Starting a new job in the middle of a pandemic
Starting a new job in the middle of a global pandemic
After graduating from QUB with a 2:1 in Business Management, I joined one of the big four on a Technology Consulting graduate programme where I spent two and a half years working on different large scale tech implementations. The majority of my time there was spent travelling back and forth to client site in London every Monday and Thursday (definitely do not miss those ‘red eye’ Monday morning flights)! Throughout this time I had the opportunity to work in both the public and private sectors and I think the skills I gained during this time set me up nicely for my new Business Analyst role at Kainos.
Starting a new job in the middle of a global pandemic
“Starting a new job in the middle of a global pandemic, 100% remote? That must have been really hard!”
Hard? No. Different? Absolutely.
For most of us, the idea of starting a new job in this current climate can be daunting for sure. I probably put off applying for a new job longer than I should have as I was waiting for the pandemic to pass and life to return to ‘normal’. However, I quickly realised I would be waiting a while. When I saw the Kainos BA Academy advertised, I knew I wanted to apply. From the first interaction with Katie from recruitment, the process was seamless.
The application process
The talent team reached out to me about two weeks after I had applied to arrange an interview for the following week. The interview would be hosted on Teams, last for one hour and I would prepare a presentation. The interview came and went, and it was actually the following day that I received a call to say that I had been successful! So there we had it, after putting it off for so long I had secured my new job (yay)! I handed in my notice and was looking forward to starting my new role at Kainos.
The part in between
Throughout the four weeks that followed, I received bits of information through Workday and had someone from the capability reach out to me to have an intro chat prior to joining. The Friday before my start date, IT made a courtesy call to ensure everything was set up and working. I had received my laptop and my log in details, but had I looked at them!? Ryan from IT kindly offered to call me back first thing on Monday morning to check again (thanks Ryan!)
My induction experience
Monday morning came around and everything went smoothly. The first two days were spent having various intro sessions, followed by a warm company welcome from CEO Brendan Mooney. The next four weeks that followed were used to cover a range of different topics such as an intro to software development, agile 101, user story writing, as-is and to-be process mapping and many more.
Because I had joined through the BA academy, I had nine colleagues with me at all the sessions - well, on my screen! The beauty of joining through one of the Kainos academies is that you will build relationships with this group of people and will have them to lean on throughout the rest of your career, and in many cases, will walk away with friends for life. Whilst the four weeks of classroom-based learning was quite intense, the facilitators were great and made every effort to make sessions as engaging and interactive as possible.
Project-ready!
So in essence, from the Teams interview, to the sending out of equipment (a nice new shiny MacBook Pro by the way), to my first day at Kainos - everything was smooth and efficient. The main challenge for me at the minute is the lack of social interaction so I’m definitely looking forward to getting back to the office in the future, even for a few days a week- though I do love the extra time in the mornings so I will be carrying forward a mixture of both home and office working when the time comes.
Kainos will be running another BA Academy in 2021, so make sure to keep an eye on the Kainos careers site to find out when and register your details here for more information.