Day in the Life - Richard Parkins:
Talent Consulting has assigned Richard as Head of Architecture. During his career, Richard has spanned many industries – Software Development, System Development, Web Design, Consulting for the likes of Easy Jet, Cloud Computing for Compare the Market and being a Lead Architect for Tesco. Richard brings years of experience and expertise to his role at Talent Consulting.
Starting Out - My background before Talent
I originally went to University in Luftborough, and got a first-class degree in Electrical Engineering and realised a year into that career that I would probably end up dying within five years because there was a lot of working with dangerous power electronics - so I thought it was best to transition into another career!
I started out doing embedded processes for an electronics uninterruptable power supply. I kept learning the basics of software engineering in that role and then moved to a company doing Safety-Critical systems.
I kept building skills over the years, I felt it was a good time to start my own company with a work colleague. We started developing website hosting, PHP applications and just riding the wave of the web during the birth of the Internet. Quite soon after that, the ‘.com bust’ happened so our company lost a lot of contracts and due to necessity I transitioned into more of a contractor role within my own company working with Tesco and Easy Jet and progressed into .Net C# and Node.
I ended up in Compare the Market from there, I started working there as a Tech Lead and went into Solutions/Applications Architect.
That takes me to now, I’ve joined Talent Consulting, so lots of potential solutions developed over my career and building solutions for Government for a long time hopefully!
My new role in Talent
I joined Talent in October 2021, during COVID-19, it’s coming up on four months so I am just past my probationary period luckily!
I was brought in to manage the technology teams and have over-riding governance as to what our contract teams are doing and build a permanent team for Talent Consulting.
We have quite a few contractors that cost quite a lot of money so my logic is that we can build our perm term by getting in our own architects, developers and cloud developers in and serving our public sector contracts.
We have been able to win several big contracts in the last few months - dealing with huge projects and multitudes of tenants on Azure Cloud that makes it very difficult to progress anything so they are looking to harmonize and use single identities and scalable architecture models.
My Day in the Life
A typical day is…
Having a ‘Stand-Up’ in the morning, to see if there are any problems with my teams.
Having initial chats about contract reviews.
Putting in a framework for how we interview permanent staff and make sure that is published out to the public through the Consulting GitHub.
One on one conversations with clients
Looking at Architectural diagrams
Brainstorming ideas on common solutions
It’s the varied role I enjoy, my day to day I don’t know what I’ll be doing next and that’s an exciting prospect. For example, this week I’ll start my day with a Stand-up which is a daily thing and then be looking at Architectural diagrams and then tomorrow best practice documents, then I could be doing interviews and after that doing one on ones with some clients and come out with some cool ideas on common solutions!
Building Better - What makes Talent different
I’ve worked for good agencies and bad agencies, and already I get the feeling from Talent that my prior work and experience was valued and thought of when considering me to join.
I know Sarah Bellis, the managing director was very keen to get me on board and her method of interviewing me was pitching to a client. It was just a really great ‘out of the box’ way of interviewing, I enjoyed it.
If I look at contractors I’ve dealt with, they universally say ‘I want to stay with Talent - they look after me and there’s no reason I should deal with anyone else’. We have a great set of staff and they seem to really care about everyone, clients, candidates and staff.
I just think it’s really important to build a community - a Talent community and allow that to spill out into GitHub and get a real solid brand to tell our clients and let them know they will be looked after and the job will be varied and exciting and we will work hard and play hard all-together.
If you are interested…
If you want to join Talent, get in contact, we have lots of roles available. Whether you want to be permanent or contract staff, Talent offers the varied day-to-day, which is what a lot of people like.
We are still forming a team and ethos, we have a small team but we are thinking about the way we keep together and get to know each other. Building a culture, you will be coming in at the right time to determine where you want the company to move - and be a valued member of a growing team.
If you are interested in joining Talent Consulting, check out our Careers Page for any opportunities we have!