This week, another one of our quick interviews from the recent Graduate Jobs and Placements Fair where we caught up with Danielle Cooper, the Academy Manager at Infinity Works in Leeds. She told us about Infinity Works, the opportunities available and advice for prospective candidates, along with details of her career journey…
Danielle Cooper, Academy Manager at Infinity Works
Can you tell us about Infinity Works and the roles available?
Infinity Works are relatively young company, we’re about 7 years old, our head office is in Leeds but we also have offices in Manchester, London and Edinburgh, and we are hiring for all of those locations. We offer digital transformation to our clients, so that could be anything from building a completely new website, all the way through to getting clients from hard infrastructure onto the cloud to get their businesses working more smoothly.
The opportunities that we offer via our academy are Software Engineer and Consultant roles, so it is a dual role; all of our consultants are software engineers who joined the academy and vice versa. The academy is a 12-week training programme where we teach the technical stuff such as front-end coding, backend coding, DevOps engineering agile methodologies, etc. plus consultancy skills including stakeholder management and negotiation skills, as we all need to work within a blended team and with clients.
After 12 weeks, the ‘academites’ are allocated a client project, and are paired with a mentor to fully support them and make sure that they don’t feel thrown in at the deep end. Over the following 9 months the cohort also comes back for one day of learning per month.
From 12 months onwards, that’s when we generally see people starting to move towards the consultant level – they’ve got a good amount of experience and are ready to work independently.
What’s the application process like than what specifically are you looking for in an applicant?
The application process is a 3 step process – the first stage is to send your CV and cover letter as well as answers to three problem-solving questions which are designed for us to be able to understand how the applicant thinks. There’s no right or wrong answers when it comes to these questions but they are very important in our recruitment process so I’d advise that applicants focus on them.
Make sure in the cover letter that you’ve stated what you’re doing at the moment, why you’re interested in tech and your tech experience, and why you’re interested in Infinity Works – that would be really key to us.
In the CV I would say and definitely note anything outside of university like volunteering or getting involved in extracurricular stuff – we don’t just want to know the professional or the academic side we want to know more about a person and their interests.
If you pass that stage then the second stage is a basic set of coding challenges (if you’re not doing computer science degree and are not used to coding, you can practice on websites like HackerRank and Udemy).
The third and final stage an interview to find out more about the person. with a few technical questions and a 10-minute presentation on a topic that they are passionate about.
Danielle and her colleague at the Graduate Jobs and Placements Fair on campus in Nov 21
Which transferrable skills are you particularly looking for?
We definitely look for people who are a team player, a collaborative person who thrives within a team and likes to share knowledge and learn from others.
Another thing we look for is a “can-do” attitude – someone who’s a natural problem solver and has a very calm attitude toward solving problems, an analytical person who likes to think about things and decipher them, pull them apart and put them back together again. If you’re like that then you will enjoy the work that we do because our clients come to us with problems and want experts to collaborate with them to create solutions.
Can you tell us a bit about your career journey?
I’m the Academy Manager for Infinity Works – my role is very much dealing with people both internal in the business and students; we also hire people who are career changers. I make sure the academy happens, so I organise the guest speakers and I also deliver a couple of sessions for the academy, run assessment centres and lots more.
Previously, I worked in recruitment and recruitment advertising for a couple of years and then decided to pursue my interest in psychology, so I started a psychology degree with the Open University and was working part-time. I ended up in IT recruitment and just really liked it – it’s very straightforward you know exactly what you’re looking for, and it’s an industry that’s always moving forward.
Thanks Danielle! You can find out more about the Infinity Works Academy here.