Please mark your calendars for Thursday 21 June 2012 – the next UKUPA Careers Event!

Following on the success of last years event, kindly hosted and sponsored by Thompson Reuters, plans are now underway for UKUPA Careers Event 2012. The event will follow the popular ‘speed dating,’ style format as last year with UX booths for professional development.

Are you currently recruiting?

If so, please get in touch with Raj Arjan to find out about booking one of our speed dating tables which will be visited by approximately 30 UX candidates throughout the evening.

More details about this year event to follow shortly. In the meantime you can read a review of last years events from one of the successful candidates.

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Event review, by Matt Radbourne

Hello. My name is Matt and I’m a recent Interactive Media Design graduate. I came to the UK UPA careers event with a view to starting my career and get to know the big names in the usability industry. I’d like to start off by saying that the event was a very positive yet demanding experience overall. When I say demanding, I mean it in the most positive of senses but, as I’m sure most will agree, there are certain types of mild panic that arise from situations that involve making a good impression. This year’s event was held at Thomson Reuters, Canary Wharf so, being so easily accessible, the venue allowed prospective employees such as myself to arrive calm and collected.

The event attracted an eclectic variety of attendees. During the evening I spoke with department managers, freelance artists and students, each with surprisingly varied reasons for attending the event. The event received interest from several different disciplines under the user experience umbrella. The professions and interests of attendees were much wider than the pure usability focus that I had anticipated.

The mix of prospective employers was no less varied: One round of speed dating saw each candidate speak to full service agencies, interface designers for NATO and online betting websites with a quarter of an hour. The premise of the speed dating was for candidates to circulate around a series of speed dating stations, each one occupied by a different employer or recruiter. Dr Tim Matschak, Web Manager at Cass Business School, City University, found the variety of employers to be wider than he expected but thought it was challenging to adapt to different speed dating stations, specifically between recruitment agencies and digital agencies in such a short space of time.

Each table in the speed dating was looking for the same information but from a completely different angle and I found that a key tip for future speed dating events is to establish the employer at each table before approaching. This will allow the candidate to adapt their delivery style before even greeting the employer, avoiding the need to frantically search the table for a company logo. Although some companies erected signs showing their name, a reasonable size sign for every company would have made this task easier.

Victoria Panshin, Freelance Artist and Designer, suggested to me that the interview room could be divided into zones based on each organisation’s discipline or market. She noted that the recruiters would tend to provide questions whereas the employers were expecting to answer more questions and was grateful for the opportunity to do both. Although Victoria told me that five minutes was not always long enough for certain organisations to answer all of her questions, several candidates mentioned that five minutes was an adequate amount of time. I found that, especially with recruiters, the valuable time would be that which occurred outside of the speed dating environment. I spoke to Mike Keane, Freelance Art Director and Designer, who said that recruitment agencies are there to refine you and the candidate must carefully consider this when summing up their unique selling point. Mike found that he covered interesting and helpful discussion topics with the employers that he was able to carry on after the speed dating session but he said that he never left a table thinking ‘I’m glad to be out of there.’

It was great to see that all candidates respected the five minute timescale and generally used each meeting as an introduction and not an interview. Unexpectedly, my printed portfolio stayed firmly closed for the entire speed dating session and one recruiter even advised me as to how he thought we should spend the five-minute slot. This was very helpful and reassuring from my point of view.

In terms of returning to the event in future years, Sarah Ancellotti from the user interface specialists UI Centric felt that the event was a good exercise, that candidates have to continuously work on their strengths and weaknesses and she will definitely return to future events for this reason. Almost everyone I spoke to agreed that, for real interviews, the more you have done of this type of activity a candidate has conducted, the more prepared and confident they will be.

Because of the high volume of candidates, some had to wait for an available slot in the speed dating. The UK UPA did a great job of accommodating these people, as well as some latecomers, and fitted them into the speed dating when they could. People on the waiting list were able to congregate by the door to the speed dating room and observe the sessions beforehand. It occurred to me that, if the event continues to be as popular in future years, it may be appropriate to instigate a queue of some kind. Regardless of this, the UPA’s decision to manage a waiting list was a great gesture. I would imagine that some people attended the event to talk to one or two companies in particular and the initial five-minute introduction makes further discussion much easier.

There were certain parts of the event that I did not leave enough time for, such as the portfolio surgery and the mentor buddy area. Digital Media and Cultural Theory student Carla Berkers made use of the portfolio surgery and gave me her impressions. “When you make your portfolio, you only get to see one side of it,” she said. “You try to put down what you think people should know about you but, with this surgery, you can more accurately see how someone does on the other end perceives it. Carla told me that the portfolio critiquer took the role of a ficticious employer that would read applicants’ portfolios on the tube. He explained to Carla that he would read her portfolio like he would normally do and follow up with some questions. These questions were intended to highlight portfolio omissions as well as larger points concerning structure and focus.

Because of the popularity of the CV doctor, Carla had to stand next to his station for a short while and mentioned that she would have liked to have made an appointment and returned to the station later in the evening. Carla told me that she was pleased by everybody’s consideration of others’ privacy and did not stand at the CV doctor’s table during a consultation. We spoke about the feasibility of a CV booth of some kind to keep all CV information and criticism more private.

Over the evening, it appeared that every candidate got the opportunity to speak to the employers and ask questions that they had. I am happy to say that I have come away from the event with all of my objectives met aside from my dream UX job, but that’s now down to me.

 

Want to write an event review? Get in touch with Martina.

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Event Details

16 June 2011, at ThomsonReuters.

Tickets are now available via eventbrite: http://ukupacareers.eventbrite.com/ and there is no entrance charge for this event.

This event is kindly sponsored by:

Event overview:

The aim of this event is to provide:

• a forum where usability employers and candidates can meet and network
• an opportunity for Professional Development through our UX Booths.

Agenda

6:30 – 7:00       Meet, greet and networking

7:00 – 7:50       Speed dating round 1: 5-minute interviews with 16 employers/candidates

7:50 – 8:20       Networking and check out the UX Booths

8:20 – 9:00       Speed dating round 2: 5-minute interviews with 16 employers/candidates

9:00 – 9:30       Networking and check out the UX Booths

Candidates looking for a new job:

If you want to be part of the speed dating to find a new job, be sure to sign up now!  Remember to come prepared with your CV up to date, business cards and portfolio in hand, and some questions prepared for the interviewers.  Keep an eye on twitter @ukupa #careers2011 for more helpful hints and details.

You will have the opportunity to talk with potential employers and recruiters from ThoughtWorks, Bunnyfoot, Futureheads Recruitment Ltd, Paddy Power, Fortune Cookie, Wearelondon, LBi, System Concepts, Propel London, Rufus Leonard, Foviance, Tobias & Tobias, RMA, Zebra People and Sapient Nitro.

Professional Development at our UX Booths:

To help you improve your skills and develop your talent, we will have a number of booths where you can drop by for:

• A 15-minute portfolio surgery with Jason Mesut
• The UK UPA mentoring programme with Raj Arjan
• A User Experience Skills Matrix and identify the UX guru within with Wyndham Lewis and Stavros Garzonis
• The winning CV and how to get that promotion with Be Kaler

Employers and recruiters, for only £300 you can speak to at least 30 UX candidates:

If you would like to buy a table to host speed dating for £300, please contact Stavros profdev@ukupa.org.uk.

Remember to follow us on Twitter @UKUPA