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Employee Experiences - Rakesh Rakesh joined SFW in late 2006. Here are the details of his journey so far:

After graduating from Brunel University with a degree in Information Systems, I set about starting my career in IT. I searched through various companies until I found an advert for SFW. I researched the company’s website and was interested to learn that they encouraged employees to gain further qualifications through Microsoft exams. I was impressed by what I had read so decided to apply.

Within a week the HR Manager called to inform me that the Directors had looked at my CV and wanted to interview me. I was interviewed by one of the Consultants, Gavin. I had read that SFW had a casual attitude towards its everyday dress code but when Gavin walked in wearing jeans and a jumper, I felt over-dressed! The interview was pretty relaxed and Gavin asked me about my experiences at university.

A couple of days later, the HR Manager phoned me to ask me for a second interview, this time with Steve, one of the Directors. Once again, the interview was fairly relaxed and Steve asked me about my degree and what my future aspirations were. I received a phone call from Steve soon afterwards, inviting me to join SFW. The job promised me the opportunity to work with the latest technology and gain a much wider range of experience, so I decided to accept.

In my first week I did some testing, and within my second week I was off on a training course to learn about .NET. I was then assigned to my first project at Sport England. The project was unique in that I would be required to work at the Sport England offices in central London. I was exposed to clients on a daily basis and worked with the latest technology, programming with .NET 2.0. I was also responsible for supporting legacy applications written in ASP - it was a very challenging and interesting project.

I have been at SFW for just over a year and a half and have acquired knowledge of a range of technologies. I have recently moved onto another project with DEFRA (Depart of Environment Food and Rural Affairs) as a Test Manager. I was even sent on a course to attain a professional ISEB qualification in Software Testing. SFW’s attitude to staff development is something which still impresses me and I’m glad to be a member of the team here.

Rakesh - Analyst / Programmer