We are Recruiting!
Having ‘insider’ knowledge of where the job market is going and what sort of jobs are available now and in the future is the kind of information that might just give you the advantage when it comes to finding your dream job.Wouldn’t it be helpful to hear from employers themselves about the types of jobs they will be offering and just what it is they look for in their next recruit?
We have interviewed potential employers to find out who they’re hiring and why.
"We are the world’s leading structured cabling company and we are looking for people who can move beyond purely technical knowledge to get a better understanding of what our customers want".
The company
The candidate
The hiring process
The company
CommScope is the world leader in the design & manufacture of cable and connectivity solutions for communications networks and with the SYSTIMAX Solutions brand is the global leader in structured cabling systems for business enterprise networks. Look at the FTSE 100 organisations and you will find our customers. We work with global organisations in diverse fields including manufacturing, transport, government, healthcare, utilities and education.
In fact, CommScope customers could be any organisation for which high-bandwidth and high productivity are vital. Generally they are looking for integrated end-to-end connectivity solutions for voice, data, video and building management applications in both wired and wireless enterprise networks.
As information becomes more and more important in helping companies to build and maintain their competitive advantage there really is no room for downtime. In fact for some organisations in healthcare it could be life-threatening and for others, simply catastrophic in terms of financial and reputation loss.
The candidate
The kind of people that we want to join this company must possess technical experience. However they also need to have a commercial awareness and confidence in talking to consultants and designers.
It is vital that they are comfortable with and want to work with customers; and not just in the UK but across Europe and into Africa and the Middle East. In fact, the Middle East, South Africa, France and Russia are booming regions for us right now.
Most employees have degrees in subjects such as marketing, business studies, engineering and IT. If their degree is not in IT, they usually have industry-based certification or qualifications.
Of course, any CV should contain relevant IT experience such as data centre infrastructure or networking knowledge or qualifications but equally it should demonstrate that individual’s ‘staying power’.
Since CommScope prepared to invest heavily in training people, I would want to feel confident that any recruit would stay for a while. A CV that showed lots of job hopping – lots of different jobs within relatively short periods of time - would not impress. A pure ‘techie’ whose current role did not have a commercial element would also not appeal to me.
It’s always interesting to see what people get up to in their free time away from work but if an applicant’s interests were limited or very unusual, I wouldn’t be put off.
As this is a global company with offices in 22 countries, one big advantage would be a second language.
The hiring process
Following a review of CVs, we base a significant part of our hiring decision on meeting the candidate.
As so many of our employees are customer-facing, it is worth remembering that candidates should present themselves with a positive attitude and confidence; they should demonstrate good communication skills and be authentic - I would be more impressed if someone admitted a lack of experience than trying to bluff their way through as it’s always so transparent.
Also the interview is no place for modesty; candidates should emphasise their genuine strengths and not be embarrassed to sell themselves.
As well as looking for strong individuals, I also check for evidence of team work as this is vital in CommScope where we really do have a collegiate culture.
It sounds clichéd but we are like a family. I think this is because we are in such a dynamic and fast moving industry that we just naturally support each other.
As a company we seem to be able to maintain this professional but informal familiarity despite working across geographies. This means that there is no hesitation in picking up the phone to colleagues in South Africa, Pakistan, Russia or Dubai and asking for help.
A driven, professional, self-manager and a flexible, relaxed, humorous and supportive professional – that would pretty much sum up a CommScope person.
And given that around ten percent of our profit goes back into the company’s extensive research and development, CommScope people are innovators and get really excited about cabling technology, real time infrastructure management and cutting-edge customer projects.
Anyone looking for the Rolls Royce of the cabling industry should make CommScope first and last stop.
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