Pete, Cambridge, Maths
The first thing that impressed me about Ensoft was the recruitment process. No forms, no telephone interviews, no tedious “Give me an example when you worked well in a team” HR-style questions. Just a good old-fashioned interview with the two directors, discussing computers and football. Oh, and there's the aptitude test, but that was easy!
The working environment is very relaxed. It's all open-plan and talking is encouraged. We're also encouraged to use the company pool, table-tennis and table-football tables whenever we fancy a break, and I believe we will soon have a company dart board (which I'm looking forward to as I'm useless at the other games!). With this atmosphere I find that, although not always easy and sometimes very challenging, the work certainly isn't stressful. Compare this to my flat-mates (who all work in the city) who come home everyday (when they don't have to pull an all-nighter that is) pulling their hair over interest rates and the price of Dollar-Swiss!
I found the training scheme here excellent: after a short 3-week training course with my fellow new starters, I joined my current team and was thrown into development straight away. I was assigned a “mentor” from my team to get me up to speed, though I found that everyone in my team was more than happy to help. With this scheme, it's impossible to become left behind, as the support is always there should you need it.
I'm currently working on some cutting-edge projects. The plight of the future of the internet and whether it can cope with the explosive growth in traffic has been in the media a lot lately, so it's nice to have an inside view, and know that the work I am doing is going to prevent the meltdown from happening. I'll even be traveling out to the States soon to meet some of the people there that I have been collaborating with on our latest project.
Overall, Ensoft is a friendly work environment with interesting and challenging work - an ideal place to start (and maybe finish) your career in IT.