Meet Rachel, a Placement Consultant at Northcoders, sharing insights into her role, helping businesses find tech talent, and challenges in hiring.

Introduce yourself

My name is Rachel and I’m a Placement Consultant at Northcoders.

How long have you worked for Northcoders?

I’m a bit of a newbie! I started at Northcoders at the end of February this year, but I’ve worked with the Northcoders team as a Hiring Partner in previous roles for the last 3+ years.

What does your job role entail? 

My job role has three main responsibilities – building meaningful relationships with UK-wide employers, sourcing fantastic junior opportunities for our graduates and championing emerging talent; particularly talent that’s taken a non-linear route into the tech industry!

What did you do before your role at Northcoders?

Prior to working at Northcoders I worked on early careers programmes in Leeds at a couple of different Digital Consultancies. My role was to manage hiring into the programmes and look after our learners whilst they were on the programmes. This is what gave me the opportunity to start working with the fabulous Northcoders team back in 2021.

Why do you enjoy working in tech?

Tech is one of the most welcoming and progressive environments you’ll find and there’s always opportunity to keep growing and developing. It’s such a cross-functional industry, and it feels like you get to brush shoulders with different people in different disciplines every day – there’s always something new to discover!

How can you and the wider team at Northcoders help businesses find the right tech talent?

There’s no denying that the Junior market is fairly over-satured at the moment. Because there’s now so many amazing routes into the industry outside of just higher education, it means there’s more and more people pivoting into tech roles. That means that employers can be totally overwhelmed when they release Junior roles to market. We can help remove some of that noise by getting to know our business partners; what they’re looking for, what will make a great candidate, and making sure we’re bringing the very best talent to their door.

What do you think the biggest challenge for hiring in tech is at the moment?

There’s still a lot of misconceptions from employers about what makes a good tech employee; that they need to have a STEM degree (or have gone to university at all), that they need some pretty extensive commercial experience (even in a Junior role!). I love getting to respectfully challenge this, and showcase how career changers can add so much value to their tech teams because of their diverse & varied backgrounds.

A fun fact about you

I play D&D! Definitely not something I ever thought I’d get into, but now we play once a month. We’re currently playing a campaign which is going to culminate in a big face off with a vampire called Straad. My character is a Sea Elf called Puddle who has a pet frog called Roger!

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