My journey to Credera as a DEVOPS Engineer
I have worked for a range of organisations over the years, which have all come with their pros and cons.
Some have worked out well and proved to be valuable experiences for me — others have been a poor fit due to a mismatch in expectations and attitudes.
When I first received a call from Credera, things immediately began to look up.
Call from Recruitment
When a member of the recruitment team at Credera first called me and said who they were and which company they were calling from, my initial reaction was to say that I had not heard of them before.
The recruiter went on to explain who Credera were and what they did. I soon learned that Credera was formally known as DMW Group and that the company had continued to grow for close to 30 years. The organisation eventually rebranded to Credera on March 15th 2021.
I told the recruiter about myself, what I was passionate about, and what I was looking for in my next role. I said I was looking to change jobs as I needed a challenge but wanted to be able to grow and to one day become a leader.
Everything that I was told about Credera and the job itself almost seemed too good to be true. I learned that I would have four days of client work plus one day a week to focus on training. At this point, I did wonder — can this really be true? Or is this another company giving us some lip service and once you do join, you end up doing it in your own time and on weekends? I asked if this was something that was just said at interview stage, but I was assured that clients were made fully aware of this arrangement when we are put on a project.
On top of the split time between client work and training, I was told that I would get a £2k training allowance each year to develop my skills and that the organisation would continue to support me throughout the process. At this point, I thought — hang on. I am going to get a day a week to train and better myself and on top of that, they will give me 2K to work towards it? In all of the interviews that I have ever had over the years, this was unheard of.
There were a number of questions exchanged between myself and the recruiter and I soon realised that we had been talking for close to 50 minutes. It was after 6.30pm on a Tuesday night and I had to question whether the recruiter had nothing better to do than have a chat with me, or whether he was genuinely interested in me. Normally, you would be off the phone within 10 minutes. It was at this point that I began to wonder if the opportunity was almost too good to be true. I was told by the recruiter that he would soon be in touch regarding interview arrangements.
First interview
Within a couple of days, I received an email asking me if I was available for an initial interview and I responded with my availability. Before I knew it, I had been booked in for my first stage interview with Credera.
The interview was conducted by the Principal Engineer at Credera. To kick off, we each introduced ourselves and I began to talk through my career to date and what I had achieved in that time. I described how I had pivoted away from SAN storage and gone on to up-skill myself in the Cloud. I explained how I eventually found myself working on Azure. The interviewer then asked me some basic competency questions in connection with my CV and the technologies that I had used, and I felt confident that I had answered them well. Throughout the interview process, I was made to feel completely at ease. Everything just seemed to flow and it felt like I had known the interviewer all my life.
As the interview drew to a close, I asked some questions about next stages and when I might expect to hear back. The interviewer confirmed that I would hear further news on the outcome within 48 hours. At this point, I wasn’t sure if I had done enough to get through to the next stage, but everything about the interview was professional and seemed like the interviewer had a genuine interest in me. On the other hand, I could have been another interviewee to simply help someone else as a formality or just another person in a long chain of interviews that day.
Later that same day, I was delighted to receive a call from the recruiter to say that I had been successful in the first stage of the interview process. However, as my background was in Azure and I had previously worked with ARM templates more than terraform, they would look to set up a paired programming test for me in Azure. At this point I thought - whoa, what's going on here? The company is going to go out of its way to create a test for me that’s specific to ARM templates to demonstrate my skills? At this point most companies would have said, “Well he hasn't worked on it, so he is a no”.
I was aware that previous tests had been in AWS using Terraform as we touched on that during the first interview.
Given the effort that the company had gone to in creating a new test for me, I was all the more determined to put the extra effort into preparing for it. I felt that I was being valued long before I had even stepped through the door and this motivated me a lot.
I later received the second stage interview email with information around the interview structure and the form that it would take for paired programming which I was told by the recruiter. I had not done paired programming before, I looked into this a bit more and there were so many different types. The second email I received contained the names of the interviewers. I reached out to them and then one of them kindly replied with the information, so I knew what to expect.
Second interview
The day of the second interview came, and this interview itself lasted for a total of 1.5 hours. This was to include 45 minutes of paired programming, 30 minutes of competency questions, and 15 minutes of additional questions and further discussion.
At the beginning of the interview, I was told that if I had not successfully completed or demonstrated what they were looking for in the paired programming, the interview would be terminated at that point. I wasn’t expecting this, but at the same time, I’m glad this was said as I knew what the expectations were. I could feel that this was not going to be an easy interview.
As the interview started, I received my login for the Azure environment. I began explaining to the interviewers how I developed the ARM template, why I did it in this way, and what the template itself did. Next, I was ready to start deployment. I began by deploying the template with my PowerShell scripts and at first, nothing happened. I was like, “Come on man! Of all the times to not deploy or work, it had to be on this day.”
I refreshed the portal but nothing showed up. What may only have been around 20 seconds it felt like two minutes. I refreshed the portal again and nothing showed up. I was now thinking, get a grip man. How are you going to get through the rest of the interview if you cant even deploy this simple template?
I decided to cancel the deployment and start again. As soon as I done that and refreshed the browser, the resource group appeared with some of the components that I had deployed. I thought now, that's it, game over, given the amount of time that it takes to delete resources and then re-deploy in Azure using PowerShell, I believed that my interview would surely be over by that point. But that was not the case. The interviewers agreed that the deployment had not worked, but suggested that I instead talk them through what would have happened if it had, why I chose the components, and what they did.
I walked them through my solution and gave examples of why I used this component over another. At one point, one of the interviewers said, “Yes, that's a great choice to make” and this made me feel a little better. Nevertheless, I still believed that I had failed the interview.
At this point, they said that the first part of the interview was over. They would discuss this practical part of the interview and how they felt it went. They would then return in the next 10 minutes and let me know if I would progress to the next stage. It was coming up close to lunch and I was thinking about where to go. I could go to the chippy for lunch and get there before the school kids do. Curry and chips with a battered sausage would go down nicely at this time on a Friday. The minutes were passing but it felt like hours.
They both came back together at the same time and I was ready for my fate. One of them said to me that they were please to confirm that they would like to proceed to the next stage.
I thought whoa, even after messing up the deployment, they still want to carry me on to the next interview stage! In my head I was thinking - the practical is the main point of the interview, so why am I still being taken through? But I reminded myself that there was a reason for me getting to where I was. Any thoughts of lunch had gone now and somehow I didn't feel hungry.
The interviewers began to ask me questions about my CV and LinkedIn profile. They asked about my storage days and some of the big data work that I had done, as well as my work with Cloud. They asked some pretty tough questions and I was not expecting it, but I soon recognised instead that the process was in fact just incredibly thorough. The interviewers were keen to make sure that they were bringing in the right candidate who would fit in well with the company and its culture.
After a series of technical questions, we moved on to the competency questions, and I felt confident that I had answered them to the best of my ability. Both of the interviewers seemed happy and genuine throughout the interview process, and allowed me to ask any questions that I had about the company and the role itself along the way. They told me more about Credera, what they did, and some of the benefits that engineers get from working at the company.
Drawing the interview to a close, the interviewers told me that there would be no further stages and that I would be notified of the outcome in the next 48 hours.
To my surprise, not even 48 hours had passed when I received a call that day to be told the news that I had got the role! I couldn’t believe it. I was over the moon and thanked the recruiter for the opportunity. I thought back to everything that he had said about the company and its culture and knew that I had a great journey ahead of me.
My first two weeks at Credera
Upon joining Credera, I was lucky enough to be invited to one of the company’s Strategy Day events. These events are held every year and provide an opportunity for the whole company to get together in one place and hear from our Board members. Before arriving at the venue, I had been assigned a buddy who would act as my first point of contact and would help introduce me to others within the company. There was plenty of networking at the event and it was great to have the opportunity to get to know my new colleagues on a more personal level.
My first week at Credera consisted of onboarding activities and a number of HR-related tasks and videos to ease me into the company. I was also told which client I would be working on and what tasks I would be performing. In my first couple of days, I was assigned a buddy who would be available to answer any questions that I might have and help me to settle in. My buddy was incredibly supportive during my induction period and to this day, we still talk and keep in touch.
Final thoughts
All in all, Credera has lived up to my expectations so far and everyone is encouraged to contribute to the growth and success of the company. There is no room for any egos here — everyone puts their all into the work that they do and continue to support one another. Having now worked at the company for six months, I can confirm that it’s truly a great place to work.
Interested in joining us?
Credera is currently hiring! View our open positions and apply here.
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