After speaking to my Store Leader I decided to apply for the position.  Once I had applied I was asked to complete a phone interview to assess my technical knowledge.  Even though I was pretty confident about my own knowledge I was still nervous about the questions they might ask.  Once I had passed the phone interview I then had to attend a face-to-face interview.  Even though the questions were challenging I was lucky enough to get the job - I was delighted!

Now, 18 months later, I am even more passionate about my role (and about O2) than ever.  I am extremely proud to be part of something special, the O2 Guru community.  When I was an Advisor I used to help customers make the right choice when it came to our products.  Now as an O2 Guru I help them make the right choice when it comes to all kinds of technology, all they have to do is ask.

Offering free, impartial advice is just the start of what I do on a daily basis. I am also there to help out when things aren’t working right.  Just yesterday I had someone come in all flustered and distraught because they had no idea how to move their contacts from their Blackberry to their iPhone.  It was an amazing feeling to see the look on their face when, just a few minutes later, not only their contacts, but their pictures and emails were now on their new phone!

Making things work is one of the things I really love about my job, but the thing I love the most is helping people get the most out of technology.  I always tell my customers that technology is there to enhance their lives and it’s my job to show them how.  There is an older lady who comes to see me every few weeks after her son bought her a Samsung Galaxy Ace.  Her last phone was a Nokia 3310 and she had never even used a computer before.  Every time she visits I show her something new, first it was basic things like how to make a call and send a text.  A few weeks later it was how to download apps and send email, now she is editing word documents and uploading them to Dropbox!  It really is a fantastic feeling to know that you’re going to work in the morning and making a small difference to people’s lives.

It really is a breath of fresh air to see a multinational company like O2 invest in their customers by providing such a fantastic service like the O2 Gurus.  It shows they are committed to providing a World Class customer experience and I’m proud to be playing a small part it making that happen.

Wayne

Myself and Marie- Claire represented Retail and Customer Care at our stand on the day, with Andrea Jones and Helen Baird representing the Head Office and Managerial areas such as Marketing, Finance, HR, Operations etc.

Having set up the stand and ensuring that we had all information to hand, we all prepared ourselves for a busy and productive day. Boy, were we right! Come 9am, the doors opened and in flocked hundreds of attendees all keen to see what we had on our big screen and what jobs we had on offer.

We were extremely lucky to have the very energetic Lauren with us on the day as a working example of mums in the workforce. Lauren is part of a new job sharing initiative and as such was much in demand from mums looking for an insight into the daily working life of a mum in O2. I can safely say that we were rushed off our feet assisting attendees with all queries relating to job prospects with us.

On the day, we also ran a competition to win an iPhone 4S. Needless to say there was much interest in this and it also gave the attendees a chance to sign up to receive updates about new jobs direct to their email address.

Having dished out a vast amount of information, chocolates and hugs to the children in attendance, we left the event delighted with a very positive reaction from those in attendance. Everyone seemed extremely excited to find out about opportunities in O2 and in turn, we were delighted to have spoken to such qualified and enthusiastic potential future employees.

A great event and we can’t wait until the next one!

Stephanie

I spotted a job on the O2 career page and thought to myself they’re hyping that up a bit, come and join our big happy family, so I applied for the position.

On filling out my on line application the web site kept crashing as I was just about to submit my details after several attempts I called the EPSC in Dublin and got talking to someone who helped me submit the details, we then went on to have a conversation about the job, she wished me luck and I came off the phone thinking how friendly she was and just maybe it was a big happy family.

I got a call 2 days later from the same person to arrange my telephone interview and again we had another chat. I have done a few telephone interviews recently and I must say I don’t enjoy them as I like to see who I’m talking to but strangely I was looking forward to this one.

I arranged my telephone interview for 3 days later on the Monday at 10.00am.

Monday morning 10.00am on the button the phone rang and I had the most enjoyable interview with Helen, she made me feel at ease and we talked like we had known each other for years. A few days later I got a call from Helen congratulating me on getting this far and inviting me to an interview with the store manager, it’s all going too well I thought. I attended the interview with Neil and again I was impressed with how well I was being treated and made to feel at ease, I was now going to be really disappointed if I didn’t get the job.

I got the call about 5 days later offering me the position and if I wanted to accept I could start on the 26th March

On the morning I was due to start that’s the first time in the whole process that nerves kicked in. When I went into the store in Victoria Square, Belfast, I was immediately made to feel at home and after a few hours we were all getting on like we had known each other for years.

I know I have a lot to learn but the guys I’m working with don’t make me feel like a nuisance when I need assistance or something explained.  I can seriously say to anyone thinking of applying for a job with O2 that it is an enjoyable application process and really is one big happy family.
William.

My name is Helen Mullan and I am based on the new Resourcing team in O2 Telefonica’s European People Services Centre. I joined the EPSC at the beginning of October 2011 and am looking after the Recruitment needs for UK Retail. I came from a HR Shared Service department in the Financial Industry and brought with me 4 years of recruitment and payroll experience.

I can honestly say that Telefonica is unlike any company I have ever worked for. The past four months have been a mixture of excitement, fun, fantastic opportunities… of course some hard work but overall a brilliant working experience and I cannot wait to see what the future of O2 Telefonica holds for me as an employee.

Not only is Telefonica a great open working environment but I have also made a brand new team of friends, not only on the resourcing team but also from other teams across the EPSC and also colleagues across the business that we have met through various projects along our journey so far.

Telefonica really is a great place for career development and opportunities and most importantly your voice, opinions and ideas really count and you really can impact on the various initiatives and strategies within your business areas.

Some of my greatest opportunities and personal highs in my role so far include being successfully appointed as an Employee Experience Champion for the EPSC and our customers. The second greatest achievement for me was being appointed as a Guru for the new SAP IT system which we will be implementing in the EPSC over the coming months. Since working on this project I have had the amazing opportunity to travel to Telefonica in Madrid and work alongside the SAP project team. This has also enticed me to return to my Spanish lessons which are also provided on A+ by Telefonica. So as you can see Telefonica really does drive and encourage personal development as well as career development.

So to summarise my career and journey so far with O2 Telefonica it has had so many positives for me as a company to work for. From the people, the opportunities and the fun to the great and challenging achievements we are setting ourselves. I really enjoy my position here and really look forward to the knowledge, growth, opportunities and future friends that I will make through my Telefonica career.

Helen Mullan

Anyway, we are now recruiting for Telesales within Glasgow Skypark and we have opportunities for both part time inbound and full time outbound advisors within our contact centre.

It is great news that we are recruiting as first of all it is down to growth, we need more staff in to help us to grow our business and continue the success that we have. It also means that people can get the opportunity to join the Telefónica family and see what it is like to work for us in the fantastic working environment that we have in Glasgow.

These roles are dealing with inbound and outbound calls, they are sales roles but it is all about how you connect with the customer – having real conversations with them and having enthusiasm and being passionate about O2 and our products. It isn’t about being pushy – you will only succeed if you can really connect with whoever’s on the other end of the line.

If you want to get a feel for how we do telesales please click on the link to hear Isobel - Senior Operations Manager, talk about her journey with Telefónica and what it is like to work here.

As well as a really competitive salary – you will get fantastic commission and flexible benefits so if you feel you are the person we could be looking for then please apply for these roles via our careers website http://cot.ag/AhtcJn.

Lyndsey

 Hannah

The event was a great success with over 100 people turning up to find out more about working at Telefónica.  I am sure it won’t be our last one so watch this space to find out about more events in the near future. 

Lyndsey

If you invite them, they will come.

OK, maybe I didn’t have someone whispering that to me, but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Way back last summer we decided to do an event at our main HQ in Slough, get people in who may be interested in joining the Telefónica family, ask our current fantastic employees to think of some friends they know who would be perfect to join us and then we can tell them about us. Explore Telefónica sounded like a good name. Simple . . .

Yeah, it wasn’t that simple.

Of the things that didn’t go to plan I will mention only a few things, meetings being arranged for different countries so we had no speakers, name badge holders never arriving, our air ship wanting to escape, lights shutting off unexpectedly.

But you know what, we sorted all of those things out with the minimum of fuss, even the lights were easy to sort out.

I have to say the event itself was great, we had over 100 people come along, all wanting to know more about us and all finding out that we aren’t just a mobile phone company, we are a full on digital company on a journey that means we want to make what we do the best around, to give our customers the best possible experience and to continue to be at the forefront of new products and customer satisfaction.

I am sorry if you didn’t get the chance to come to our event, but from the reaction of those that did it won’t be our last one, I hope to see you at the next one.

Harry

All of this was enjoyed knowing that we were part of something that had never been done before- live streaming a gig on YouTube. Although I wasn’t heavily involved with this I still understood the lengths other members of the Sponsorship team went in order to pull this off…in spectacular fashion.

Whilst the music guys were working on pulling together an amazing night that could be enjoyed again and again online, myself and the sports sponsorship team were lining up ideas for 2012 alongside our on-going work setting up for our upcoming six nations campaign. January is going to be a busy month to say the least!

Now I am 6 months in I am able to have a lot more involvement with on-going Arsenal work as well. This is mainly because I understand O2’s assets in sport a lot more than I did at the start. Obviously, this helps when trying to get the most out of sponsorship. So I have been working a lot on our priority match day activations next of which is the Manchester United game.

Speaking of Arsenal, I have been to a few games already and my first of the year was a great game, the return of Thierry Henry! Now I’m not even an Arsenal fan but even I cheered when he scored that goal.

Anyway, better get moving, will be back soon.

 Jonny

We now have new content that has gone live today.  The 3 new videos are from people who work in our offices in Glasgow Skypark.  We have Isobel McKendry who is our senior operations leader within Telesales, Carl Doig who is a team manager within Connected World and Remo Catani who is an operations manager within our contact centre.

Each of the above give a really good insight to the areas that they work in but also talk about their personal experience with O2 and how they have developed their career.  We hope you find them interesting and give you a flavour of what it is like to work for us.
So have a look at the content, see what you think and if you feel O2 could be the company for you then please have a look at our current vacancies on our website – www.o2careers.co.uk.

Lyndsey