video below for advice on the next era of inclusion and diversity. Want to share your thoughts? Reach out to me to discuss!</p>
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How can you create greater diversity in 2021? Join Darren Topping and Debbie Forster MBE from the Tech Talent Charter as they discuss how COVID-19 has changed inclusion and diversity culture, and opportunities for the future.

Diversity and Inclusion Series - Hiring, Onboarding and Retaining Diverse Talent with the Tech Talent Charter

<p>Lorien's Diversity and Inclusion Series features talks with our key clients about how they're putting candidates at the heart of their business this year by driving ED&amp;I. In this episode, I'm talking to Mark Bates, Trainee Development Manager, and Jessica Samm and Isabelle Plater, both Technology Development Programme Specialists, from Nationwide about the role of apprenticeships and upskilling in improving inclusion and diversity. We talk about the value and importance of diversity in early talent programmes, the effectiveness of apprenticeships to level the playing field and boost social mobility, and how talent can come from anywhere, and candidates with non-traditional backgrounds are sometimes the ones with the most to give. Watch the video below, and if you enjoyed it, get in touch with us to learn more or check out the rest of our Diversity and Inclusion Series. &nbsp;</p>
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In this episode of Lorien's ED&I series, Darren  talks to Nationwide about the role of apprenticeships and upskilling in improving inclusion and diversity.

Diversity and Inclusion Series - Apprenticeships and Reskilling Initiatives with Nationwide

<p>I'm speaking to Lorien&rsquo;s partners as part of a Diversity and Inclusion series looking at challenges and opportunities for equality, diversity, and inclusion in 2021. In episode five of our ED&amp;I series, Joanna Fagbadegun is in conversation with Senda Kavindele from KPMG on what KPMG are doing to drive attraction of Black Heritage Talent. Watch the video here or&nbsp;contact us&nbsp;to learn how Lorien can support your ED&amp;I journey.&nbsp;</p>
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Joanna Fagbadegun talks to Senda Kavindele, KPMG about challenges and opportunities for equality, diversity and inclusion in 2021 - with a specific focus on Black Heritage Talent

Diversity and Inclusion Series - Black Heritage Talent with KPMG

<p>Lorien&rsquo;s Diversity and Inclusion Series explores the challenges and opportunities for ED&amp;I in 2021. Today, I&rsquo;m speaking with Lara Montefiori, Chief Science Officer at Arctic Shores. Arctic Shores uses award-winning technology to help companies make better people choices, and people better career choices. In this short video, we look at neurodiversity in business. We discuss the value of cognitive diversity to drive competitive advantage and avoid groupthink, how cognitive diversity improves employee engagement and performance through psychological safety, how to harness the benefits of a neurodivergent workforce every day, and how to use your recruitment and selection process to create greater neurodiversity. Watch the video below to hear how neurodiversity can help build better businesses.</p>
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Cognitive neurodiversity is crucial for building a better understanding of your market, creating more inclusive products, and generating new ideas. Here, we speak to Arctic Shores about neurodiversity in business, why it matters and how you can create it.

Diversity and Inclusion Series - Neurodiversity with Arctic Shores

<p>I'm speaking to Lorien&rsquo;s partners as part of a Diversity and Inclusion series looking at challenges and opportunities for equality, diversity, and inclusion in 2021. In episode three of our ED&amp;I series, Darren Topping is in conversation with Elizabeth Jessop from KPMG on what in-house recruiters and external recruitment partners can do to help organisations employ more people with disabilities and how organisations can improve the gender balance within their technology function. Watch the video here or&nbsp;contact us&nbsp;to learn how Lorien can support your ED&amp;I journey.&nbsp;</p>
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Darren Topping talks to KPMG about challenges and opportunities for equality, diversity and inclusion in 2021 - with a specific focus on disability recruitment and gender balance

Diversity and Inclusion Series - Disability Hiring and Gender Balance with KPMG

<p>I&rsquo;m in conversation with Lorien&rsquo;s key client partners as together we focus on driving equality, inclusion, and diversity in 2021. Today I&rsquo;m speaking to Chris Bleakley, Director of Resourcing at Nationwide Building Society. Nationwide is a business I love working with because of their strong sense of purpose and their commitment to building a stronger, kinder, and greener society. In this video short, we are talking about the rise of remote and hybrid working, the importance of inclusivity, and how they are adapting their ways of working to the new normal.</p>
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Learn how Nationwide how responded to the pandemic and adapted to the needs for remote working. In this video short, Chris Bleakley from Nationwide discusses the rise of hybrid working, the importance of inclusivity and adapting working practices for the new normal.

Diversity and Inclusion Series - Ways of Working with Nationwide

<p>Have you ever wondered what it's like to work in Internal Audit at a market-leading organisation? We spoke to Janice Byrne about her career at Nationwide, and what's next for the Society.</p>
<h3><strong>Tell us a bit about your position at the Society and your experience.</strong></h3>
<p>I&rsquo;m the Audit Director for Strategy and Operations at Nationwide and I&rsquo;ve just celebrated my first-year work anniversary here after taking a career break to redevelop my house. I have over 25 years of internal audit experience within financial services.</p>
<h3><strong>Why is there a hiring drive in the audit space at Nationwide?</strong></h3>
<p>The Society really values Internal Audit, and our insights and assurance can support management when making key decisions. As Nationwide continues to focus on how best to serve our Members and Build a National Treasure, Internal Audit has a key role to play.&nbsp; We are looking to increase the amount we can do for the Society over the next few years &ndash; hence the hiring drive!<br><br>If you want to join a team where you are supported, have professional development opportunities and where you are working for an organisation that aligns with values such as authenticity, being supportive and doing your best, then I think you would fit into our Internal Audit team. To me it&rsquo;s so important to work with people who you value, respect and trust and Nationwide has got that in place.&nbsp;<br><br>The Internal Audit team is relatively small &ndash; about 100 people &ndash; but it&rsquo;s big enough to give you audit experience and career opportunities across a variety of different portfolios and teams covering the whole Society. Being small has its advantages too, as we&rsquo;re personal enough to give you the opportunity to build relationships with the entire community. It&rsquo;s really the best of both worlds. Additionally, as some of our agile and data analytics work that we&rsquo;ve already done shows, we are innovative and at the forefront of auditing techniques.</p>
<h3><strong>How are Nationwide looking at implementing an agile way of working in the audit space?</strong></h3>
<p>When I first joined Nationwide, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had already adopted an agile way of working. We are one of the forerunners within the internal audit profession to be adopting these principles, which means that we are more collaborative across our community, better engaged with our stakeholders, and are able to complete audits in a more efficient way. This encourages us to focus on the right things.</p>
<h3><strong>What makes Nationwide different compared to other companies?</strong></h3>
<p>The best thing about Nationwide, that you notice on day one, is that we are a mutual organisation, meaning unlike banks, we&rsquo;re owned by our 16 million members. And we are all working together to build a stronger, kinder, greener society. The core of everything we do is to protect our members and it&rsquo;s so refreshing, authentic and a lovely environment to be part of. This is one of the reasons why our colleagues work with a real sense of pride and it&rsquo;s one of our cornerstones for building the legendary service and to protect the Society.&nbsp;<br><br>I also think Nationwide has a great leadership culture. This sets the tone for the rest of the Society, making it a positive place to be. For example, there&rsquo;s a really healthy focus on wellbeing and personal resilience, which is so important at the moment. Generally, everyone is very supportive of each other and will help each other out, which is a big morale boost. It&rsquo;s a culture to be really proud of.</p>
<h3><strong>Are there any exciting projects that have been worked on?</strong></h3>
<p>We need to audit what really matters, and that means looking at things that protect the Society, in order to protect our members.&nbsp;<br><br>The Society has recently taken a new approach to look at whole customer journeys for our members (or their &lsquo;missions&rsquo;). From an audit perspective, that means that we&rsquo;re not just looking at small processes, but at end-to-end experiences and what is important to our members. This allows our teams to engage in audits covering multiple business areas and thereby gain more experience across the Society. We encourage this as a way of working, so that our team are responsive to risks as they emerge with a much broader perspective.<br><br>If I think about some of the things that we did last year whilst responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, our role became one where we were able to support management with business-critical activities. For example, our team was actively engaged on delivering the keyworker project across the business, and we really got stuck in and helped the organisation as a whole.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>What has been a career highlight for you at Nationwide over the last 12 months?</strong></h3>
<p>Joining Nationwide at the beginning of the pandemic was interesting. However, to work in a team where we were able to pull together and carry on providing insightful and constructive assurance, developing new products as we went along while maintaining morale, resilience and motivation throughout, I can honestly say, has been a career highlight.&nbsp;<br><br>If we look back to see what our community has achieved, I&rsquo;m really proud of them. We not only maintained our activity, but we were innovative, developing new products to provide real time assurance to help the Society. For example, the mortgage payment holiday process that the government announced almost overnight resulted in us introducing a new product to provide assurance literally just as it was happening. I am very proud; we did an amazing thing together as a community and we genuinely did help our members.</p>
<h3><strong>Finally, what does the future look like for you and your team?</strong></h3>
<p>We are still building innovation into our ways of working, taking our learnings from the pandemic to reimagine audit. We need to be innovative and continue to be brave so that we are calling out insightful observations to management. Our role is to help our leaders run the business in a controlled and sustainable way so that it will be built to last. That in turn, will help Nationwide become a National Treasure. I believe that audit can play a fundamental part in that journey.<br><br>We hope you enjoyed this insight from Janice Byrne, Audit Director for Strategy &amp; Operations at Nationwide. If you&rsquo;re interested in learning more about a career at Nationwide, please check out the current vacancies at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nationwide-jobs.co.uk/opportunities/audit/">https://www.nationwide-jobs.co.uk/opportunities/audit/</a>&nbsp;or speak to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:Sanjeev.Singh@nationwide.co.uk">Sanjeev Singh</a>&nbsp;to learn more about the Internal Audit team, current roles, and upcoming opportunities.</p>

Investigating Internal Audit: Q&A with Janice Byrne, Audit Director for Strategy & Operations at Nationwide

Investigating Internal Audit: Q&A with Janice Byrne, Audit Director for Strategy and Operations at Nationwide

<p>Alex has worked with Lorien since 2016, rising through the ranks to National Account Executive. We spoke to Alex about her experiences, working at Lorien, and what we need to do to create more successful women in business.</p>
<h3><strong>How did your recruitment journey start?</strong></h3>
<p>I started recruiting right after graduating from the University of Miami. My cousin worked for s.com, now Lorien, and told me that his office was looking to create a team and asked if I knew anyone who would be good for the position. I was planning on going to grad school, but the opportunity seemed great, so I decided to apply for the role, and I&rsquo;m very grateful I did.</p>
<h3><strong>What do you enjoy most about working at Lorien? How has Lorien supported you in your career?&nbsp; </strong></h3>
<p>I really love the relationships that I have made at Lorien. The leadership team has always been extremely helpful and encouraging. I became an Account Manager because my then manager saw potential for me and encouraged me to make the move. As a woman in what at the time was a predominantly male environment, I didn&rsquo;t feel certain about going after the job, so it was extremely helpful to hear that my male boss as well as his manager felt as though it was the right move for me.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>How have things changed for women throughout your career? Where have we progressed, and where is there still room for improvement?</strong></h3>
<p>Things have definitely changed. When I first started at Lorien there was only one woman in sales and one woman in recruiting.&nbsp; Throughout the years, there has been a stronger stance on improving our diversity and that action has brought about very positive results. Currently, half of my recruiting team are women. There is room for improvement, and I would love to see more women on every team as well as more women in leadership roles. In 2019, Claire Marsh became our CEO in North America. I think seeing diversity at the top is important to help grow an inclusive company.</p>
<h3><strong>What can we do as individuals to improve gender diversity and representation in business?</strong></h3>
<p>I think the biggest way to drive change is speaking about it. As a woman there have been many times where I didn&rsquo;t speak up about issues and it seemed easier to sweep things under the rug. No one will know that change needs to occur if they don&rsquo;t hear that anything is wrong. The more we speak up the more we can make a difference. It is also extremely important to have male advocates and allies. If we truly want to create a balanced playing field, we need men on our side. I also believe that diversity is something that benefits all of us, so it&rsquo;s something we should all fight for.</p>
<h3><strong>What wider steps do you think we need to take to create real change for women in business? </strong></h3>
<p>Creating large scale change takes time and social change. Our daily lives are riddled with microaggressions that are embedded in our vocabulary. Common phrases like &ldquo;be a man&rdquo;, &ldquo;man up&rdquo;, or &ldquo;you ____ (run, scream, fight) like a girl&rdquo;&nbsp; all seem harmless and are just words, but they act as unconscious reinforcers to the idea that there is a superior gender. I believe the first act of transformative change is education. The better an understanding, the more awareness. I think a large portion of society thinks that they are not contributors to the gender gap however when you pick apart something as simple as the way we speak and the phrases we use, it&rsquo;s easy to detect that there are glass ceilings embedded in how we speak, act, and engage.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>What are your tips for success in recruitment?</strong></h3>
<p>I believe that the more time you put into recruiting, the better you become. Recruiting is a human-centric trade so predicting how a situation is going to pan out from start to finish is difficult. I could sit in a classroom and try to learn about the fundamentals of recruiting, but the best tips and trick usually come from being hands-on and creating a mental book of knowledge on what has happened in your past and how to react.</p>
<h3><strong>What female leaders inspire you?</strong></h3>
<p>I have a lot of respect for Tina Fey. Comedy is very male dominant and a hard career for a woman to crack. Tina Fey was the first female head writer at Saturday Night Live, then after leaving SNL, she went on to write, produce and star in her own TV shows and movies.&nbsp; Women in comedy usually have a hard time and I have heard the phrase &ldquo;women aren&rsquo;t as funny&rdquo; many times, but she stands on a podium that was much harder to climb than many of her male counterparts.&nbsp;<br><br>But Ruth Bader Ginsberg is my number one. She has been fighting for women&rsquo;s rights before it was cool. She graduated law school, first in her class, while taking care of her husband who had cancer. She went to her own classes as well as her husband&rsquo;s and took notes for him so he wouldn&rsquo;t fall behind, all while also raising her daughter. She became the second female justice in the US supreme court. She paved the way for women by advancing in her own career then continued to break ceilings by fighting for women&rsquo;s rights in law.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>A huge thank you to Alex for taking the time to speak to us on International Women&rsquo;s Day. If you are interested in joining an organization where you are empowered to fulfil your career potential, where change is championed and diversity embraced, and where female success is real and tangible &ndash; we are currently hiring.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/en/contact-us">Contact us</a>&nbsp;for more information about taking the next step in your career.&nbsp;<br><br>How do you #Choosetochallenge?&nbsp;</p>

International Women’s Day: Q&A with Alex Kerbel, National Account Executive

<p>We spoke to Simone Steel, Chief Data Officer at Nationwide, on leading the D&amp;A practice, opportunities, developments and the future of data and analytics.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>Tell us a bit about yourself.</strong></h3>
<p>I&rsquo;m the Chief Data Officer at Nationwide and the leader of the data and analytics sub-community. My role includes regulatory reporting and compliance, as well as supporting the business from an operational perspective with business intelligence, MIS and getting value from data.<br><br>I have a long career &ndash; over 32 years and counting &ndash; in technology. I&rsquo;ve worked as a programmer, a systems analyst, an architect, a tech strategist and most recently in and around large data challenges for big financial institutions &ndash; such as enterprise warehouses, low-latency information exchanges, high volume modelling exercises and data-intensive processes. Today, companies are dealing with an explosion of usage patterns for data, but also a lot of different technology options. It&rsquo;s the mix of fast-paced technology and data problems that makes my role so interesting.</p>
<h3><strong>What&rsquo;s happening in your D&amp;A department at the moment?</strong></h3>
<p>We have quite a big recruitment drive at the moment. The environment is increasingly digital, and we need to scale our operations to meet that need and act faster.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>To transform our D&amp;A function, we will be putting engineering at the core, with a strong architecture practice and foundation to support engineering activity. We will move from manual governance to continuous compliance, putting in place controls and creating data sensors everywhere to respond to environmental changes. Previously, the business would have grown the workforce to do more, but now the strategy is to do as much with technology as possible. But that&rsquo;s a different skills mix, so we&rsquo;re shifting people from pure play data specialists, to understanding data at a deeper and a wider level &ndash; such as gathering metadata, and understanding data models, taxonomies and lineage as part of engineering the solution. As well as upskilling the team, that means investing in more people and acquiring new skills.</p>
<h3><strong>What opportunities are there?</strong></h3>
<p>Because we&rsquo;re transforming the data practice, there&rsquo;s a lot of opportunity, and a lot of variety. It could be in linear modelling, machine learning, data analytics or in the data governance space looking at how to automate data lineage.&nbsp;<br><br>We&rsquo;re looking for people of all levels and experiences, but there is a backbone of engineering skills that I&rsquo;m looking for. The more I see technology professions evolving, the more I believe we need to hire talent with continuous learning and full stack engineering at its core. I&rsquo;m talking about someone that understands the overlap between infrastructure and cloud, continuous monitoring of services and development of features. In the past, these three things were very distinct. But as we move to a cloud environment, those roles get very blurred. If you are providing a good data service, you need to understand all these layers.&nbsp;<br><br>That comes with experience, and I&rsquo;m not expecting everyone to have the full package. Today it&rsquo;s less about specific languages or databases and more about an understanding of a full stack service offering, multi-language development and continuous learning. If you come with some of the package and the desire to learn, there&rsquo;s plenty of opportunities here, and I&rsquo;d love to discuss them with anyone interested.</p>
<h3><strong>What wider projects are you working on at the moment?</strong></h3>
<p>We are fully committed to adopting cloud for our analytics, MIS and business insights. We want to reduce our legacy burden and move some of our old platforms into a fresh cloud space with added controls and security.&nbsp;<br><br>In doing so, we will also look under the hood for ways to simplify. There is a cost imperative - we need to reduce some of the on-premise and end-of-life servers - but there is also an agility imperative, which is to scale our compute and our storage up and down as the business needs. And of course, there is the challenge of doing that in a secure way, in a robust and resilient way, and in a regulatory compliant way.&nbsp;<br><br>My D&amp;A team is partnering closely with our cloud centre of excellence to achieve this. Data challenges and use cases are quite unique, so we take an active engineering role when it comes to breaking ground in the technologies needed in this space &ndash; such as data lakes, data fabrics, data mesh, data warehousing etc.</p>
<h3><strong>What&rsquo;s it like working at Nationwide?</strong></h3>
<p>I&rsquo;ve only been here 10 months, but I already feel like part of the fabric. Nationwide is the largest mutual in the UK, and for me that&rsquo;s really important as it says a lot about how the business is run. It means that members are at the core of everything we do. Coming from a long background of public enterprises, sometimes your business decisions can be at the mercy of the market. Your customer and your shareholder can need and want different things. But being in a mutual means these two things are aligned. My customer is also my shareholder, which is important for creating a sense of purpose and focus; I can say that everything that I&rsquo;ve done since I&rsquo;ve joined Nationwide has been for a common, consistent, good.</p>
<h3><strong>What is the future of data and analytics?</strong></h3>
<p>In a nutshell, the future of data and analytics is when we stop looking at it as a community and start seeing it for what it is &ndash; a digital representation of the business. To do this, we will need to move into a space where we have data sensors everywhere and where we are free to capture and analyse data within parameters that the Society accepts. Then we will be liberated from the departmental view and will become better partners and embedded in how we do business. But one step at a time!<br><br>We hope you enjoyed this insight from Simone Steel, CDO at Nationwide. If you&rsquo;re interested in learning more about a career at Nationwide, please&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nationwide-jobs.co.uk/tech-talent/">check out current vacancies</a>&nbsp;or speak to<a href="mailto:dan.harrison@nationwide.co.uk?subject=D%26A%20Opportunities%20at%20Nationwide">&nbsp;Dan Harrison</a>&nbsp;for more information. You can also&nbsp;<a href="https://meetandengage.com/aklch3bv3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">register for our upcoming event, &lsquo;Be Part of the Future of Data &amp; Analytics at Nationwide&rsquo;</a>&nbsp;to learn more about the D&amp;A practice, current roles, and upcoming opportunities.&nbsp;</p>
<div>&nbsp;</div>

We speak with Simone Steel, Chief Data Officer at Nationwide on her career, the data and analytics practice, opportunities, developments and the future of data at Nationwide

On Data and Analytics: Q&A with Simone Steel, Chief Data Officer at Nationwide

<p>Have you ever wondered what it&rsquo;s like to be part of one of the UK&rsquo;s biggest tech giants?<br><br>Rightmove is the UK&rsquo;s largest property marketplace and is a digital native business. Its website and apps receive over 140m visits a month &ndash; more than ASOS, Instagram and Wikipedia &ndash; making it one of the UK&rsquo;s top visited sites, it manages 70TB of data, using 15,000 servers, and is on target to make 2,000 code releases this year. Rightmove isn&rsquo;t just a household name &ndash; it&rsquo;s a tech pure play with a large-scale platform, home to a keen engineering community.<br><br>Here, we take you through the keyhole to life in their technical team. We&rsquo;re joined by Dean Smith, a QA Engineer, and Aamir Choksi, an Android Developer.</p>
<h3><strong>Tell us a bit about yourselves.</strong></h3>
<p>Dean: I&rsquo;m in my fourth year here at Rightmove &ndash; and loving it!&nbsp; As a QA Engineer, I work on all aspects of the Rightmove platform.&nbsp; My role loosely revolves around managing the quality processes for my team and writing or maintaining automation frameworks for the frontend apps, using tools such as NightwatchJs, Geb and straight up selenium WebDriver in Java.&nbsp; The apps we work with are principally developed in Java or ReactJS and we have recently been moving to Docker.</p>
<p>Aamir: I joined Rightmove in February and I currently work in the Apps Team as an Android Developer. On a day-to-day basis, I use Kotlin and Java to develop the Rightmove Android app and we use MVP architecture and follow clean code/architecture principles. We also use some third-party libraries like Coroutines, Dagger2, Picasso, Mockito, and Firebase Crashlytics.</p>
<h3><strong>What does a &lsquo;day in the life&rsquo; look like for you?</strong></h3>
<p>Dean: The nature of what I do requires the ability to context switch quickly and often.&nbsp; Most mornings we start off with &lsquo;stand up&rsquo; (well, actually &lsquo;sit down&rsquo; thanks to COVID-19!) for a short catchup up with the team and to give a quick overview of the previous day and what we might tackle next.&nbsp; I then split my time between Kick-off&rsquo;s or Sign-off&rsquo;s, meetings, exploratory testing and coding.&nbsp; In between all of that, I like to see what&rsquo;s going on generally in slack to chime in on conversations when needed and enjoy the light-hearted chat.&nbsp;<br><br>Aamir: Most of my day compromises of coding new features for the Rightmove Android app, refactoring old code, fixing bugs, etc. When I'm not coding, I'm doing code reviews, attending team meetings like stand-ups, sprint planning, feature estimation, and sprint retrospective.</p>
<h3><strong>What attracted you to working at Rightmove?</strong></h3>
<p>Dean: What initially attracted me to Rightmove was the fact that it was a household name but what sealed the deal was the interview process and the people I met during that.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s the best interview process I have ever been through.&nbsp; I got to meet some of the colleagues I would work with and getting a sense of the culture and how warm and affable they were was invaluable.<br><br>Aamir: Rightmove is the UK's largest real estate portal and part of FTSE100 with over five million downloads from Google Play Store. I've been using the Rightmove app myself since I started renting my first property. The opportunity to work on such a popular app and create value for millions of people, while working on the latest tech stack with an amazing team was what attracted me.</p>
<h3><strong>How would you describe the culture at Rightmove?</strong></h3>
<p>Dean: Inclusive, pleasant, crazy, enjoyable, thought provoking and thoroughly engaging.&nbsp; I love the &lsquo;no blame&rsquo; culture - What&rsquo;s the problem? How do we fix it? How can we avoid it in future? Affectionately, I like to say that Rightmovers are a little eccentric in a fun, relaxed way. Whether you are playing table tennis, pool or chatting in the kitchen there is a palpable &lsquo;homeliness&rsquo; to it all.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>Aamir: People here are very approachable and are always willing to help; everyone is encouraged to innovate and to bring new ideas to the table.</p>
<h3><strong>How does the team work together?</strong></h3>
<p>Aamir: We work in an agile way, everyone is given autonomy, and everyone in the team is easy to approach if something needs to be discussed.<br><br>Dean: We&rsquo;re very similar. We work in agile, two-weekly sprint-based development streams, or focus on epics.</p>
<h3><strong>What do you enjoy most about working at Rightmove?</strong></h3>
<p>Aamir: I love the autonomy that I&rsquo;m given to innovate and to bring a new approach to finding a solution &ndash; already I&rsquo;ve worked on several new releases since joining. You get to work with some of the smartest minds in the industry, on some of the latest technology. And, alongside some great &lsquo;usual&rsquo; company benefits, you get 10% time each week to focus on learning new skills or developing in an area you&rsquo;re interested in. There&rsquo;s great work-life balance at Rightmove too &ndash; which is so important to me.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>Dean: For me, it&rsquo;s the culture. Everyone is so nice here; we have a wonderful mix of extremely talented people that career/skill growth is just natural. The opportunity to grow here both professionally and personally has been amazing; I feel like I&rsquo;ve learned so much. Echoing Aamir, our 10% time out to work on any project of our choosing (directly related to Rightmove, or not), is a fantastic perk that everyone should know about. You can use it for personal development, learning a new framework or pairing up with a colleague to explore some new tech.&nbsp;</p>
<p>A huge thank you to Dean and Aamir from Rightmove for taking the time to chat to us about their experience &ndash; and to give us a look through the keyhole of this household name! Are you interested in learning more about a career at Rightmove? The team are currently hiring for tech experts in the following roles &ndash; follow the&nbsp;<a href="../../../../../../en/jobs?keywords=rightmove">link</a>&nbsp;to find out more and apply!</p>

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be part of Rightmove? Hear what it's like from the perspective of a QA Engineer and an Android Developer

Rightmove: Through the keyhole of a QA Engineer and an Android Developer

<p>Have you ever wondered what it&rsquo;s like to be part of one of the UK&rsquo;s biggest tech giants? Rightmove is the UK&rsquo;s largest property marketplace and is a digital native business. Its website and apps receive over 140m visits a month &ndash; more than ASOS, Instagram and Wikipedia &ndash; making it one of the UK&rsquo;s top visited sites, it manages 70TB of data, using 15,000 servers, and is on target to make 2,000 code releases this year. Rightmove isn&rsquo;t just a household name &ndash; it&rsquo;s a tech pure play with a large-scale platform, home to a keen engineering community.</p>
<p>Here, we take you through the keyhole to life in their technical team. We&rsquo;re joined by Dan Wilson, a Front-End Engineer, and Louis Leondiou, a Java Developer.&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>Tell us a bit about yourselves</strong></h3>
<p>Louis: I&rsquo;ve been with the business since 2015. My Java experience comes from an Academy I joined after finishing university. While at the Academy I experienced a few different working environments &ndash; I was an Automation Engineer at Betfair, worked with HTML and JavaScript at a start-up and worked at Sage developing Java in their internal suite of software.<br><br>Dan: I&rsquo;ve been with the business for just under three years, and in that time, I&rsquo;ve worked on some exciting, almost entirely greenfield, projects. Before Rightmove I worked as UI Engineering Consultant for companies including Tesco, Canon and a subsidiary of Kuoni, where I helped clients build large scale and multi-language ecommerce platforms.</p>
<h3><strong>What does a &lsquo;day in the life&rsquo; look like for you?</strong></h3>
<p>Louis: I&rsquo;m currently working in a new team that was created to facilitate communication between our different users. We formed just as Docker was rolled out in-house, so we can be flexible with the tech we use in our applications. We build our services with Node and Java, as well as Kafka. We use Jenkins to test and deploy new code and although we are not there yet, we are aiming towards a fully automatic CI Pipeline. Day to day, we follow scrum agile methodology, with work done in sprints that are defined by the team (two weeks for us).&nbsp;<br><br>Dan: A typical day involves working closely with product owners, QA&rsquo;s and other engineers to build new features and help come up with technical solutions to solve problems. I&rsquo;m typically involved in technical discussions, helping make technical decisions and providing technical context for product owners. This includes helping them prioritise product vs technology features, sprint goals and longer-term roadmaps. Most days I will pair with one or two engineers, whether that&rsquo;s within the team or helping others across the engineering community. I deliver small features that can be built upon and I also work on a group of internal libraries including some Node libraries and our React shared component library.</p>
<h3><strong>What attracted you to working at Rightmove? </strong></h3>
<p>Dan: The Rightmove brand. I really wanted to work for a household name and contribute to applications I used on a regular basis outside of work.&nbsp; I also wanted to work on Node projects and get involved in more of a full stack role, including getting some experience in AWS. Another selling point for me was moving into a more product focused role where I could make a real impact on technology and work with the business to come up with solutions for product roadmaps.<br><br>Louis: Rightmove deals with 500+ million requests a day, so it&rsquo;s a great opportunity to develop skills that enable you to deal with huge throughputs like that.</p>
<h3><strong>How would you describe the culture at Rightmove?</strong></h3>
<p>Dan: Rightmove has a great engineering community, with a lot of very smart people. It&rsquo;s a very collaborative environment and we do a lot of peer programming. There&rsquo;s a lot of time and space to innovate as well &ndash; we have 10% time out to learn or work on personal projects and an annual hackathon. We also have lots of social groups and do regular outside of work activities. I even went sailing for the first time and competed in one of two boats Rightmove put into the Cowes regatta in 2019!<br><br>Louis: Business decisions are shared company-wide and there are clear, well defined and supportive structure in place to help you achieve your career goals. There are also lots of social groups catering for any interest &ndash; be it photography, gaming, running, football etc. And you can even create your own group!</p>
<h3><strong>What&rsquo;s the team like?</strong></h3>
<p>Dan: We have a great team relationship and we work very closely together. There is always a helping hand when you need it, whether that&rsquo;s technical or just a chat. The teams are setup with a product owner, a group of engineers (front end specialists, backend specialist and those in-between) and a QA.&nbsp; We have a good mix of engineers and everyone has the chance to get involved across the stack, with the opportunity to learn something every day. We are all involved in the technology decisions and although I am primarily a front-end engineer, I find myself having an impact on wider technology decisions, including service architecture and API design. Our team has an iterative approach to building products, and we release changes / new features regularly in order to gain feedback from those using it. The teams make their own decisions about technology and we have the empowerment to design what we want our product to look like (with support from principle engineers and architects).<br><br>Louis: A team consists of Product Owners, Software Engineers, Quality Assurance Engineers and Designers where there is collaboration between each role consistently. Stand ups happen every morning and discussions often break out throughout the day. The scrum ceremonial meetings keep the team in sync and ad hoc meetings allow the team to come up with new features and ideas to break down and develop.</p>
<h3><strong>What do you enjoy most about working at Rightmove?</strong></h3>
<p>Louis: I love the relaxed culture at Rightmove and how it feels like you&rsquo;re working with friends. There is a huge drive on personal development, providing direction and a means to get there making the &lsquo;career ladder climb&rsquo; an enjoyable challenge. Learning is also easy &ndash; Rightmove has Pluralsight which is a good source for material, but you can also request to go on any training course or conference that you can get yourself to.<br><br>I like trying new things and Rightmove have been very accommodating by allowing me to pursue different development directions. I started as a Java back end developer, then I moved into a full stack role but still fully Java, then I moved onto Android development and now I&rsquo;m back to full stack with Java, Node and React applications. As a result, I have been able to work on an exciting greenfield project where I headed up the proof-of-concept development and showcased it to customers. It&rsquo;s maturing very quickly, and it has been very exciting and a great learning experience.<br><br>Dan: The people are great, and it&rsquo;s amazing to have a real impact on driving technology choices. One of my personal highlights has been helping two graduate engineers with writing their first front end applications from scratch in React, Node and Express. I find this a really rewarding part of my role, and it&rsquo;s great to be given the opportunity to tech and mentor others if that&rsquo;s what interests you.<br><br>Are you interested in learning more about a career at Rightmove? The team are currently hiring for tech experts in the following roles &ndash; follow the<a href="../../../../../../en/jobs?keywords=rightmove">&nbsp;link</a>&nbsp;to find out more and apply!</p>
<div>&nbsp;</div>

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be part of one of the UK’s biggest tech giants? Here, we take you through the keyhole to life in Rightmove's technical team.

Rightmove: Through the keyhole of a Front End Engineer and a Java Developer

<p>Those of you that know me probably know that I don&rsquo;t particularly enjoy being the centre of attention. That&rsquo;s perhaps a by-product of being raised in the generation before social media encouraged us to share our breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Instagram!</p>
<p>But, maybe, my approach is a little selfish rather than selfless. As leaders, we have a responsibility to act as role models and use our voices to encourage positive change.</p>
<p>Last week, I had a moment where I let flattery get the better of me&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;and it got me thinking. I was delighted to make the&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lorien_resourcer-tech-recruitment-activity-6574567842614657024-zY9k" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>2019 Staffing Industry Analysts Top 100 European Influencers</em>&nbsp;list</a></strong>. For 24 hours, I received lots of supportive and congratulatory messages from good friends and contacts I have made over my 21 years in the sector, and that felt really good&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;a nice, warm feeling on an autumnal Tuesday afternoon.</p>
<p>But when I looked at the full SIA list, my heart sank a little. It&rsquo;s 2019 and we work in a sector that has excellent female representation at many levels&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;so, why are there only 23 women on the list of 100 selected from the whole of Europe?&nbsp;</p>
<p>Before I get an onslaught of comments, I am not saying that any of the men that are on this list do not deserve to be there. I know many of them, and they are outstanding (including several who are leading advocates for diversity and inclusion&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;particularly, my fellow&nbsp;<a href="https://www.impellam.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Impellam</a>&nbsp;colleague &amp;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.guidantglobal.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Guidant Global</a>&nbsp;CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-blockley-1264731/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><strong>Simon Blockley</strong></a>). Their credentials speak for themselves. But there are definitely more than 23 women in Europe who have influenced our sector.</p>
<p>I am genuinely grateful for the recognition by the SIA. But I feel that our industry awards and lists of recognition need to cast the net far and wide; and look beyond the obvious and visible nominees.</p>
<h3><strong>Speak up to stand out</strong></h3>
<p>I wrote a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/insights/from-junior-resourcer-to-ceo-claire-marshs-journey">blog earlier this year on International Women&rsquo;s Day</a>. In it, I referenced my advice to women looking to get into the boardroom and I said: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be silent.&rdquo;</p>
<p>If you have an idea or an opinion, then make sure that you voice it. We can&rsquo;t expect to be heard or listened to if we don&rsquo;t speak up.</p>
<p>Maybe, I need to take a bit of my own medicine.</p>
<p>I read the SIA&rsquo;s response to a complaint about the lack of diversity on the&nbsp;<strong><em>2018</em></strong>&nbsp;<strong><em>40 under 40 list.</em></strong>&nbsp;They said the list was &ldquo;reflective of the nominations we receive. If more than 80% of nominations we receive are for men, what is fair and reasonable? Should we force an evenness that isn&rsquo;t there by setting a minimum for women? But that&rsquo;s not how we work. Rather, each nomination is given the same consideration regardless of the name attached... The nominations we receive, however, are in your court. Take the time to send people whom you think are worthy of the list, and give us the data to help us understand their contributions and achievements...&rdquo;.</p>
<p>I agree! We have a shared responsibility. As an industry and as business leaders, we need to shine more of a spotlight on the breadth of talent within our sector; we need to use our voices to create the platform to showcase their achievements. Not just to give them &ldquo;a warm fuzzy feeling&rdquo;, but to ensure that they too can be seen as role models by the next generation.</p>
<h3><strong>Changing and championing</strong></h3>
<p>The SIA also said: &ldquo;&hellip;three years ago, the low numbers of women on our&nbsp;<em>Staffing 100</em>&nbsp;lists led us to create our&nbsp;<em>Women in Staffing&nbsp;</em>list&hellip;.but it was always our hope that the Women in Staffing list ultimately would prove unnecessary. That the industry would catch up and recognise the value women offer and put them in more places of leadership. Because without women reaching those places of leadership, our lists of staffing leaders will remain unbalanced&rdquo;.</p>
<p>I couldn&rsquo;t agree more. I am not an advocate for &ldquo;women-only lists&rdquo; in perpetuity, but they are a means to an end; a way of highlighting the breadth of female talent in the industry. They are also a way of encouraging all businesses leaders to understand and be actively engaged in their own Diversity &amp; Inclusion programmes.</p>
<p>I have recently been involved in hiring several fantastic senior females to join both the Impellam and Lorien leadership teams&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;they had outstanding careers, but just couldn&rsquo;t break into the boardroom in their current roles. To be clear, I didn&rsquo;t hire them because they are women. I hired them because they had valuable experience, a determination to prove they could make it at the next level, and because I knew that we could provide the environment where they could truly realise their ambition.</p>
<h3><strong>When will companies realise that diversity and inclusion fosters the retention of great talent, ultimately building better and stronger businesses?</strong></h3>
<p>I am proud to be part of an organisation like Impellam, where we recognise talent and provide equal opportunities for everyone (it&rsquo;s no coincidence that my boss,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-robertson-73739616/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Impellam CEO&nbsp;<strong>Julia Robertson</strong></a>, is also on the list, another leading advocate for diversity and a positive influence on my career).</p>
<p>This is the real privilege of having a long tenure and visible presence in our industry; it enables me to be the kind of &ldquo;influencer&rdquo; that makes me truly proud, someone who can create great opportunities for great people and play my part in ensuring they are recognised for their success.</p>
<p>So, here I am&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;using my voice and the platform generously gifted to me by the SIA to speak up and ask my fellow&nbsp;<em>Top 100 European Influencer</em>s, and anyone else that reads this blog, to nominate at least one female for the list next year.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Nobody wants a &ldquo;free pass&rdquo;. Let everyone be judged on merit and achievement, but let&rsquo;s take accountability for helping the SIA to find our great women and hold them up as role models&hellip;because I am certain that there are more than 23 out there!</p>

Our CEO Claire Marsh was recently named as one of the Top 100 Influencers in the European Staffing Industry – something she took great pride in. But in a sector that has excellent female representation at many levels - why are there only 23 women on the list from the whole of Europe?

Influencing the Influencers: the 2019 SIA Top 100 European Influencers list

<p>Following our recent tech meetup &lsquo;What on Earth Does KPMG Know About DevOps?&rsquo;, we caught up with Ariane Gadd, Lead DevOps Engineer at KPMG, to find out a bit more about her career, the business, and what we can expect for the future of DevOps. If you missed out on the event, but would like to know more about a tech career at KPMG, please contact Sourcing Partner Calum McMahon via&nbsp;<a href="mailto:Calum.McMahon@kpmg.co.uk?subject=Tech%20careers%20at%20KPMG">Calum.McMahon@kpmg.co.uk</a>.</p>
<h3><strong>Tell me a little about yourself and your career. What drew you to DevOps?</strong></h3>
<p>I joined KPMG on the Technology Delivery Graduate Scheme. During the scheme, I was approached to join the Infrastructure Team as one of KPMG&rsquo;s first DevOps engineers. I started out in a team of just three, where I was given a lot of investment to develop my skills and support to learn on the job.</p>
<p>Four and a half years later, our team sits at over 100 and I&rsquo;m responsible for leading my own team to deliver some of KPMG&rsquo;s most exciting DevOps projects. I&rsquo;m currently leading a team on a big migration for one of our clients, which I&rsquo;m really enjoying.</p>
<h3><strong>So, you joined KPMG on their graduate scheme and have been with the business ever since. What attracted you to the company, and what keeps you there?</strong></h3>
<p>One of the things that I really like about working in DevOps at KPMG is the variety. We have access to such a range of projects here, so there&rsquo;s always the opportunity to learn and develop your skillset. I work with different developers and different tools, and I have the independence to choose which I use when. To an extent, that means you can shape your development.<br><br>If I think a new tool will help me with a project, I have the scope to go out and learn about it in a safe environment where someone else can probably field any questions I have. We&rsquo;re constantly learning from the work we do and from each other, but there&rsquo;s also the opportunity to develop formally through courses. All of our certifications are paid for and we can apply to go on any course that is relevant to our work.</p>
<p>Beyond that, one of the things that keeps me there is the culture and, in particular, the team I work in. It&rsquo;s a really collaborative, fun environment with great leadership. Everything is flexible, from the hours you work to the tools and methodologies you use. And we&rsquo;re encouraged to share knowledge, to seek help from each other, and to work together.<br><br>It&rsquo;s the sort of environment you might expect to see in a start-up rather than an international accountancy firm like KPMG. For me, there&rsquo;s something quite unique about it &ndash; on the one hand, you have this huge business with all these impressive clients and their diverse challenges; on the other, you have this very intimate, autonomous, and collaborative way of working. It&rsquo;s the best of both worlds.</p>
<h3><strong>What should everyone in DevOps be looking at right now? What trends do you think will shape the industry in the coming years?</strong></h3>
<p>I&rsquo;m particularly interested in the future of Cloud in DevOps, and how we&rsquo;ll make use of the managed infrastructure that the big Cloud providers are offering. Using Cloud in this way will also enable us to harness Big Data, AI, and ML. At KPMG, we optimise Cloud in all of our offerings &ndash; for example, we use server-less technology and managed infrastructure, and we&rsquo;ve also been using Data Lakes and Machine Learning to deliver competitive edge.</p>
<p>Beyond Cloud, I&rsquo;m also interested in how the automation of security tools will affect DevOps in the coming years. Security is an important part of DevOps &ndash; hence the emergence of DevSecOps &ndash; and automating security tools will make measuring and responding to security incidents far easier.</p>
<p>At KPMG, we have our own DevSecOps team because we have to think carefully about controls for the client, and we automate as much as possible as a result. I&rsquo;ve also been given the opportunity to expand my security knowledge, which has been great from a career development perspective.</p>
<h3><strong>What are the biggest challenges DevOps as a practice faces?</strong></h3>
<p>It can be challenging to get clients to fully embrace a DevOps culture. There are so many benefits to delivering this way &ndash; cost, delivery, performance, resilience, speed, scalability &ndash; but clients can be reluctant to adopt the methodology if they don&rsquo;t understand all of the facts. Part of our role as a partner is to show clients just how DevOps can revolutionise how they do business &ndash; and to take them on that transformative journey.</p>
<p>As a methodology, one challenge that DevOps sometimes faces is ensuring that security measures are embedded from the beginning. We work closely with the DevSecOps team to make security a core part of our delivery, and they have full visibility and controls for what we do. We use a lot of automation, such as automating controls and alerting, to make the process as collaborative as possible.</p>
<h3><strong>You were recently nominated for &lsquo;Most Influential Women in UK Tech&rsquo; by ComputerWeekly.com. What advice do you have for women wanting to follow in your footsteps?</strong></h3>
<p>For anyone, my advice would be to be passionate about DevOps, to read up on it, and to become a DevOps evangelist. Learn as much as you can, and contribute too, by going to networks, conferences, and meet-ups &ndash; some of my favourites are the AWS Summit, Women in DevOps, and ones for specific tools such as the Google Cloud Summit.</p>
<p>For women specifically, I think it&rsquo;s important to have confidence in your capabilities. So many women question themselves, but lack of confidence doesn&rsquo;t show lack of competence. It also doesn&rsquo;t matter if you don&rsquo;t know everything, or if you make mistakes, as long as you try and learn from it. I&rsquo;ve found that the more open you are to being helped, and to helping others, the easier it is to work to DevOps.</p>
<h3><strong>Who has influenced your career in DevOps over the years?</strong></h3>
<p>Our management team, particularly Chris Astley (Director, Cloud Practice Lead at KPMG UK) and Alan Richards, has been a big source of support for me over the years. Chris approached me on the Graduate Scheme about joining his (newly built) team to do DevOps. At the time, I had no prior experience or knowledge of DevOps and it felt like quite a big step for me.</p>
<p>I would have really struggled to make that leap if it hadn&rsquo;t been for the team&rsquo;s support and encouragement. They gave me the autonomy and the freedom to learn practically, as well as investing in formal training. Being able to learn on the job and the space to learn from your mistakes is so important in a technical role.</p>
<h3><strong>What does the future of DevOps look like at KPMG? Are you working on any exciting projects at the moment?</strong></h3>
<p>We&rsquo;ve been doing more with analytics and Big Data recently, as well as ML. We&rsquo;ve also been working on some big, and quite complex, migrations and transformations to the Cloud for our client base. A lot of big businesses still have their data centres on premise, so translating that all to the Cloud can be a good challenge.</p>
<p>We&rsquo;re lucky because the challenges we often get to take on are quite unique &ndash; for example, we were once involved in building a custom solution that hosted customer data for a large international bank, which at the time was the first of its kind!</p>
<p><em><strong>Interested in finding out more about a career at KPMG, or in DevOps? Please get in touch with&nbsp;<a id="DevOps jobs at KPMG" href="mailto:Calum.McMahon@kpmg.co.uk." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Calum.McMahon@kpmg.co.uk.</a></strong></em></p>

Following our recent DevOps tech meetup in our London office, we caught up with Ariane Gadd, Lead DevOps Engineer at KPMG, to find out a bit more about her career, the business, and what we can expect for the future of DevOps.

Q&A with Ariane Gadd, Lead DevOps Engineer at KPMG

<p>Senior recruitment business partner Sam Blinman has spent the last three years helping some of our largest clients find the right technology talent. He shares his thoughts on the employment market today, plus his Lorien highlights to date.</p>
<h3><strong>1)&nbsp; Tell us about your role at Lorien</strong></h3>
<p>I joined in September 2016 as a recruitment business partner. I have worked on a number of our key client accounts, including one of the world&rsquo;s fastest growing money transfer services. Currently, I help look after permanent technology recruitment at one of the top professional services firms. I predominantly look after two main areas &ndash; Management Consultant &amp; Solutions, and Digital.</p>
<h3><strong>2) What&rsquo;s the state of the technology market at the moment from a hiring perspective?</strong></h3>
<p>There&rsquo;s no doubt the market is extremely candidate-centric. When it comes to specialised technology positions, there is a deficit. Therefore, the search for talent is tough and it has to be a collaborative process between all the stakeholders &ndash; companies and recruitment partners. Throughout my career, I&rsquo;ve always looked to put the candidates first and look at ways to create a great experience for them. When you&rsquo;re operating in a landscape where there&rsquo;s a talent deficit, this becomes even more important.</p>
<h3><strong>3) What else would you like to see being done to combat this talent deficit?</strong></h3>
<p>From a bigger picture point of view, there needs to be a focus on getting more people into technology from a young age, by working with education providers. There also needs to be a strong push on diversity. Widening the talent pool not only helps businesses attract more technology talent, but also means they will also reflect the wider community in the way they want to.</p>
<p>For example, research indicates that females only make up 17% of the technology profession. This is definitely something which can be improved &ndash; even simple things like producing gender diverse job descriptions and using growth mind-set language can have a massive impact.</p>
<h3><strong>4) What have been your highlights during your time at Lorien?</strong></h3>
<p>I would say my biggest highlight was completing our Virtuoso training programme, which is a scheme to develop and nurture future leaders. It has been, by far, the best training I have received in my career. The tools and methods I was taught have resulted in a huge, positive shift in my personal mind-set.</p>
<p>As a result of this, I had my most successful year in recruitment last year, and won an award at our annual conference.</p>
<p>I was also part of the Lorien mentorship scheme, which helped develop in areas I had identified. I&rsquo;m a big believer that everybody can improve if they are willing to ask for advice, no matter what stage of your career you&rsquo;re at.</p>
<h3><strong>5) What advice would you give to anybody looking to get into recruitment?</strong></h3>
<p>I&rsquo;ll admit that I didn&rsquo;t grow up with aspirations of working in recruitment (I assumed I was guaranteed a career as a professional rugby player!). However, looking back at my career, I can&rsquo;t imagine working in any other industry.</p>
<p>I would say that if you enjoy a challenge, like working with people, and want a career where you can see benefits from the start &ndash;&nbsp;then working in recruitment is a no-brainer.</p>

Sam Blinman has spent the last three years helping some of our largest clients find the right technology talent. He shares his thoughts on the employment market today, plus his Lorien highlights to date.

Meet the team: Sam Blinman, Senior Recruitment Business Partner

<p>An industry veteran, Darren has over ten years of experience designing and delivering agile permanent and contract recruitment solutions for the Northern market. Darren has acted in both operational and strategic roles at Lorien, including as Regional Director for Manchester, where he led a team of experienced tech recruiters, account managers, and recruitment business partners. At the beginning of 2019, Darren was appointed to the role of Business Solutions Director, where he is responsible for building innovative best practice recruitment models, plus developing our service offering for our clients.</p>
<h3><strong>How did you get into recruitment?</strong></h3>
<p>Like many people, you could say I &lsquo;fell&rsquo; into it. After graduating from university I struggled to find my niche. I was working in a call centre upgrading mobile phones when it hit me that if I didn&rsquo;t act soon, I might run out of prospects. I applied for Lorien &ndash; a recruitment business that looked like it was doing something a little different in the market place. And after seven interviews and an initial rejection (it was a tough process), I finally made it past the ochre gates. It&rsquo;s been an amazing journey ever since.</p>
<h3><strong>What&rsquo;s the thing that gets you up in the morning?</strong></h3>
<p>It sounds really cheesy, but I&rsquo;m really passionate about making recruitment &lsquo;better&rsquo;. I get really frustrated by imperfection, so I&rsquo;m always striving for a better way to do things. I speak to candidates and clients on a daily basis, so I&rsquo;m always making mental notes for how we can improve their experience and help them to engage better. I&rsquo;m also part of Lorien&rsquo;s innovation team, so I&rsquo;m always learning about what&rsquo;s new in the market. I get my energy from fixing problems, no matter how small or significant. In my new role, this is something I&rsquo;m going to be doing more and more of, so I&rsquo;m very excited to see the impact that Lorien can have on the industry!</p>
<h3><strong>What&rsquo;s the Manchester office like?</strong></h3>
<p>I know it&rsquo;s a clich&eacute;, but we are just like a big family. Our attrition rate is so low that I&rsquo;ve worked with the same faces for many years and, as a result, we all know each other really well &ndash; including how to support each other, get the best from each person, and (naturally) wind each other up! We&rsquo;ve more than doubled in size over the last five years, and throughout that time we have never had to hire anyone above entry-level. For me, that&rsquo;s a huge achievement. Starting out as a resourcer with Lorien myself, it gives me enormous satisfaction to bring people in and play a part in their development as they progress their career with us.</p>
<p>As an office, we&rsquo;re very diverse and reflective of Manchester as a whole. We don&rsquo;t do hierarchy, so everyone pitches in and it&rsquo;s created a culture where everyone is aware of their part in the bigger picture and is committed to bringing their best to the table &ndash; not just for them, but for their teammates too. Everyone is a strong performer and I&rsquo;m incredibly proud of all of them. I think it says something about our people that, even as we&rsquo;ve grown, we&rsquo;ve managed to retain such a powerful culture; one that undoubtedly enabled our growth in the first place.</p>
<h3><strong>What&rsquo;s the biggest challenge you think clients in the North face?</strong></h3>
<p>Candidate attraction is probably the biggest sticking point. We develop a lot of talent in the region, but for some reason we still have some leakage down to the capital. My gut instinct on this is that the tech community is good at talking about opportunities in the North at a certain level, but at entry-level candidates still aren&rsquo;t aware of the amount of opportunity we have here. I like to think that&rsquo;s on the turn though; as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/en/new-blog/its-grim-up-north-so-why-are-so-many-startups-bedding-down-there" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more and more companies move up North and start-ups grow</a>, opportunities will develop and that naturally attracts talent.</p>
<h3><strong>How has Manchester&rsquo;s tech landscape changed over the last five years?</strong></h3>
<p>Something really exciting about Manchester&rsquo;s scene at the moment is the number of new businesses springing up every day. We have a real start-up hub here in the city, which has created an eco-system of organisations of completely varying sizes operating and helping each other all within the same space. This has led to a vast amount of innovation and exploration into new and emerging technologies. I think Manchester is rapidly developing into a centre for change, all built from a strong and collaborative tech community.</p>
<p>It wouldn&rsquo;t surprise me if we start seeing some major breakthroughs coming out of the North in the coming years. In response to this, I&rsquo;ve also started designing some alternative and potentially revolutionary recruitment models that fit with this thriving community &ndash; I believe that a region at pace needs an agile model, and this is something I&rsquo;m really keen to bring to market. So watch this space!</p>
<h3><strong>What future developments in the recruitment industry are you most excited about?</strong></h3>
<p>I&rsquo;m really excited to see how developments in AI change how we interact with our clients and candidates. In my opinion, for too long clients have measured candidates based on rigid criteria, with limited results. New assessment technology could change all of that. Tools that support cultural alignment matching and psychological assessment will give clients a better understanding of a candidate&rsquo;s ability than previous experience does.</p>
<p>This will be invaluable for long-term talent retention; we already know that with each generation, the job market is becoming more fluid and people are staying in roles for less and less time. Being able to match candidates to opportunities that will genuinely resonate with them and will maximise their skillset will become so important.</p>
<p>There&rsquo;s a chance this may have a knock-on effect for candidates too, as clients start to build custom teams around broader skillsets matched to a candidate&rsquo;s innate aptitude. For candidates, this means greater job satisfaction and better development opportunities.</p>
<h3><strong>What do you think we will be nostalgic for, 50 years from now?</strong></h3>
<p>Talking to people! I&rsquo;m constantly amazed by the things technology enables us to do, but at the end of the day I really don&rsquo;t think you can replace human interaction with technology. One is great for driving efficiency, the other for building relationships and getting a deeper understanding of what&rsquo;s important to that person. You need to know when to utilise which.</p>
<h3><strong>What&rsquo;s the best thing about working at Lorien?</strong></h3>
<p>For me, it&rsquo;s about the ownership and the level of trust you are given in order to do the best by your clients and your candidates. There is nothing dictated to you other than to ensure that those two parties are happy. That kind of freedom breeds new ways of working, helps to identify efficiencies, and drives quality. We&rsquo;re not a static business and improvement is driven from the ground-up as well as the top-down, so we&rsquo;re more attuned to our people and to the clients and candidates we work with. It&rsquo;s kept me here for ten years, so it must be doing something right!</p>
<p>Interested in finding more about Lorien&rsquo;s Manchester operations? Contact&nbsp;<a href="mailto:Darren.Topping@Lorien.co.uk">Darren Topping</a>&nbsp;to find out more about the Manchester market and how Lorien is helping our clients to attract better local tech talent. Alternatively, get in touch with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lorienglobal.com/insights/Nigel.Bigger@Lorien.co.uk">Nigel Bigger</a>&nbsp;to find out more about career opportunities with Lorien (we have offices in the UK, Ireland, and Germany).</p>

Join us as we sit down with Darren to reflect on his 10 years of experience designing and delivering agile perm and contract recruitment solutions for the Northern market.

Q&A with Darren Topping, Business Solutions Director – Manchester

<p>In honour of International Women&rsquo;s Day on Friday, we&rsquo;re profiling some of our most talented women each day this week. Next up is our Jenna Finnie, one of our Scottish superstars. She tells us about her journey from the back office to recruiting for one of the largest banks in the UK.</p>
<h3><strong>Tell us about your journey so far at Lorien</strong></h3>
<p>I joined Lorien seven years ago. I was initially working in the Pre-Employment Screening team; I loved this role and it really built up my confidence. That was a big help when a year later I became a Resourcer. Our team provides IT and Digital contractors to one of the largest banks in the UK so it was a demanding role, but really fun!</p>
<p>I later took the leap into account management which, again, was a massive learning curve. But I was lucky enough to have a supportive team around me for help.</p>
<h3><strong>What have been some of your highlights since joining?</strong></h3>
<p>Where do I start? Every year we have an annual company-wide conference, which is the best day of the year! At one of them, I won&nbsp;<em>Resourcer of the Year</em>. But the best award was when we won&nbsp;<em>Team of the Year</em>. We&rsquo;re all very close and it&rsquo;s the best feeling winning something together.</p>
<p>I have also been lucky enough to attend our incentive trips abroad &ndash; this was an amazing experience, especially watching a couple of our directors sing a duet of<em>&nbsp;Ice, Ice Baby</em>!</p>
<h3><strong>What type of support has Lorien provided to you during your time here?</strong></h3>
<p>I have been really lucky with the support of my managers, who helped me make the jump into account management. I learn a lot on the job, especially as client needs can change regularly. But I always have the support of management and the team around me. I think it&rsquo;s really important to be comfortable speaking to the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and asking for their advice.</p>
<h3><strong>Do you have any advice for women looking to get into recruitment?</strong></h3>
<p>Work hard and, most importantly, enjoy yourself! You spend so much time at work, so pick an environment where you are comfortable. I would also say have a look at the number of women at any companies you are applying to, as that can be a good example. We&rsquo;re lucky at Lorien that we have the CEO Claire Marsh as the biggest example; she rose from Resourcer to where she is now, so I look up to her.</p>
<h3><strong>What do you enjoy most about working here?</strong></h3>
<p>I know everyone says this&hellip; but 100% the people. I really do think I am very lucky, as I work with the best people and I consider them all great friends.</p>
<p>It also helps coming to work in a funky new office!&nbsp;</p>

In honour of International Women’s Day on Friday, we’re profiling some of our most talented women each day this week. Next up is our Jenna Finnie, one of our Scottish superstars. She tells us about her journey from the back office to recruiting for one of the largest banks in the UK.

Meet the team: Jenna Finnie, Account Manager

<p>In honour of International Women&rsquo;s Day on Friday, we&rsquo;re profiling some of our most talented women each day this week. Here&rsquo;s Hayley Klaff, our Recruitment Solutions Manager. She also heads up our Diversity &amp; Inclusion group and tells us why this is one of her career highlights.</p>
<h3><strong>Tell us about your journey so far at Lorien</strong></h3>
<p>I joined Lorien in April 2016 from our sister company Guidant Global and joined for an initial 6-month contract to implement a new customer.&nbsp; Following on from that I was moved into another project for our largest customer to implement a new software platform and service roll-out. I was then made permanent and took on the role of Business Solutions Manager which involves managing all our client projects, supply chain, and Vendor Management systems. Outside of my daily role, I have introduced into our business a mentoring scheme and I also lead our Diversity &amp; Inclusion group, Cohesion.</p>
<h3><strong>What have been some of your highlights since joining?</strong></h3>
<p>Being nominated for the last two years at our annual conference for&nbsp;<em>Best Newcomer</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Support Person of The Year</em>&nbsp;was great.&nbsp; In addition, I&rsquo;ve loved seeing the roll-out of the mentoring scheme &ndash; we now have 25 mentoring partnerships working in our business and hopefully more to come.</p>
<p>Finally, seeing how Cohesion has grown in our company and the initiatives we have rolled out. A personal favourite is that we now have five Mental Health First Aiders (MHFA) trained up in our business, which is a huge benefit to our employees.</p>
<h3><strong>What initiatives does Lorien run to encourage more women and diversity in general?</strong></h3>
<p>As a business, we are always looking at how we attract and retain talent at all levels and we have focused a lot on different diversity groups. We run ongoing initiatives to educate people and so they know they can bring their whole selves to our workplace. Through Cohesion, we have employee networks that focus on various diversity dimensions including Gender, Mental Health, BAME, LGBTQ+, Disability, Working Parents, Social Mobility, and Religion.</p>
<p>Also, with our CEO and a number of our Senior Leadership Team (SMT) being women, we lead from the top. It&rsquo;s great for anyone who starts in the business to see that gender doesn&rsquo;t stop you from being successful. I am also active in attending networking and industry events to be on top of what else we can do to make our company - and industry - fully inclusive.</p>
<h3><strong>Do you have any advice for women looking to get into recruitment?</strong></h3>
<p>Recruitment is a great industry no matter your gender or background.&nbsp; It has many different types of roles; you don&rsquo;t have to be a typical sales person. It is your skills and experience that will enable you to be a success.</p>
<p>Women sometimes look at a job description and think about what they &lsquo;can&rsquo;t do&rsquo;. I recommend you look at things differently and remember the skills and experience you have that could let you do the job, if given the responsibility.&nbsp; If you have outside commitments, don&rsquo;t feel that it will stop you being successful. We don&rsquo;t believe that you don&rsquo;t have to be in the office till 10pm every night, and you shouldn&rsquo;t either!</p>
<p>Most importantly &ndash; believe in yourself and know your own worth.</p>
<h3><strong>What do you enjoy most about working here?</strong></h3>
<p>The people and the culture. Everyone here is genuine and wants to do the best they can. We work in a collaborative way and people are allowed to look at things in a different way to get the best results. We are always looking for innovative ways to be the best we can be, and I like working for a company that is constantly striving for growth.</p>

Next up in our International Women's Day series is Hayley Klaff, who also heads up our Diversity & Inclusion group – which she considers to be a career highlight.

Meet the team: Hayley Klaff, Recruitment Solutions Manager

<p>In honour of International Women&rsquo;s Day on Friday, we&rsquo;re profiling some of our most talented women each day this week. First up is Lily Eva, who talks us through some of her highlights, and shares her tips for women wanting to get into recruitment.</p>
<h3><strong>Tell us about your journey so far at Lorien</strong></h3>
<p>I have been working for Lorien for a year now. I joined as a Resourcer and have since been placing people in various IT roles across the country, across multiple accounts.</p>
<h3><strong>What have been some of your highlights since joining?</strong></h3>
<p>A big highlight was placing somebody in a tough niche role at a multinational tech company a few months after joining. It was a contract position but the client liked the candidate so much that they offered him a permanent position after the interview. He was over the moon and so was I!</p>
<p>Another one of my highlights was reaching 100 deals which I achieved in under a year. That was a great feeling, as was winning a place on our quarterly incentive.</p>
<h3><strong>What type of support have Lorien provided to you during your time here?&nbsp;</strong></h3>
<p>When I started at Lorien I only had around 6 months experience in recruitment and I was quite nervous about getting back on the phones. My manager Josh was extremely supportive though and made things as easy as possible for me.</p>
<p>He and the business have also supported me in starting a REC Apprenticeship, to further my knowledge. There&rsquo;s a lot of studying involved but I&rsquo;m learning a lot.</p>
<h3><strong>Do you have any advice for women looking to get into recruitment?</strong></h3>
<p>I would say don&rsquo;t be put off by the stereotypes about recruitment being an &ldquo;alpha male&rdquo; environment. I think at most recruitment companies in general, those stereotypes aren&rsquo;t true and women are being given good opportunities.</p>
<p>If you&rsquo;re confident about what you can do and have the drive to achieve, you will succeed. The great thing about recruitment is that you&rsquo;re in charge of how well you do &ndash; the harder you work and the better your results are, the more successful you&rsquo;ll become.</p>
<p>So don&rsquo;t be put off by the negative stereotypes - if you want to achieve in recruitment then you can!</p>
<h3><strong>What do you enjoy most about working here?</strong></h3>
<p>I honestly enjoy coming into work every day. Across the floor everyone is extremely friendly and wants each other to be the best we can be. I have made some good friends since joining the team and it&rsquo;s also nice that our achievements are always recognised by senior members of staff.</p>

In honour of International Women’s Day on Friday, we’re profiling some of our most talented women each day this week. First up is Lily Eva, who talks us through some of her highlights, and shares her tips for women wanting to get into recruitment.

Meet the team: Lily Eva, Resourcer

<header class="l-section hero-section hero-section-blog">
<div class="l-container">&nbsp;</div>
</header>
<div class="blog-article-body">
<h3><strong>1. How did your recruitment journey start?<br></strong></h3>
<p>My journey started at the age of 18. I&rsquo;d just finished college and didn&rsquo;t know what I wanted to do or where to even start looking. Lorien gave me the opportunity to do two weeks of work experience, to give me an introduction to the &lsquo;real world&rsquo;. In September of that year, I received a personal message from the MD David Gettins asking if I&rsquo;d like to interview for a Resourcer position. Lorien took a chance by taking me on which I really appreciate, and I haven&rsquo;t looked back since! I am now Account Manager across some of our largest clients, both in the UK and Dublin.</p>
<h3><strong>2. What have been your proudest achievements at Lorien?</strong></h3>
<h3>There are quite a few that stand out to me, but something I&rsquo;m particularly proud of is growing one of our Dublin accounts from scratch. I look at where I started when, quite frankly, I knew nothing about recruitment, and am amazed at how much I&rsquo;ve learnt and how far I&rsquo;ve come. I am now a lot more prepared to take on new challenges, such as recruiting outside of the UK, and am really pleased with how that account has developed.<br><br><strong>3.&nbsp;What sort of support have Lorien provided to you?</strong></h3>
<h3>Within my first week, I was trained on how to use our CRM system, how to write job adverts, and the end-to-end recruitment life cycle. The training sessions put on by the team here are always useful &ndash; they&rsquo;re easy to follow and you come away with a good understanding of how to reach the end goal.&nbsp;<br><br>Lorien also paid for me to become CertRP qualified. This helps prove to clients and candidates that you have a good understanding of recruitment standards. It was quite intensive but was definitely worth doing and I&rsquo;m grateful for Lorien&rsquo;s support.<br><br>Finally, just being able to sit with people and observe them was a massive help. There are some very experienced and talented people here and as long as you&rsquo;re willing to learn, there is every chance of being successful.<br><br><strong>4. What do you enjoy most about working at Lorien?</strong></h3>
<p>This is a simple answer for me &ndash; the people. At the end of the day you spend more time at work than anywhere else, so you need to be happy with the people you spend that time with.<br><br>There&rsquo;s always a buzz in the office, everyone&rsquo;s approachable, and there&rsquo;s a good social aspect to working here, which is needed in what can be a very stressful industry!</p>
<h3><strong>5.&nbsp;</strong><strong>What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into recruitment?</strong></h3>
<p>Be a sponge and take in everything around you. You never stop learning in this job &ndash; even when you think you&rsquo;ve mastered it, the unexpected is around the corner!</p>
<p>If you're interested in working for Lorien, please check our vacancies <a href="../../../../../../join-lorien">here</a> or <a href="../../../../../../contact-us">contact us.</a></p>
</div>

A career in recruitment at Lorien offers progression opportunities - read more about Henry's journey, and maybe you'll be inspired to join our team.

Account Manager Henry Wilson tells us about his journey and how he climbed the Lorien ladder

<article>FINkit has recently been awarded a grant from the Welsh government to support the development of FINkit, a cloud-based platform that enables financial services organisations and banks to transform and accelerate the delivery of their digital services to customers. This includes the expansion of FINkit&rsquo;s existing team in Nantgarw, Wales (on the outskirts of Cardiff). We caught up with Anouska Streets, Head of Engineering, to find out how the team is growing and what the future has in store for FINkit.</article>
<article></article>
<article>Hi Anouska, thank you for taking some time out to join us today.</article>
<p>Thanks for having me!</p>
<h3>1. You&rsquo;ve had quite an interesting career. Can you tell us a bit about how you got into engineering and software development?</h3>
<p>It all started when my school got its first BBC Micro in 1984. The BBC Micro was part of the BBC&rsquo;s initiative to improve computer literacy in the UK and get the next generation interested in programming by providing these computers to every school in the country &ndash; and in my case, it worked. I was so interested in it, in fact, that the following year my parents bought me a Commodore 64 for Christmas. I started coding and that carried on throughout school and then onto university where I studied Computer Science. I&rsquo;ve now been doing it for 20 years so I think I have the BBC to thank for that!</p>
<h3>2. We hear a lot nowadays about encouraging women in STEM. What would be your advice for someone looking to follow in your footsteps?</h3>
<p>Honestly, if you&rsquo;re interested in it, get involved! There are meet-ups all over the country where you can talk to like-minded people and universities in particular have some great social events for women in tech. There&rsquo;s some really good meet-ups in Cardiff that I&rsquo;ve been to like Equal Experts &ndash; who provide UK-wide networking events on a range of different subjects &ndash; and the South Wales Agile Group meetup &ndash; who have monthly meetings on Agile best practice. I would also recommend getting as much industry experience as possible, be that work experience, apprenticeships or placements. I spent my third year at university on an industry placement at British Steel and the practical experience you get is invaluable &ndash; at the end of the day, university can only teach you so much. That real life understanding around enterprise application development is something that employers look for too; it can really help you to stand out from the crowd.</p>
<h3>3. You&rsquo;ve been the Head of Engineering at FINkit for almost a year now; what things are you most excited about bringing to the market and where do you see the industry going in the future?</h3>
<p>I think it&rsquo;s a really exciting time to be in the financial industry &ndash; previously, it&rsquo;s been quite a tricky sector to innovate in because of how heavily regulated it is but that&rsquo;s changing as more SMEs and start-ups enter the mix. The competition is far more reactive and far more creative than anything we&rsquo;ve seen before and that means that banking and financial institutions are having to act quickly too. This is where we see FINkit coming in. The platform allows financial organisations to think more deeply about what their customers want and to get their products out quickly and safely &ndash; meaning more innovation in shorter timescales and still without the risk. I think for me, I&rsquo;m most excited about refining that platform so that it continues to evolve with our client&rsquo;s needs &ndash; needs that are, in many ways, very difficult to predict at the pace we&rsquo;re going!&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>
<h3>4. Tell us a little bit about your career at FINkit. We understand that this isn&rsquo;t your first time working for the company, having worked for Monitise back in 2011. What made you return?</h3>
<p>When I left about two and a half years ago, it was a completely different business. We were using a legacy platform and weren&rsquo;t really matching the pace of the market and that has completely changed. FINkit as a business went through a huge transformation process, building the business from the ground-up again to focus on bringing out products that are innovative and serve our clients in a way that no one else in the market can. I know it sounds cheesy, but it&rsquo;s actually my dream job, being that close to the cutting-edge and getting to be a driving force in it too, in the way that everyone at FINkit is.</p>
<h3>5. How do you think FINkit stands out from the crowd? What makes you different to work for?</h3>
<p>From a purely technical perspective, there isn&rsquo;t really anyone like us out there. We&rsquo;ve moved completely away from a legacy, monolithic service to a cloud native, microservices architecture. We embrace DevOps culture and ways of working with a fully automated continuous delivery pipeline. We release into production many times every day.</p>
<p>From a cultural perspective, we&rsquo;re all very easy going and friendly people. I really enjoy coming to work every day because I genuinely get on with my team and I think for some people that can be quite an unusual thing. We work hard but we also have fun together; we regularly get together outside of work and I think that helps when you&rsquo;re back in the office because it means that you know each other on a personal basis and can work together more effectively. When you&rsquo;re working in the way that we do &ndash; multi-disciplinary and collaboratively &ndash; it&rsquo;s a huge advantage being able to understand other people&rsquo;s perspective. I believe that it&rsquo;s because of how we work, the people that we are and how we work together, that we&rsquo;re able to come up with some of the solutions that we do. If you&rsquo;re the sort of person who likes to be kept on their toes and to be part of something bigger, we&rsquo;re a great company to work for.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>
<h3>6. Which tech stack do you use, and why?</h3>
<p>FINkit services are built using Spring Boot and Java running in the Cloud Foundry elastic runtime. We also develop extensive tooling to support our automated build pipeline and operate all of our infrastructure as code. As a result we are also heavy users of tools like Ansible and Bosh.</p>
<h3>7. Tell us a bit about the team. How does the development team work? How do you think the team differs to others you&rsquo;ve worked in previously?</h3>
<p>I&rsquo;m very lucky to work in the team that I do &ndash; they are genuinely some of the most switched-on, intelligent and talented people that I have worked with in the last twenty years &ndash; and I don&rsquo;t say that lightly! We&rsquo;re all very driven by learning and collaboration which I think makes for a really unique team dynamic. We&rsquo;re constantly learning from and challenging each other, which often results in some really interesting developments and ideas.</p>
<p>Structurally, we&rsquo;re made up of a team in Nantgarw in South Wales (near Cardiff) which we&rsquo;re currently expanding and a team in Istanbul. We work cross-functionally to deliver workstreams and the teams work quite autonomously &ndash; they&rsquo;re expected to get from A to B, but how they get there is entirely up to them. I think one of the best things about the team is how we all work together. Everyone is encouraged to contribute and everyone is expected to collaborate; it&rsquo;s very much an open forum.</p>
<h3>8. Cardiff is becoming a bit of a hub for talent in the digital and tech sector, with FINkit recently awarded a government grant to boost innovation and investment in South Wales. How are you looking to expand the team to support this drive?</h3>
<p>Our priority this year is to expand the team in Nantgarw so that we can accelerate the development of the FINkit platform, get it running at optimum capability and get it into the hands of our customers. We&rsquo;ve recently been acquired by Fiserv and one of their aims is for us to start delivering this one-of-a-kind toolkit, so we&rsquo;ll be pouring a lot of investment into finding the people that can help us achieve this. We&rsquo;ll be looking for a mix of disciplines to get that holistic view I mentioned earlier &ndash; so developers, architects, operations, Java specialists etc.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s true that the tech industry in Cardiff and South Wales is incredibly buoyant: there&rsquo;s a very stable talent pool here and some excellent universities that are constantly adding to it, so we&rsquo;re very confident that we&rsquo;ll be able to find the talent we need to make the platform a success. Being awarded the government grant I think just goes to show how much store is placed in that talent pool, so yes &ndash; we&rsquo;re very excited.</p>
<h3>9. What&rsquo;s the best tech joke you know?</h3>
<p><em>Q:&nbsp;</em>What&rsquo;s got feathers and says &lsquo;pieces of seven, pieces of seven&rsquo;?<br><em>A:&nbsp;</em>A parroty error</p>
<p>I think that&rsquo;s my best one &ndash; I have a lot to choose from though (and some more appropriate than others!)</p>
<h3>10. Well it sounds like there&rsquo;s a lot of exciting things happening at FINkit at the moment! One last question: how can our readers keep up to date with opportunities and what&rsquo;s going on in the industry?</h3>
<p>There&rsquo;s so much out there that sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming I think, so my tip would be to pin down the subjects that interest you the most and do some research on key voices online and offline. They are all pretty prolific on Twitter, so I would say that&rsquo;s a good way to build your network, but you can also find articles, podcasts via Pivotal and Google Platform and blogs if that&rsquo;s not your thing. Some of my favourites include Jez Humble and Chris Skinner who are quite entertaining as well as informed. Breaking Banks is also a great site to visit, with guest speakers and articles from some of the leading names in FinTech.</p>
<p>To keep up with what&rsquo;s going on at FINkit you can follow us on Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/finkit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@FINkit</a>, but more importantly, you can follow the FINkit team:&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/gonickwhite" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@GoNickWhite</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/AnnaB_Tech" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@AnnaB_Tech</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/LouisaFreestone" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@LouisaFreestone</a>&nbsp;and myself (<a href="https://twitter.com/AnouskaStreets" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@AnouskaStreets</a>). For future job opportunities, follow our recruitment partner&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ThisisLorien" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lorien</a> (details below). We&rsquo;re expecting a very busy year, especially in Cardiff and South Wales, so I can guarantee there will be lots to catch up on.</p>

A growing team, a government grant and a dream career: we talk to Anouska Streets about working at FINkit and how South Wales is set to become the hub for FinTech’s latest innovation

The Future at FINkit Q&A with Anouska Streets

<article class="blog-article">
<h3>1. Hi Anna, thank you very much for making the time to talk with us today,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-bennett-4251b54?authType=NAME_SEARCH&amp;authToken=y_XQ&amp;locale=en_US&amp;trk=tyah&amp;trkInfo=clickedVertical:mynetwork,clickedEntityId:12430109,authType:NAME_SEARCH,idx:1-1-1,tarId:1483968560727,tas:anna" target="_blank" rel="noopener">you have a highly successful career in the tech industry</a>, what inspired you to select IT as your sector of choice?</h3>
<p>If I&rsquo;m brutally honest, I didn&rsquo;t select IT so much as happily fell into it. Twenty plus years ago, technology wasn&rsquo;t so integral to our daily lives. I&rsquo;d been a music scholar and I really had very little to do with technology, apart from typing up essays and a few experiments in C++ programming with my Dad (my role-model geek!). When I decided &ndash; after qualifying - that a career in music wasn&rsquo;t what I wanted, I started to look for other things. I came across a job description &ndash; IT Sales &ndash; that sounded interesting and training was given, so I went for it and to my delight, I got the job. From the moment I walked through the door, I was enthralled with this new world I&rsquo;d discovered for myself, fully embracing my geek side and voluntarily putting myself through and passing IBM Systems Centre exams within a year. I never looked back; technology has been an integral part of me ever since.</p>
<h3>2. When you were a cloud focused Management Consultant, what were the most common challenges to true cloud adoption, and how did you overcome them?</h3>
<p class="blog-article-body">I started consulting in cloud when it was a cirrus (the highest altitude cloud) type notion and so very little of it was understood, compared to now. So the most challenging thing at the time was helping clients - who&rsquo;d engaged us to tell them more about how this &lsquo;new cloud thing&rsquo; could help with the efficiency of their business operations - understand the concepts that we take for granted today.Today, I see the challenges to true cloud adoption as legacy systems integration, complex wholescale migration and the resistance upheld by risk and security divisions who don&rsquo;t necessarily understand the wealth of security now deployed to keep data safe.In the heavily-regulated Financial Services industry, it has been hardest of all to overcome these issues, but the push from FinTech in delivering services very quickly and having the agility to update and change those services to meet consumer demand has now brought it firmly to the top of the agenda. Risk mitigation is the real key and bodies like the FCA stating last year that they support &ndash; and expect &ndash; banks moving to cloud-based service delivery has been transformational in changing attitudes.</p>
<h3 class="blog-article-body">3. You manage the Monitise FINkit Partner Programme, what is the selection process like? What companies have been introduced over the past 6 months?</h3>
The selection process is pretty tough going. We show clients that out of the huge number of FinTechs and Tech companies that we have considered for the programme, only a mere 13% make it through. The main criteria have been, of course, &ndash; compliance, relevance (to retail banking), delivery capability (is it something that can be used today?), longevity prospects (including funding), reliability and scalability. These are the sort of factors that, having worked with banks for over a decade, Monitise knows are of key importance.The Partner Programme has been underway since 2015 and our founding cohort was revealed in November, where we announced 14 partners across a broad range of services who, together with our FINkit platform capabilities, can help our banking clients to deliver the sort of innovation that customers expect, as well as the innovation remedies that the CMA has set for banks to achieve.</article>
<h3 class="blog-article">4. What have been the main challenges of retail banks&rsquo; adoption of FinTech to date, and how have you overcome them?</h3>
<article class="blog-article">The main problem that we hear repeated time-after-time from both the banks and the FinTech community is the &lsquo;square peg, round hole&rsquo; problem. Essentially a mismatch between the operating models of these big banks who have large legacy technology estates and who operate with caution and FinTechs who are nimble, agile and can utilise all of the latest technology without worrying about their non-archaic infrastructures. Add to that conundrum the problem of getting onto a bank&rsquo;s approved supplier list, which is nigh-on impossible when you are small. One small FinTech quoted having had a two year due diligence process with a European Retail Bank which nearly broke them, whilst another&nbsp; now very successful and larger-FinTech experienced a three year on-boarding with a large US Bank, which saw them have to apply for more funding just to complete the process without going bust. This is not how to collaborate!FINkit not only provides a platform for the integration of these capabilities, allowing banks to consume multiple services from a single integration point, but we&rsquo;ve also done the background due diligence and selection. Add to that the service capabilities and toolkit within FINkit and you can start to see how banks can now start to consume services as quickly as their own pace allows them to.</article>
<h3 class="blog-article">5. You have been known to say &lsquo;I love technology, I always have.&rsquo; What is exciting you the most in FinTech currently, and what do you think the retail banking UK FinTech landscape will look like in the next 3 years?</h3>
<article class="blog-article">I do love technology &ndash; you&rsquo;re quite right. From FinTech to MedTech, it&rsquo;s a truly fabulous place to have a career and by &lsquo;always&rsquo; I mean from the minute I entered the world of work. I&rsquo;ve been so lucky to have a career in this space, it&rsquo;s always exciting.There are many emerging trends in FinTech as you&rsquo;d expect, with the biggest being RegTech, AI/Machine Learning, the IoT and Blockchain/DLT.Obviously all of those technologies can and probably will be game-changing for the financial services sector, but my personal area of interest is the IoT, in the capacity that it offers for lifestyle change and making life simpler for us all. This will absolutely result in huge change in how people (and their &lsquo;things&rsquo;) interact with their bank and financial service providers, yet very little discussion goes on about it within the hallowed walls of banks. I foresee that changing fast and soon; it has toIn terms of what the landscape will look like in 3 years&rsquo; time &ndash; I think by then we will see a lot more &lsquo;fussy funding&rsquo; which is a pattern that started to emerge at the end of last year. Gone are the days where anyone calling themselves a FinTech could expect to have money throw at their door! I think we will also see a few more disruptors take off, but largely that FinTech will settle into a pattern of being collaborators. We&rsquo;ll have a proven model inside the next three years, with lots of examples of those FinTechs who have seen their business transformed in terms of client acquisition; by forging successful partnerships with banks. To date, these partnerships have been largely stuck in innovation labs. We&rsquo;re aiming to change that. Banks need it to change and FinTechs need it to change too!</article>
<h3 class="blog-article">6. You have said that in the future customers will experience &lsquo;ambient banking&rsquo;, are you seeing real steps towards this in the current banking climate? What do banks need to do to give customers the seamless digital experience they get with other companies, such as Amazon and Uber?</h3>
<article class="blog-article">The concept of ambient banking is really that it will merge into everyday activities and cease to be a separate &lsquo;thing&rsquo;. If banks are to play an ongoing part in their customers lives rather than transition to being &lsquo;dumb pipes&rsquo; then they need to work collaboratively with the surrounding technologies that will allow them to remain current and vital and become an integral part of many day-to-day activities that today they are not getting involved in. Travel is perhaps my favourite example of highlighting ambient banking. We all travel more than ever, yet card usage abroad (certainly by UK residents) is not high. What if your bank &ndash; like your mobile network - welcomed you to another country as soon as you arrived, told you that your card was clear for use and gave you the current exchange rate. Then offered you free and quick authenticated messaging from your app, the ability to chat to someone and get help immediately. If you lost your card abroad, helping you to get access to emergency cash. Rewarding you for using your card by giving you Avios points or money off a leading local restaurant chain. Notifying you that at your current rate of spending, you&rsquo;ll be 20% over budget by the time your holiday ends. That&rsquo;s ambient banking; relevance to what is happening to the customer right now and the delivery of services that help the customer as well as build loyal revenues for the bank.&nbsp;</article>
<h3 class="blog-article">7. What advice would you give to anyone looking for a career in financial technology?</h3>
<article class="blog-article">If you&rsquo;re young and just starting out then go and intern for a summer in a bank and see how things work behind the scenes - if you understand the challenges then you can understand how to help and make it better. If you&rsquo;re wondering how to make that happen &ndash; contact the people who regularly provide media commentary on behalf of the bank. Follow them, understand them and appeal to them with a great introductory letter or email, tell them what your aspirations are and how you feel you could learn greatly from the work that they are doing.I firmly believe that the future of FinTech lies largely, although not solely, in collaborating with banks. How are you going to come up with solutions if you've got no understanding of the problems? Being a retail banking consumer isn't usually enough - you need solid inside banking knowledge. From there, you can go your own entrepreneurial way and set up your own business, or you can go and work with a funded FinTech and get started that way.And if like me, you've moved on some time ago from your endless summer years, then go and enrol yourself in every webinar, seminar or trade show that you can find &ndash; there&rsquo;s normally something going on every day of the week. Sign up to FinTech newsletters, get yourself on Twitter, on LinkedIn and engage with the community. Once you understand FinTech, you can understand how your particular career background could be applied and what experience you can bring to help solve some of the challenges facing Financial Technology.Getting and staying informed is really the key in any tech field.</article>
<h3 class="blog-article">8. Your pioneering activities within the Monitise partner network were recognised by Innovative Finance, who named you in their <a href="http://www.fintech.finance/01-news/innovate-finance-publishes-women-in-fintech-2016-powerlist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Women in FinTech Powerlist 2016</a>. How important do you think recognition like this is to the continued growth and success of FinTech?</h3>
<article class="blog-article">I think this breaks down into two distinct areas. The Women In FinTech Powerlist aims to highlight and celebrate the role of women in a male-dominated industry. FinTech has a worse record than the rest of the financial and technology sectors for female leadership, with only 8% of top roles being occupied by women. Innovate Finance is committed to addressing this imbalance and I fully support and encourage their work in this area and I&rsquo;m honoured to be on the list. A lot of work goes into encouraging younger girls into STEM careers and yet they get disenfranchised when they look at their career potential by taking a quick straw poll on women reaching the top. This has to change and lists like the Innovate Finance one give younger women in technology-based careers hope and aspiration for the future, knowing it is possible.Secondly, recognition within the FinTech industry at a company level is incredibly useful for FinTechs. Nominations, Awards, FinTech delegations to other countries &ndash; these are all very important in highlighting your company&rsquo;s proposition and potential. It also helps in gaining interest from companies (such as banks) that can help grow customer acquisition numbers and in the early stages, in attaining and retaining funding. Good PR can never be underestimated.</article>
<h3 class="blog-article">9. What&rsquo;s next in terms of the key pieces of your partner network strategy for 2017?</h3>
<article class="blog-article">Firstly, making it real. Lots of companies set up marketplaces and partner programmes, but then the impetus dies and nothing much ends up happening. Not here! We&rsquo;ve on-boarded some relatively small FinTechs and now we need to show them that this is worth their while by achieving success with our banking clients. We are in advanced discussions with several clients and we&rsquo;ll be highlighting these wins when they happen.Secondly, my team and I are keeping an eye to the market, to changing customer whims and behaviour and to changing regulation &ndash; all of which dictate how a bank needs to evolve its services.&nbsp; We have carefully selected our first 14 partners to deliver services that are relevant for the next few years, but we are also busy evaluating new technologies such as AI/Machine Learning, Blockchain/DLT, RegTech and IoT. When any of these look like they can be quickly adopted to solve an existing retail banking problem, we will act swiftly and build the functionality into our partner network. We&rsquo;re already out there meeting with companies who show huge promise in these areas, so watch this space!</article>
<h3 class="blog-article">10. If you were to describe your career so far as the title of a novel, what would it be?</h3>
<article class="blog-article">Goodness, what a great but tough question; I love literature! I think, as I&rsquo;ve answered very honestly - and so it&rsquo;s already apparent - I started my career at &lsquo;Technology for Dummies&rsquo;. I then traversed through the &lsquo;War and Peace&rsquo; years with &lsquo;Great Expectations&rsquo;, but as a whole, I&rsquo;ll settle for &lsquo;Alice&rsquo;s Adventures in Wonderland&rsquo; because to me, technology is exactly that &ndash; ever evolving in delivering things that we all previously thought impossible and &lsquo;dream-like&rsquo; in vision.</article>
<h3 class="blog-article">11. If you were to design an app, what would it be and why?</h3>
<article class="blog-article">Given that I stand by my word, it would have to be the ultimate ambient banking app, with more than a nod to the IoT as my area of personal interest.Customers are frustrated by the experiences they get in other areas of technology not resonating with what is deliverable in banking and that needs to change. Banks are still in the ultimate position of trust as those who can deliver this, but that window of trust is closing as people &ndash; and in particular, millennials - start to put their trust in anyone who delivers a great and relevant experience. Let&rsquo;s act now!
<p>&nbsp;</p>
</article>

Lorien talks to Monitise’s Anna Bennett, Soon to be opening the London stock exchange as a part of International Women’s Day, about the future of Fintech

Anna Bennett Q&A

<h3><strong>1. Hi Chris, thanks for taking the time to talk to us today, your tech career is highly impressive, Silicon Valley is certainly different from Loughborough! How mapped out was your tech career for the 5 years following your graduation from Loughborough University?</strong></h3>
<p>Not at all really! Most of my friends at university went into formal graduate schemes with FTSE100 companies. I declined a position with one of them to take an entry level role at Rackspace instead. It was at the very start of their hyper-growth phase when they were still a start-up to hosting. What I missed out on in formal graduate programme structure, I made up for in opportunity and fun. It was a wild ride that actually lasted 9 years and saw me cover a wide number of roles and set me up for what I&rsquo;m doing now. I owe Rackspace a lot for the investment and opportunities they gave me when I was starting out.</p>
<h3><strong>2. What are your 3 stand-out memories from your fledgling tech career?</strong></h3>
<p>I am most proud of the work we&rsquo;re doing at Pearson building Platform as a Service capabilities for developers on an open source container platform. That has been a labour of love that myself and my team have taken from scratch to being a major part of Pearson&rsquo;s strategy going forward. I will also always remember the first time I spoke in front of a large audience, I did a cloud presentation at a Rackspace customer event that went really well and I&rsquo;ve never looked back! Finally, I always remember fondly the cool work I did with CERN and the IT team who process the data from the LHC particle accelerator. The joint research we presented on OpenStack really moved the community forward and to be part of their teams and see close hand their work at the time they discovered the Higgs Boson was a really special time for a nerd like me!</p>
<h3><strong>3. In your latest presentation at DevOps Enterprise Summit London &lsquo;16, where you presented &lsquo;Our Story of Building a Start-up to compete with ourselves&rsquo;, you mentioned you &ldquo;thought you were a technical person, but the more technical people you worked with the more you realised you weren&rsquo;t particularly technical and couldn&rsquo;t hold a candle to those people&rdquo;, how did this influence your career choices?</strong></h3>
<p>I realised 3 years or so ago that I wasn&rsquo;t a naturally gifted coder and what I took days to write, others could do in hours! But I realised that I had a lot to add in making the cool stuff engineers build accessible and understandable to the business so that they maximise the value from the thing that someone has created. In my role as a leader, I get to be creative and build strategies but ultimately, I exist to allow others to express themselves technically. I have learned to take great pride from building an environment where a team of engineers can do something incredible and take the deserved plaudits. I still like to keep my hand in though, just so I can toss my team a curve ball and remind them that I still have a rough idea what it is they are building!</p>
<h3><strong>4. You also mentioned you&rsquo;ve grown to love Silicon Valley, why is that?</strong></h3>
<p>I think I was referring to the TV Show! I&rsquo;ve worked closely with start-ups for a number of years in London, so some of the humour in the Sitcom really tapped into experiences I have had working in that exciting sector. There is an awesome start-up scene in the UK and I love how open source software communities bring the smallest and largest companies together to work on the same technology.</p>
<h3><strong>5. Why did you specifically choose the bubble analogy within your &lsquo;Disrupting the Enterprise&rsquo; piece?</strong></h3>
<p>I think the bubble idea works because you are somewhat insulated from the wider enterprise, but you can still look out and be heads up to what is going on around you. It&rsquo;s close to a silo, but a bit more deliberate&hellip; Our idea and ambition is still very embryonic and something so important but so new could get bumped around in the trade winds of a massive company, I wanted to make sure we protected what we were making so that it had the best possible chance of success.</p>
<h3><strong>6. At your presentation at DevOps Exchange London #DOXLON in 2015 your bio was: Reformed evangelist Ex-Racker and stealth sales-person Moved from vendor to customer world Now leading people at Pearson What would your bio be now?</strong></h3>
<p>I think a lot of that still holds true! I think I&rsquo;m more aware of the power that disruptive technology can wield in an enterprise and I think I&rsquo;ve had the chance to work with and lead much larger teams. So I might add &ldquo;Disruptor in Chief and Enabler of people smarter than me!&rdquo;.</p>
<h3><strong>7. Would you rather be known as a tech influencer or an exceptional leader?</strong></h3>
<p>I think an exceptional leader will influence technology, either directly or through the actions of the teams they lead. If you look at the influence someone like Jeff Bezos has had on technology - he&rsquo;s not recognised as being immensely technical, but he is one of the main contributors to the most seismic industry change in IT for the last 20 years! I&rsquo;d also like to think I would be known as a brave leader - sometimes the things we need to do aren&rsquo;t easy and they need someone to protect a group and take some headwinds for the long term benefits to reveal themselves.</p>
<h3><strong>8. How would you describe your efforts in creating a better, faster, smarter working environment for your teams as the title of a novel?</strong></h3>
<p>&ldquo;The Never-ending Story&rdquo;</p>
<h3><strong>9. What are the key benefits of operating a DevOps Methodology, to any business?</strong></h3>
<p>It ultimately is about delivering more value to the business through bringing products to market faster without impacting performance or stability, increasing the rate of innovation and getting new ideas and revenue opportunities into customers hands quickly, establishing fast feedback loops to developers.</p>
<h3><strong>10. Would you rather have a disruptor or a DevOps rock star join one of your teams tomorrow?</strong></h3>
<p>We work hard on our team dynamic to get the right blend of personalities. Our ideal team members have got the skills and experience in the technology we work with, but more importantly they are able to work in a social environment, justifying and sharing their own ideas and respectfully challenging others on their contributions.</p>
<h3><strong>11. There is and has been an abundance of stats and research around why women in tech&rsquo;s numbers are still declining, despite best efforts. If you could design the processes to entice more women into tech roles by ultimately make the processes better, faster and smarter: what would you do?</strong></h3>
<p>There&rsquo;s no silver bullet to this. I think ultimately more people need to talk about what is stopping us having a better distribution of race and gender in teams. I would concentrate on giving people the confidence to expect to have a conversation with a potential employer as a complete equal and on the flip side work closely with my existing team to ensure when we are given the opportunity to bring someone new to the team that we spend some time considering social norms we&rsquo;ve built up to ensure we&rsquo;re keeping the team approachable and inclusive. Everyone who works in technology needs to take responsibility for thinking about how they can improve the current balance, whether as a team member or a leader, we all have a part to play in making our industry a more balanced and inclusive place. I take that responsibility seriously and want to do all I can to help make sure this is an issue we keep on the agenda.</p>
<h3><strong>12. If you were to define your most significant &ldquo;water cooler&rdquo; moment what would it be?</strong></h3>
<p>Probably when I pressed the sparkling water button by accident&hellip; #firstworldproblems</p>
<h3><strong>13. Your 1st customer is now live on your platform initiative. Significantly, what&rsquo;s next?</strong></h3>
<p>The 2nd, 3rd and 4th customers! We also are in the process of enabling new regions so our customers can exploit the Platform to deploy their applications globally. We also want to drop the adoption barrier a little bit so future customers can self-migrate themselves and we can concentrate on writing more features.</p>
<h3><strong>14. If you were to design an app for the greater good, what would it be?</strong></h3>
<p>We&rsquo;re already enabling this kind of thing at Pearson! We&rsquo;re trying to provide digital education services to the world and democratising access to high-quality education to anyone with access to an internet connection. I love the impact we have on learners around the world every time we make headway on our work!</p>

Chris Jackson, Director of Cloud product Engineering at Pearson, talks to Lorien about his career in tech and how he adds value to his business

Lorien Q and A with Chris Jackson from Pearson

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<p>Your submission has been successfully submitted.</p><p>We will be in touch shortly!</p>

<h1>Candidate FAQ</h1>
<p>Are you a candidate and have a question for us? Check below for our frequently asked questions for our top candidate enquiries to streamline the job application process for all candidates. From application updates to locked accounts, you can find your answer here.</p>

<h2>Complaints Procedure Form</h2>
<p>Please fill out the form if you have any complaints.</p>

<h2>Do you work for Lorien?&nbsp;</h2>
<p><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">If you are a contractor working for Lorien and have a question about your assignment, payment or timesheet, then please contact the Ask team at <a href="mailto:ask@impellam.com">ask@impellam.com</a> or phone <a href="tel:03333 23 24 50">03333 23 24 50</a>.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>General Enquiries&nbsp;</h2>
<p><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">For General Enquiries, please contact the relevant branch below.</span></p>

<h3>Send Us Your CV/Resume</h3>
<p>With a strong focus on learning and development and a culture that encourages you to spread your wings, we&rsquo;re all about giving people the room to try new things and thrive in a role they really enjoy. Join somewhere you can be yourself, be your best, and be part of something special. Join Lorien today.</p>

<h5>Submit your CV/Resume</h5>
<p><span style="color: rgb(43, 42, 41); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As a fast-growing business, we have some big opportunities for the year ahead &ndash; will you join our journey?</span></p>

<h2>Get in Touch</h2>
<p>Are you looking for talent to transform your business? Or are you looking to take the next step in your tech career?</p>
<p>Whatever your ambition, we&rsquo;ve got the experience and expertise to get you there.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Register your resume and job preferences with our team to start your new career journey or search current vacancies.</p>
<p>We&rsquo;re more than happy to help with any questions.</p>

What are the benefits to Contract &amp; Permanent Recruitment?

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<p>A brief description of what we can help our clients achieve</p>

<h2>Get in Touch!</h2><p>Unresolved query? Let us help. Get in touch with the Lorien Contractor and Candidate Support Team to find answers quickly, from information on payments to how to submit your timesheets. No matter how big or small the question, no matter how new or experienced you are to the world of contracting, we'll do our best to give you up-to-date, informed, and helpful answers about working through Lorien as a contractor.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><h5>Our hotlines are:</h5>

<p>For all other enquiries, please complete our form or reach out to us on <span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">0<span style="color: black; background: white;">207 654 1000.</span></span></p>

<h2>Contractor Portal</h2><p>The Contractor Portal is your single repository for logging timesheets and raising invoices.</p>

<h2>Ask David - Lorien's Managing Director</h2>
<p>At Lorien, we put people first. Building trust through genuine, honest relationships is one of our core values and underpins everything we do. Ask David is all about resolving problems quickly, helpfully and at the source.</p>
<p>If you&rsquo;re a current contractor at Lorien with a question, concern or request, then get in touch with Lorien's Managing Director, David Gettins With more than 20 years&rsquo; experience in recruitment at all levels and operations, David can provide expert guidance and support on almost any recruitment-related subject (and if he can&rsquo;t, he&rsquo;ll put you in touch with someone who can).</p>

<h1>Contractors</h1><p>Your success is our priority. That’s why we’re here to support you every step of the way in your contract career. We want to make sure we really get to know you and your goals - so you'll be appointed a dedicated tech recruitment specialist to find the contract opportunities suited to you. Learn more about how to kick-start your new contract career.</p>

<h2>Our CSR Partners</h2><p>We’re determined to build a better future for everyone. In 2022 Lorien, alongside sister brands SRG and Carbon60, appointed Chris Blackburn as our Head of CSR. Chris is helping us find ways to give back to our local community and to solve key issues our world faces – such as STEM skill shortages, equal opportunities, and access to resources.&nbsp;</p><p>We’re working with a number of partners to help us achieve this, including MAMA.codes, Lucy Air Ambulance for Children and TechGirls. Find out more about these amazing businesses and charities below.</p>

<p>For all other enquiries, please complete our form or reach out to us on <a href="tel:02039109446" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">02039109446</a>.</p>

<p>We believe in supporting the STEM industry to tackle the skills shortage, creating equal opportunities and access to resources. Lorien is a leader in technology and digital recruitment, and as part of the Impellam Group, we work closely with our sister brands, SRG (a specialist scientific recruitment business), and Carbon60 (engineering recruitment), to facilitate the whole STEM sector.</p>

<h2>Ask David</h2><p>At Lorien, we put people first. Building trust through genuine, honest relationships is one of our core values and underpins everything we do. Ask David is all about resolving problems quickly, helpfully and at the source.</p><p>As a concept, it’s simple: if you’re a current contractor at Lorien with a question, concern or request, then get in touch using the below contact form and David will respond directly to you himself within 24 hours. With more than 20 years’ experience in recruitment at all levels and operations, David can provide expert guidance and support on almost any recruitment-related subject (and if he can’t, he’ll put you in touch with someone who can).</p>

<h1>CSR &amp; Partnerships</h1>
<p>Lorien's purpose is to unlock untapped potential in people, enhance ways of working, and give back to the local community. We&rsquo;re determined to build a better future for everyone and work towards solving the key issues our world faces.</p>

<h2>Discover more_</h2><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">With insight across the whole of Lorien, we’ll keep you ahead of the curve. Get in touch with our team today. </span></p>

<h2>Latest Salary Survey</h2><p>Fill out the form below to gain exclusive access to the 2023 Salary Survey results. </p>

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<h2>Featured Guides &amp; Reports</h2>

<h2>Largest IT Staffing Firm in the UK!</h2>
<div class="d-flex gap-3">
<p class="col-span-9 mb-0">We are thrilled to have been ranked #1 largest IT staffing firm in the UK by Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA).</p>
</div>

<div class="d-flex flex-column gap-0">
<h3>Leaders in Everest Group PEAK Matrix® 2024 for UK IT Contingent Talent and Strategic Solutions.</h3>
<div class="d-flex gap-3 align-items-end">
<div class="d-flex flex-column gap-4">
<p class="col-span-6 mb-0">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="col-span-6 mb-0">We are thrilled to have also been ranked <span class="fw-bold">#1 largest IT staffing</span> firm in the UK by Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA)!</p>
</div>
<img class="ratio ratio-21x9" style="min-width: 200px; max-width: 80px; height: auto; object-fit: contain;" src="/site-assets/images/SIA_2024_ListLogos_LrgstStaffng_IT_UK.png" alt="tes"></div>
</div>

<h2>It's What We Do</h2>
<p>Transforming careers, businesses and tech strategies. At Lorien we are always adapting to the digital world, providing our clients with tech recruitment solutions across the full digital spectrum.</p>

<h2>Awards &amp; Industry Recognition</h2>

<h2><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Featured Jobs</span></h2>
<p>Find the best technology and digital career opportunities.</p>

<h2>Our Insights | News, Events &amp; Case Studies</h2>
<p>We believe in the power of technology; that’s why we keep up to date with tech advancements and the latest trends to provide regular market insight to our clients and candidates.</p>
<p>We are always learning, adapting, and educating.&nbsp;</p>

<h1>We are the house of global tech recruitment</h1><p>Lorien is an award winning digital, transformation and technology recruitment specialist. With over 45 years' experience, we work with clients of all sectors, sizes, and tech needs–from digital giants to tech-enabled businesses–to attract and retain top talent around the world. Through our network of specialists, we combine deep tech sector expertise with the scope, depth, and breadth of large-scale talent solutions, giving our clients the confidence and the agility to compete in the digital age.</p>

<h1>Thank you for downloading our salary survey</h1>

<p>You've downloaded our salary survey.</p>

<h2>Our Insights | News, Events, and Case Studies</h2><p>Our tech expertise and partner-led approach allows us to deliver highly successful results for our clients so they can attract and retain unique talent for their business. Explore our latest collection of case studies, news, events, and insights.</p>

<h2>Podcasts</h2><p>People Make the Difference - The Lorien Podcast</p>

<h3>Subscribe to our newsletter</h3><p>With insight across the whole of Lorien, we&rsquo;ll keep you ahead of the curve on the talent market.</p>

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<h2>More Information</h2><p>There's much more to explore!</p>

<p>At Lorien, we support world-leading organisations in taking their technology above and beyond their competitors. Likewise, we encourage talented candidates to take the next step in their career with our bespoke service that offers candidates unique roles with high-profile employers that are exclusively partnered with Lorien. Candidates can browse through the roles to see what best aligns with their desired career path and ambitions on each business page.</p>

<h2>The Lorien Pulse: Latest News, Events, and Insights</h2>
<p>Our tech expertise and partner-led approach allows us to deliver highly successful results for our clients so they can attract and retain unique talent for their business. Explore our latest collection of case studies, news, events, and insights</p>

<h2>Jobs from Careers at Howden</h2><p>Find the best tech and digital career opportunities.</p>

<h2>Centered Text Element Goes here</h2><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Suspendisse eu facilisis duis fringilla at hac. Dignissim et imperdiet aenean nulla neque. Leo eget nisl vitae tempor neque viverra. Vitae cursus tortor turpis sed. Proin est in eleifend mattis blandit. Sed leo pellentesque sed praesent orci sem varius integer etiam. Nibh nunc egestas amet sed id cras elementum non. Orci bibendum elementum sem facilisi morbi egestas amet eu.</p><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Suspendisse eu facilisis duis fringilla at hac amet eu.</p>

<h4>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Sed pulvinar aliquet tristique.</h4><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Suspendisse eu facilisis duis fringilla at hac. Dignissim et imperdiet aenean nulla neque. Leo eget nisl vitae tempor neque viverra. Vitae cursus tortor turpis sed. Proin est in eleifend mattis blandit. Sed leo pellentesque sed praesent orci sem varius integer etiam. Nibh nunc egestas amet sed id cras elementum non. Orci bibendum elementum sem facilisi morbi egestas amet eu.</p><h4>Why choose us?</h4><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Suspendisse eu facilisis duis fringilla at hac. Dignissim et imperdiet aenean nulla neque. Leo eget nisl vitae tempor neque viverra. Vitae cursus tortor turpis sed. Proin est in eleifend mattis blandit. Sed leo pellentesque sed praesent orci sem varius integer etiam. Nibh nunc egestas amet sed id cras elementum non. Orci bibendum elementum sem facilisi morbi egestas amet eu.</p>

<h4>What are the benefits of working with Phoenix Group?</h4><ul><li>Point 1: Use this component to make a few points</li><li>Point 1: Use this component to make a few points</li><li>Point 1: Use this component to make a few points</li><li>Point 1: Use this component to make a few points</li><li>Point 1: Use this component to make a few points</li><li>Point 1: Use this component to make a few points</li><li>Point 1: Use this component to make a few points</li></ul>

<h2>Jobs from Phoenix Group</h2><p>Find the best tech and digital career opportunities.</p>

<h2>Subscribe to our newsletter</h2>
<p>With insight across the whole of Lorien, we'll keep you ahead of the curve on the talent market.</p>

<h2>Specialist Markets</h2>
<p>As the house of global tech and transformation recruitment, we specialise in bringing talent solutions across the full digital spectrum to life. We can help you find a foothold in some of the toughest tech markets out there. These are our Specialist Markets.</p>

<h2>Discover Our Live Jobs</h2>
<p>Explore over 200 live opportunities and find your next exciting career move.</p>

<h2>Our Insights: Latest News, Events, and Case Studies</h2>
<p>Our tech expertise and partner-led approach allows us to deliver highly successful results for our clients so they can attract and retain unique talent for their business. Discover more here...</p>

<h2><strong>Candidate Testimonials</strong></h2>
<p><em>At Lorien, we pride ourselves on being trusted consultants to both clients and talent alike. Because together we can create a brighter future.</em></p>

<h1>Unlock Your Potential</h1>
<p>The technology industry is constantly evolving. Every day brings new breakthroughs – and you could be at the forefront of this progress. Each year, we help thousands of people find rewarding jobs in the ever-changing world of work.</p>

<h3>Interested in partnering with us as a Featured Employer?</h3>
<p>At Lorien, we support world-leading organisations by taking their technology above and beyond their competitors. Powered by experts, we can accelerate your hiring strategies and give you access to top talent.</p>

<h2>Join Our Talent Network</h2>
<p><strong>Are you looking to take the next steps in your career? Upload your CV and our experienced recruiters will be on hand to match your skills to their jobs.</strong></p>

<p>You have subscribed to our newsletter.</p><p>We will be in touch shortly!</p>

<p>Your application has been successfully submitted.</p>
<p>We will be in touch shortly!</p>

<h2>Subscribe to our newsletter</h2>
<p>With insight across the whole of Lorien, we&rsquo;ll keep you ahead of the curve on the talent market.</p>

<h2>Featured Jobs</h2>
<p>Find the best tech and digital career opportunities.</p>

<h2>Get in Touch!</h2>
<p>There are many ways to get in touch.</p>
<p>For all other inquiries, please complete the form.</p>

<h3>Send Us Your CV/Resume</h3>
<p>Join somewhere you can be yourself, be your best, and be part of something special. Join Lorien today.</p>

<h1>Join Us</h1>
<p>We know that our growth isn’t measured by numbers, but by people. With a strong focus on learning and development and a culture that encourages you to spread your wings, we’re all about giving people the room to try new things and thrive in a role they really enjoy. Because if you’re growing, then so are we.</p>

<h2>Get in Touch</h2>
<p>Do you have a question? Leave it with Lorien.</p>

<h2>Newsletter Sign up</h2>
<p>With insight across the whole of Lorien, we’ll keep you ahead of the curve on the talent market.</p>

<h1>Meet the Team</h1>
<p>We have over 270 talented, ambitious, innovative and determined people working for us across our UK, Ireland, Germany and US offices. In the UK, you can find us in London, Leeds, Manchester, Edinburgh and Belfast. As an equal opportunities employer, we value and encourage diversity within our business.</p>

<h2>Get in Touch</h2>
<p>Do you have a question? Our team are happy to help.&nbsp;</p>

<h2>Join the Lorien Team</h2>
<p>Be part of something bigger&nbsp;</p>
<p>Our specialists make up an incredible ecosystem of knowledge, and we believe in tapping into that and working together to reach innovative solutions.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Trusting ourselves and each other is what sets us apart. .</p>

<h2>Featured News &amp; Insights</h2>

<h2>Want to Know More?</h2>
<p>Discover more about what we do at Lorien, speak to one of the team or read more of our insights.</p>

<h2>Latest Salary Survey</h2>
<p>Download our latest Salary Survey report for 2023.</p>

<h2>Featured Podcasts</h2><p>Our People Make The Difference podcast is led by Darren Topping, Lorien’s Director of Solutions and Insights, and features industry leaders from recruitment and tech industries, such as Cambridge Spark, Freeman Clarke and Balfour Beatty.</p><p>Our podcast covers a wide range of topics spanning the entirety of technology, talent acquisition, and retention, whilst offering unique insights into the recruitment industry. With a new guest each episode, every listen offers a chance to learn something new that you can take away and action within your organisation.</p>

<h2>Listen to our latest podcasts</h2><p>People Make the Difference - The Lorien Podcast.</p>

<h1>Podcasts</h1>
<p>People Make The Difference - The Lorien Podcast.</p>

<h2>What Tech Candidates Want 2024</h2>
<p>Fill out the form below to gain exclusive access to the report.</p>

<h2>Subscribe to our newsletter</h2><p>With insight across the whole of Lorien, we’ll keep you ahead of the curve on the talent market.</p><p><br></p>

<h2 class="ql-align-center">Our Insights | News, Events &amp; Case Studies</h2>
<p>Our tech expertise and partner-led approach allows us to deliver highly successful results for our clients so they can attract and retain unique talent for their business. Explore our latest collection of case studies, news, events, and insights</p>

<h2>Subscribe to our newsletter</h2><p>With insight across the whole of Lorien, we&rsquo;ll keep you ahead of the curve on the talent market.</p>

<h2>Download our Latest Report</h2><p>Fill out the form below to gain exclusive access to the report</p>

<h1 class="ql-align-center">We&rsquo;re a Collaborative Group&nbsp;</h1>
<p>Our strength lies not just in our brands and their specialist vertical markets but in how we are united by one purpose, one culture, one driving forces.</p>

<h1>About Us</h1>
<p>We are Lorien, a technology, transformation, and digital talent company, powered by Impellam Group, a connected group providing global workforce and specialist recruitment solutions.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>We combine tech expertise with the scope, depth and breadth of large-scale talent organizations. Driven by both clients and candidates, covering the US and Europe, we work with all sectors, sizes and tech needs&mdash;from start-ups to established tech companies and those who use tech to propel them further.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;Our unique position in the market means we have the insight to create tailored solutions, keeping our clients ahead of the curve and giving them complete agility. From one-off placements to scalable enterprise solutions, executive search to next-generation tech skills, time-sensitive projects to ongoing digital journeys&mdash;we flex to fit the requirement.</p>

<h2>Work for us</h2>
<p>Interested in joining our team? Apply today!</p>

<h3>Join #TeamLorien</h3>
<p>People. Lead. Growth. Three simple words. That&rsquo;s the secret to our people-centric approach.</p>

<h2>Our Recruitment Expertise</h2>
<p>Helping you to find a foothold in some of the toughest tech markets out there, our Specialist Markets solutions are the definition of expert-led.</p>

<h2>The Lorien Pulse: Latest News, Events &amp; Insights</h2>
<p>Our tech expertise and partner-led approach allows us to deliver highly successful results for our clients so they can attract and retain unique talent for their business. Explore our latest collection of case studies, news, events, and insights</p>

<h1>Business Solutions</h1>
<p>Our business solutions are shaped to meet your needs and goals, with the agility to adapt as you grow. Covering all technology verticals, from entry-level to c-suite, with solutions from one-off hires to full enterprise models, we specialize in bringing expert talent solutions across the full digital spectrum.</p>

<h2>Get in Touch!</h2>
<p>There are many way to get in touch.</p>

<h3>Send Us Your CV/Resume</h3>
<p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(43, 42, 41);">As a fast-growing business, we have some big opportunities for the year ahead &ndash; will you join our journey?</span></p>

<h2>Get in Touch!</h2><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW216223936 BCX0"><p class="Paragraph SCXW216223936 BCX0"><span class="TextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="auto"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0">Do you have any questions? </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0">Don't</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0"> hesitate to contact our Lorien Contractor</span> <span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0">Team </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0">for quick </span><span class="NormalTextRun CommentStart SCXW216223936 BCX0">answers</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0">!&nbsp;</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW216223936 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:240,&quot;335559740&quot;:279}">&nbsp;</span></p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW216223936 BCX0"><p class="Paragraph SCXW216223936 BCX0"><span class="TextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="auto"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0">Whether you are a beginner or an experienced contractor, we are here to provide you with the latest and reliable information to </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0">help</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0"> you</span> <span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0">through</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0"> your journey with</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0"> Lorien</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0">.</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW216223936 BCX0"> No matter how big or small your question is, we will do our best to provide you with helpful and informed responses.</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW216223936 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:240,&quot;335559740&quot;:279}">&nbsp;</span></p><p class="Paragraph SCXW216223936 BCX0">&nbsp;</p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW135433514 BCX0"><h5 class="Paragraph SCXW135433514 BCX0" style="text-align: left;"><strong><span class="TextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">Contractor </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">B</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">enefits</span></span> </strong></h5><h5 class="Paragraph SCXW135433514 BCX0" style="text-align: left;"><sup><span class="TextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">Benefits offered by Lorien </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">m</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">ay</span> <span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">include</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">: </span></span><span class="EOP SCXW135433514 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}">&nbsp;</span></sup></h5></div><div class="ListContainerWrapper SCXW135433514 BCX0"><ul class="BulletListStyle1 SCXW135433514 BCX0" role="list"><li class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW135433514 BCX0" role="listitem" data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1"><p class="Paragraph SCXW135433514 BCX0"><span class="TextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">Choice among three major medical plans and one minimum essential coverage medical plan&nbsp;</span></span></p></li><li class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW135433514 BCX0" role="listitem" data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1"><p class="Paragraph SCXW135433514 BCX0"><span class="TextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">Integrated prescription benefits with your medical plan&nbsp;</span></span></p></li><li class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW135433514 BCX0" role="listitem" data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1"><p class="Paragraph SCXW135433514 BCX0"><span class="TextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">Two standalone PPO dental plans (</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">o</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">ne plan includes orthodontic benefits for adults) </span></span><span class="EOP SCXW135433514 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}">&nbsp;</span></p></li><li class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW135433514 BCX0" role="listitem" data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="4" data-aria-level="1"><p class="Paragraph SCXW135433514 BCX0"><span class="TextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">Standalone vision plan with exams, lenses, contact lenses, and frame benefits</span></span></p></li><li class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW135433514 BCX0" role="listitem" data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="1" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="4" data-aria-level="1"><p class="Paragraph SCXW135433514 BCX0"><span class="TextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">Savings&nbsp;</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">p</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">rograms: Our 401(k) allows participants to contribute to both pre-tax and after-tax payroll deductions. In addition, we offer a flexible, tax-advantaged Section 529 College Savings Program.</span></span></p></li></ul><ul><li class="Paragraph SCXW135433514 BCX0"><span class="TextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW135433514 BCX0">Direct deposit (weekly payroll) </span></span><span class="EOP SCXW135433514 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}">&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;</li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p></div><h2><sub>Our hotlines are:</sub></h2>

<h4><strong><span class="EOP SCXW135433514 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}"><span class="TextRun SCXW64043463 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="auto"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW64043463 BCX0">Professional Referrals</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW64043463 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:240,&quot;335559740&quot;:279}">&nbsp;</span></span></strong></h4><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW175820273 BCX0"><p class="Paragraph SCXW175820273 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="TextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="auto"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0">At Lorien, we believe in the power of professional connections to fuel our industry's future. </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0">That's</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0"> why we highly value candidate referrals from our trusted network of contractors. These referrals are more than just names—</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0">they're</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0"> seasoned professionals who come highly recommended for their skills, reliability, and dedication to their career. </span></span><span class="EOP SCXW175820273 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335551550&quot;:0,&quot;335551620&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:279}">&nbsp;</span></p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW175820273 BCX0"><p class="Paragraph SCXW175820273 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="TextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="auto"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0">When a contractor refers a candidate to us, </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0">it's</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0"> a testament to the candidate's quality and fit for upcoming projects. We carefully consider each referral, aiming to seamlessly integrate these skilled individuals into our staffing solutions, thereby ensuring our clients receive top-tier talent. </span></span><span class="EOP SCXW175820273 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335551550&quot;:0,&quot;335551620&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:279}">&nbsp;</span></p></div><div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW175820273 BCX0"><p class="Paragraph SCXW175820273 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US"><span class="TextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0" lang="EN-US" xml:lang="EN-US" data-contrast="auto"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0">This collaborative approach not only enriches our talent pool but also strengthens the bonds within our professional community, leading to more successful projects and satisfied clients.</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0"> Please speak to your recruiting contact to discuss our referral bonus</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW175820273 BCX0"> program in greater detail.</span></span></p></div><p><strong>For all other questions, please complete our form or reach out to us at 954.433.4100</strong></p>

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<h2>The Lorien Pulse: Latest News, Events &amp; Insights</h2>
<p>Our tech expertise and partner-led approach allows us to deliver highly successful results for our clients so they can attract and retain unique talent for their business.</p>
<p>Explore our latest collection of case studies, news, events, and insights</p>

<h1>We are the house of global tech recruitment</h1><p>Lorien is a digital, transformation, and technology recruitment specialist. We work with clients of all sectors, sizes, and tech needs&ndash;from digital giants to tech-enabled businesses&ndash;to attract and retain top talent around the world. Through our network of specialists, we combine deep tech sector expertise with the scope, depth, and breadth of large-scale talent solutions, giving our clients the confidence and the agility to compete in the digital age.</p>

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<h2>Want to be featured as an Employer?</h2><p>At Lorien, we support world-leading organizations in taking their technology above and beyond their competitors. Likewise, we encourage talented candidates to take the next step in their career with our bespoke service that offers candidates unique roles with high-profile employers that are exclusively partnered with Lorien. Candidates can browse through the roles to see what best aligns with their desired career path and ambitions on each business page.</p>

<h2>Specialist Markets</h2>
<p>As the house of global tech and transformation recruitment, we specialise in bringing talent solutions across the full digital spectrum to life. Each one of our solutions is built to the specific needs of our clients, with great variety in size, shape, and scale of design, but with a unifying core of deep tech sector expertise.</p>
<p>This gives our clients the unique advantage of tech specialism at scale. Naturally, our background means that we cover all digital skillsets, but there are specific sub-sectors where we provide even deeper levels of insight&ndash;often in the places where skills are niche, rare, competitive, or just developing.</p>
<p>We call these our Specialist Markets.</p>

<h1>Unlock Your Potential.</h1>
<p>The technology industry is constantly evolving. Every day brings new breakthroughs &ndash; and you could be at the forefront of this progress. Each year, we help thousands of people find rewarding jobs in the ever-changing world of work.</p>

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<p>We have over 270 talented, ambitious, innovative, and determined people working for us across our US, UK, Ireland, and Germany offices. You can find us in the US in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Fairfax, Pembroke Pines, and Seattle. As an equal opportunities employer, we value and encourage diversity within our business.</p>

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<p>Our tech expertise and partner-led approach allows us to deliver highly successful results for our clients so they can attract and retain unique talent for their business. Explore our latest collection of case studies, news, events, and insights.</p>

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