Hey man....I got a job!

Well, I finally landed a job over here! I'm in to day number 5 today, so I though I would give all of my faithful readers (if there are any!) an update. After stopping work for Dell EMEA last December and going home for the holidays and our trip through Wales in January, I really geared up the job search. The economy wasn't really cooperating in Jan and Feb and it was pretty silent. I was trying to network like crazy with my Dell contacts and use various recruitment agencies and websites. It's a little tricky because we don't know where we will be living in the fall, so about 6-8 months was all I had to work with. I also wasn't crazy about commuting an hour plus each day.

Suddenly in April I was inundated with interviews....like the news finally told companies to start hiring again. I was trying to concentrate on local Oxford companies: a PR/Marketing manager at a video game company, a "green IT" product manager, client product marketing at good ol Dell, marketing for department at the University, and finally a marketing exec at a small company called OPP. After a crazy week of interviews and stressful decisions (which happened to be the week we returned from India) I decided on the company called OPP. This was actually the only one that was offering a 6 month fixed contract, so it fit perfectly in to our situation.

Almost the end of Day 5 on the new job, and I think it was the right choice. I'll be learning all about psychometric instruments (like Meyers-Briggs) and the HR services industry. I have found out OPP used to stand for Oxford Psychology Press, but they are no longer a printing company, so they've dropped all reference to that except the acronym. I'm on the small (8 people) marketing team, and I really like all of the people so far. I'll be working on a variety of things: online marketing projects, e-marketing, branding, competitive analysis, events....really a bit of everything (very project based). Should be exciting to learn a new industry and set of products. Very much an academic start, but and they still carry that reputation and the same guy is still the CEO (this is the company's 20th anniversary) and lectures at Oxford.

The corporate culture is totally different than Dell for so many reasons: culturally (US vs UK/Europe), size (OPP has <150>70K people WW), the HR-services industry, and the open office plan (no cubes!). By nature of the industry, they are very "nurturing" to their employees, and I could see this even in the hiring process. We even get free tea/coffee/milk...and let me tell ya they drink a lot of tea! A friend of mine also works here (the wife of another MBA student), so it's nice to know someone coming in.

The biggest bonus - the renovated warehouse office is only 3.5 miles from our house. I've walked home a few times to enjoy the sunshine, but I have been mostly taking the bus. There's park nearby to go for a walk at lunchtime, and I'm planning to get a bike to commute. So, all in all I am enjoying it so far. It's good to be back at work (never though I would say that!!).

More soon.....

Karen