Life as a CoreTech Graduate
Returning to CoreTech after completing my final year of university was a relieving experience as, despite a significant amount of growth, CoreTech has retained its enthusiastic atmosphere which had captivated me during my summer internship in 2022. With several new employees I was only able to recognise what felt like half of the company, however it was pleasing to discover that each new joiner has an extremely similar attitude to those I had met the previous summer. This blog post aims to exhibit all aspects of the early stages of a graduate role at CoreTech, from the perspective of a new joiner to the Software Engineering team. For those looking to use this post as reference for the process of graduate entry into one of the other teams, please be reassured that the on-boarding process is relatively similar between the teams and I will make a point of highlighting any differences.
Fred making the most of the Hardware Lab back in the Summer of 2022
How is the graduate role different?
I would highly recommend the internship, for anyone in their first or penultimate years of study, as an opportunity to sample work within this industry. It is important to note however that in the joining week of the graduate role there were several workshops to familiarise us with both our domain of work and the points of support in place to help us complete it. These workshops were hosted by a variety of staff members - from the CEO to the team leads - which not only provided specific insight into individual day-to-day operations, but also helped to quickly incorporate us into the community. The most notable of these introductions was by our Operations Director who kindly demystified questions surrounding the background checks associated with our role and provided us with an overview of working practices. Our final introduction of the week was to the CoreTech Academy - a scheme designed to effectively up-skill and transition us into client-facing consultants.
A quick summary of the Academy process. Pay reviews are every six months for our graduate intake!
The academy has meetings spread across the first six months of joining, starting with every week, to provide us with an opportunity to digest the work we've completed and discuss any challenges we've faced. These meetings run alongside Academy projects - which we're assigned in pairs with fellow members of our team within the graduate cohort. These small deliverable tasks are selected to provide a sample of client-facing work and to ensure we're up-skilled before moving on to wider company projects. I took this as an opportunity to refine my approaches to specific problems and to learn from the reviews of senior consultants within my team. Despite only completing sample tasks, I was incredibly impressed with how seriously our work was considered - with several rounds of review. This allowed us to quickly adapt to the standards the team follows and to highlight areas of improvement in an environment where it was safe to make mistakes. These small projects were also supported by the project management team - with regular catch ups to track progress and support with report writing.
What’s it like working at CoreTech?
One of the major benefits of working at CoreTech is how incredibly friendly and open the other employees are. I will often find myself asking members of my team, and even the wider company, about their work and they have always made time to talk. Despite there being three distinct teams, there is a strong sense of collaboration at CoreTech, alongside a few projects that require the skill-set of multiple teams. We have a company wide chat platform to casually discuss technical quick wins, advice and issues which helps to easily talk to team members from across the office. This chat is very active and is very useful to find company wide approaches to certain problems. This is further emphasised by our biannual internal conference, aptly named "CoreCon", which consists of talks by volunteer members of the company about their recent technical achievements or interests. The slides for these talks, alongside many technical blogs, are available on our internal systems - making it very easy to learn as a junior employee.
Pittville Pump Rooms, home of Summer CoreCon 2024
The Pump Rooms were host to 11 technical talks from our best and brightest, with the entire company attending.
There have also been several non-technical social events, such as a charity bake sale, games nights and the summer and Christmas socials. As an incoming graduate I was invited to the social of the summer before I joined which was a great opportunity to meet everyone at the company before the first day of work. All new joiners are assigned a buddy, usually from a different team, who can be a great reference for any queries before joining and a nice familiar face for the first day. I retained my buddy from the internship, and they offered to meet up with me before joining which made my original first day a lot less daunting. Since joining I have had regular line manager meetings to discuss my progress, set targets and provide feedback on the tasks I've been assigned. Again, this provides another layer of support when joining the company.
The new ground floor kitchen, where games nights are hosted
What’s Cheltenham like?
Relocating to Cheltenham was difficult for me as I was three hours away from property viewings, however I found that the number of appropriate places increased as I approached a month before my start date. Coming from University renting, it felt strange to be so last minute, but I was reassured by the amount of availability. I batched as many viewings as I could into one visit and managed to secure a flat very close to the office. I would recommend finding somewhere in the town centre, although we're only a 15 minutes walk from the train station so several people commute from further afield. Having not visited Cheltenham before joining CoreTech, I was very pleased to find how nice the town is. There are a surprising number of shops and restaurants in and around the area with direct trains to Birmingham, Bristol and London. I have thoroughly enjoyed living here so far and find it a very easy sell to visitors.
The graduate role at CoreTech has been extremely rewarding so far and provided the perfect combination of challenging problems accompanied by a great community to learn from. Our work gives me a strong motivation to get out of bed each morning and from there the people, office space and coffee machine make every working day a pleasure.