I'm recruiting for software engineering trainees again

Burnsy2023

Burnsy2023

Burnsy2023

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I'm looking for some new Trainee Software Engineers at Ordnance Survey. The scheme is quite unusual in the fact we have no formal requirements and actively look to recruit from a diverse backgrounds and for people looking for a career change.

We're looking for people who have already decided to invest in themselves, and learn to code. If you've completed Harvard's CS50, or built a hobby project using python (or any other language), and want to make a career developing enterprise level software, I want to hear from you.

There are also links in the ad to some awareness seminars where we'll talk you through what we look for in an application to help you tailor your experiences to what we're assessing. We'll give you everything you need to show us you're the right person for us. The cover letter detailing the three areas noted in the ad is what we're primarily looking at, spend the time on that, rather than your CV.

Some of previous trainees have been Librarians, A&E Nurses, Teachers and Researchers with PhDs, the scheme looks for potential and people who are self starters and habitual learners.

Trainees start on £25k and when you progress to Associate Engineer after a year, there is a bump to around £27.5k. There are also lots of opportunities for further promotions and advancement. Full time remote work is a possibility for some of the positions we're recruiting.

All details below in the link and happy to answer any questions.

Sharing this would be a great help :)

Job Link
 
In the job ad are links to some awareness sessions in Microsoft Teams. I suggest you join one of those to properly understand what I'm looking for. You'll be able to talk to current trainees and work out how to best set yourself up to succeed, so that even if you're not ready quite yet, you might be in 6 months (we tend to have recruitment twice annually).
 
AndyCr15 said:
Do you post here, or maybe you could bump this thread each time? This could be right up my street. If I'm honest/blunt my only issue would be the pay, but I guess if you're taking people on without qualifications and helping them learn and develop, then that's the trade off? (I'm being made redundant and would like to move into tech)
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I post when I'm the hiring manager, I'm not always aware if other recruitment is happening, although that might change.

So depending on your aptitude, the common progression is £27.5k when you finish you traineeship. This is advertised as a year, but three of the four most recent finished 3 months early. It's typically 1-2 years to progress to engineer which is ~£36k although some make it in 6 months. That gives you a rough idea.
 
Hatfemmi said:
Why don't you consider hiring professional developers NO ADVERTISING! I understand that they need to pay more money, but the result of their work will be much better.
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We do outsource some of our development with variable results.

There are a few issues with outsourcing, one is the huge amount of specialist domain knowledge that we need in our area of work. Finding software engineers that understand both software engineering and geospatial problems/tooling is very difficult. Also, we're very focused on continuous deployment and full automation. The quality of approach and general maturity in this area using our tech stack and cloud approach from outsourced devs has been mediocre to poor in my experience. Finally, we find that with a longer term investment, we can build software engineers that are better than what we can buy in.

We hire trainees, because we can't find what we need in the market, so we need to build it ourselves.
 
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fatbatman said:
A response and feedback should be automatically given, it's pretty impolite after a candidate spends a chunk of their own time for him to be asking for feedback on a public forum.
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I don't think you realise how many applications we get - it takes days to just paper sift, let alone give feedback. All candidates that get offered an interview get detailed feedback.
 
Bassmansam said:
indeed and i really appreciate the offer of feedback. I have just checked my application status on Ordnance Surveys website and it still says “in process”, at the very least i think thar should be updates to unsuccessful or something.
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That's probably due to the HR person who will update this being on holiday as it's mid-august. I imagine that'll be rectified soon when she's back.
 
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