Sunday 6 July 2008

Success In The City

Good news from London Town! After being unemployed for the entire month of June (conveniently coinciding with Wimbledon on the TV...) Johnny has finally found himself a new job.

He was hoping to get another contract role, but after 3 weeks of disappointments and zero-progress, he switched to looking for permanent work. The contract market in London is in very bad shape at the moment, with all this Credit Crunch malarkey making employers a great deal more likely to be off-loading contractors than adding more to their payroll. As this situation looks to be around for a while, even if he had picked up a contract, Johnny didn't fancy being dropped back into that market in 3 or 6 months (or perhaps even less if things went very badly!) Sure enough, within a week of looking for permanents, he had an interview, and 3 hours later, a job!

In a change from his past two roles, the new company couldn't fit all its employees into a minibus - they are 50-strong and have very good partnerships with some big, big names (Nokia, Vodafone, etc). So hopefully they won't follow Johnny's kiss-of-death pattern and go down the tubes like his last two! The company is called Icom and they build websites for "communities" of like-minded people. For example, 50% of UK universities have their Student Union websites operating on the Icom platform, which offers various cool features like a mini-Facebook for students of the same uni. Icom also developed a "GlastoNav" product which helps drunk Glastonbury music festivalgoers find bands and each other via interactive maps on their mobiles.

So the work is interesting and the job is secure, but best of all, the location is slap-bang in the middle of London - just off Oxford Street - and only a few minutes away from Bec's work. Result!

6 comments:

-- Blogger Dad -- said...

Hey John. Congratulations on sucsex and the city. Sounds like it was a good decision to go permanent, and how nice to be working close to home (and Bec). All the best for your first week on the job.

Naomi

Matt said...

Congrats on the new job Chis! Hope it all works out for you. Law of averages says things'll be fine!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Johnny! This is great news. Hope it works out really well.

Kath said...

Congratulations on the new job John! So a permanent job...how long does this mean you guys are staying over there??

'Brush and Bel said...

Nice one Chis. Welcome back to the land of the employed. :)

Tschüß,
Brushy

Bec and John said...

Thanks everyone!

@Kath: Well, there's Permanent and there's Permanent - let's just say we'll see you in '09 and leave it at that...