I’m going to Gocompare some jobs…

In four and a half months and I’ll have officially left uni forever and I’ll be on the prowl for a job. The jobs market isn’t the best at the moment. However, the industry I’m looking to enter as a whole is expanding quite nicely, so in that sense I count myself lucky. Finding a job that I genuinely want to enter isn’t going to be easy, but I’m determined to start my career with a job I’m happy with. When I find a job I know I’ll love, I won’t stop until I get it.

Some criteria I want out of a company I work for (in no order):

• Good company culture. Approachable higher ups. Flatter corporate structure.
• Tech based.
• Good outlook for the company’s future. Growth trending. Good longer term prospects
• Relatively close to Cardiff (commutable by public transport or car)
• Positivity in the media, and the ability to say ‘I worked on that project!’
• Good company size. Not necessarily too big or small (maybe smaller than ‘Barclays’, but bigger than ‘Corner shop’)
• In an industry I can relate to, where I can genuinely feel that I believe in the product

There’s not that many companies that meet all of these criteria. The first I’ve found that actually does, is Gocompare. In particular, their media attention is generally positive (recently took a hit in the SERPS because of blackhat techniques – not a big deal). I would say the “negative attention” brought about by the Gio Campario advert wasn’t actually negative. Actually pretty cool… They’ve won consecutive awards for having “the most annoying TV advert”.

They’re also entirely tech based, and very close to Cardiff (only a half hour drive in the mornings!).

Certainly good prospects in terms of the company’s future- CEO refers to it as ‘her baby’. Also Esure were looking to buy a bigger share ahead of their IPO. Seems like a nice future for the company as a whole, so hopefully that translates into a nice stable job.

Can’t speak for the culture, but the company staff seem relatively young (LinkedIn seems to verify this claim, and the CEO is only 38).

Bonus: Gocompare’s website design is pretty good in my opinion (though comparethemarket.com and confused.com aren’t exactly bad either). I like Gocompare’s color pallette and overall style. Most insurance comparison sites have a very homogenous layout, so I can’t really comment too much on that.

So the company has been selected; I’m going to attempt to get a job at Gocompare!

This blog post is continued here.