Blog

A long time ago, in a Skypark far far away . . .

lyndsey — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:18:11 +0000

The last time we recruited for Glasgow Skypark was way back in October 2010 – at that time the iPad had only just joined us, we had just got 3D TV and the Commonwealth Games were just starting in Delhi. The world might not have changed a great deal, but we do have the London Olympics round the corner, and rumours about the iPad3 coming next month.

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

New to Resourcing

lyndsey — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:10:01 +0000

One month ago I moved from the policy side of human resources to the resourcing side and this blog will be about my first impressions of resourcing at o2 and how this will help me reach the Olympics. Strange connection maybe?
Well, so far I’ve spent time at the Resourcing Contact Centre (RCC) where screening and telephone interviews take place for customer services and retail roles. My first impression was the responsibility this stage of recruiting has to make the culture that we, at o2, are so proud of. This centre recruits people who are often customers’ first point of call and is the way that we relate to the public day to day. A great customer experience can make someone an o2 fan and a bad one can be detrimental to our reputation - which is why the RCC have such a responsibility to keep high standards for every day they’re screening and interviewing.
Over the next month the RCC services will be moving to be part of the European People Services (EPS) in Dublin which will cover resourcing at a European level. So as well as learning about the role of a resourcing advisor in the RCC, I’ve also been helping with training materials for the EPS, giving me a chance to see the old world of resourcing and gain an understanding of the new.
So not only am I learning about high volume resourcing, but I’ve also been able to appreciate the task of moving a very important service, with lots of processes, over to another country to a very real deadline. This is a tough job physically and emotionally but it seems to be going fantastically well. As a newbie I see this being down to inspirationally robust teamwork based on o2’s open, bold, trusted and clear values. Regular calls, looking out for each others workload, and setting clear deadlines are some examples.
As an athlete I’m also aware of a very real deadline coming up. Although I’ve four major competitions to go before final qualification for the Olympics, stress, anxiety and not-enough-time syndrome is on the brink of hitting. Therefore, it’s valuable for me to look towards my resourcing colleagues as role models. I need to use my team mates, coaches, sports psychologist, friends, family and everyone else involved in my journey, to help me reach my deadline feeling 100% prepared but also 100% sane for whatever the end result is.

Hannah

Some pictures from our networking event

lyndsey — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:59:58 +0000

Following on from our blog update yesterday, please find some pictures of our networking event that took place last week. We have some crowd shots and also a picture of our fantastic speakers who were Abi Bracken - Head of HR Operations UK, Simon Devonshire - GM Small and Medium Business and Fiona Davidson - Resourcing Manager UK.

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

Networking Event

lyndsey — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:13:28 +0000

The thing is, when all the wine had been drunk, and the last duck roll and cocktail sausage had been eaten we could look around and realise everything had gone really well, and all the stress had been for nothing.

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

New Year for Jonny

lyndsey — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:40:26 +0000

What a start to the New Year! New challenges, new faces and new opportunities. 2012 began in a different fashion to 2011. Instead of working behind a bar as I was last year I was with many of my friends at The O2 seeing in the new year in style; watching the likes of Chase and Status and Kasabian whilst enjoying the luxuries of the O2 VIP lounge.

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

Happy New Year

lyndsey — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:40:09 +0000

In November we updated our Careers Website with some great new content from people who currently work in the business giving their stories about working with O2 and talking about their journey and career development. We have videos from our HR Director, one of our sponsored Olympic Athletes, our CFO from Finance plus many more.

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

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

lyndsey — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:24:15 +0000

One of the things you notice every year in recruitment is that the first 2 weeks of December is a bit mad, but then it calms down. “no one recruits over the holidays” people assure you.

We don’t do things like that at O2.

Apart from keeping our stores stocked with our brilliant Advisors and Gurus so you can get your O2 Christmas fix, across the business this year we are going flat out to make sure we have the best possible people everywhere to make us do what we do best, serve you the customer.

Here is a quick idea of what we are doing right now, we are recruiting a huge amount of roles in Marketing so we can use our data better to give you the products you want. We are looking for people in Devices so you can get the most out of your O2 phone. We are recruiting for people in our New Businesses like M2M so we stay ahead of the game. And we are planning a huge push for the new Telefónica Digital business to go live in the next few weeks.

We are looking for people coming from all sorts of backgrounds, to be our future leaders, so we want people joining our stores to move up the ranks, we want new people joining finance to be looking to be our CFO in 10 years time, we are looking for people for the future and right now is an incredibly exciting time to join us.

So, check our job boards over the next few weeks www.o2careers.co.uk, there could be something on there for you

And Happy Holidays everyone, hope you have a good one

My time in the Policy team

lyndsey — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:10:05 +0000

As the year draws to an end, so does my time with the people policy team. And so I will write this blog with the intention of divulging my experiences, whilst also giving myself the time and opportunity for some self-reflection.
Like most businesses in today’s recession, Telefonica has been changing its structure to work to be really efficient. And the policy team has been working hard to do the same. This has meant it’s been very busy for a team who do much more than my original expectations of policy refreshes and case management. This fast pace and ever-evolving motion of Telefonica, and the teams it’s made up of, quickly showed me why it’s such an innovative company and pioneering the way in telecommunications of the future. It is, without a doubt, an exciting company to work with. But, as with athletes who strive to be the best, it isn’t done without a lot of hard work and commitment.
The policy team were inspiring in these aspects throughout the five months I was with them. They were devoted to the highest standard of work in everything they took on and I learnt the importance of accurate and thorough attention to detail. A very new thing to me, as when I was at University, I wasn’t one to even reread an essay once I had written it (and now I am on version six of the adoption policy).
I also learnt how to communicate and plan a little better in the clear, bold, trusted and open way that Telefonica loves. As an athlete, I have had to plan my time and adjust from an earlier age to most of my peers at school and University, which again, is not something that comes naturally to me. But Telefonica is certainly much quicker in its pace than the British Fencing Association and I can see how the core values allow the changes to take place in an effective and smooth way.
As well as carrying out my responsibilities as an athlete, such as presentations on motivation, and blogs, I have also had responsibilities in the policy team that are drawing to an end. I created a policy library so that an archive of the policies can be stored in case they’re needed at Employment Tribunals; I’ve refreshed some of the policies via feedback from unions and people forums; I’ve gained an understanding of case management through note-taking for a variety of cases and recently was able to support a manager myself. From having no history or prior knowledge in human resources, the policy team have given me a firm foundation in this, and of Telefonica’s culture and values as a whole. I’m now really looking forward to taking this with me for my time in the Resourcing Team which I begin in January. I’ll let you know how I get on, but for now, Merry Christmas.

Hannah

Mat’s exams

lyndsey — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:27:08 +0000

Being one of Telefónica’s Finance Grads isn’t all fun and games, we have to work hard and we also have our exams!!! So as I am travelling back from another set of exams I’ve decided to use a train journey to do something productive instead of watching films I’ve downloaded!

Exams are the end result of all the money, time and effort that is given to us in our training. But however bad or stressful they can be are incredibly worthwhile (though I may not have said that Tuesday evening worrying about the fact that I could not remember anything I had revised!) Plus if I pass these ones I’ve only got one more year of them to go, which seemed a distant prospect when I started.

Anyway, I finished my last blog promising to write about what I’ve been up to recently. So here goes;

A few months ago I moved from doing accounting in the core mobile business to supporting one of our new business areas O2 Money. It’s been a brilliant place to work as there is a buzz working on something that is new, not only to this business but to the market as we are launching a mobile wallet and other services to buy things via your mobile.

It’s been a huge learning curve to understand these new products and services but also everything that goes with setting up the finance function for something like this. I’ve been able to get involved setting up the business and writing the agreements that govern it, in addition to seeing how the FSA and other regulations affect businesses like these. I’ve also been able to set up how we review the performance of the business and how we in finance can help influence or shape the strategy of products or services. I’ve got involved with brand new products, understanding how we identify opportunities and bring those ideas to life.

Outside of the day job I’ve been working on two other projects. One to improve business expenses and another to launch an internship and sandwich placement course in UK Finance. I even found time to go back to my old Uni (Durham) and put in an appearance for the Old Boy’s team (see the pics) .

The business expenses work has been fascinating, it affects the whole company and something we spend millions of pounds on each year. It’s enabled me to look at what we do and how to make it better.

I’ll talk more about the placement stuff we’re doing in my next blog, as hopefully by then I’ll be able to talk about when to apply and when it will begin!

Thanks for reading

Mat

It’s all about the kids ……………

lyndsey — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:42:38 +0000

I have been taking my plastic swords to unsuspecting victims in the name of o2. This time, instead of call centres and head offices, it was primary school children from Oldham that got the opportunity to test their swordsman skills and their musketeer career potential.
The primary school children who swapped football and basketball dribbling for fencing lunging yesterday, usually have 3StyleSports running their PE classes but yesterday had the opportunity to fence their classmates in the playground. 3 StyleSports is a youth project that is supported by Think Big and ran by Andy Williams who I met at a Think Big residential I attended a few months ago. He uses the financial and business support Think Big give, to increase sports participation amongst youngsters in the Oldham area, who are given little opportunities to go to after school clubs and other sports clubs because of their financial restrictions.�
I brought some fencing kit for them to try the alternative sport of fencing. One of the great things I saw from the fencing session was the lifting of normal sporting stereotypes. Because there aren’t strong gender associations attached to fencing, unlike dance and football (also covered by 3StyleSport,) all of the kids took it on with a fervour that Andy said he rarely sees from both girls and boys in the same session.�
The picture above shows some of the children who took part.

Hannah