Focus on Fujitsu

Fast track your career in IT with Fujitsu Defence and National Security Support.

Fujitsu has been a trusted supplier to the UK Ministry of Defence and National Security agencies for close on 50 years, delivering as promised and exceeding expectations as standard.

Because of this, it is seeing substantial growth in its Defence and National Security Business unit. One of its largest growth areas is in its operational support and service teams, which have grown significantly over the last 12 months and expected to continue over the next 18 months. The team is a substantial size and manages a wide range of desktop, server, storage and network infrastructure with well over 150,000 devices across 1000 sites in the UK and oversea, including Land Deployed and Maritime environments. With an infrastructure of this size and complexity, Fujitsu has a need for a variety of skills and the environment provides some of the most exciting and challenging roles that will stretch even the most experienced engineer.

The opportunities for personal development in this environment are excellent and the whole team recognises this and we see regular promotions and progression within the team. This also makes engineers in the team suitable for promotion outside the team, whether into design, integration, development or even Test.

In addition we also see lots of progression into Team Leadership and Management as well as people moving into different career paths such as Project Management. The team is a real breeding ground for talent and over the few years, we have seen great success in recruiting junior talent from our Service Desk and also our Apprenticeship routes. We are able to take intelligent people with a passion to succeed and grow their technical, industry and customer knowledge to allow them to develop themselves rapidly. However our need to grow and rapid levels of promotion mean that we need to recruit more intelligent and talented people that given the skills and knowledge we provide, can rapidly growth their own career in IT.

Having attended a recent Career Transition Partnership (CTP) recruitment event earlier this year, it became clear that our Service leavers are exactly the type of intelligent and talented people that we need to join our organisation. Not only is our environment and customer familiar to Service leavers, we know that they have a desire to develop their careers and build upon their knowledge gained in their services career. From experience we have recognised that asking Service leavers to answer a range of in-depth technical questions, related to our environment is not always a positive experience, but know that with the right training and support, they learn and develop rapidly.

Bringing this all together, we have developed a Service leaver’s selection centre, which we plan to run at least monthly for the foreseeable future. The selection centre aims to find candidates with the right outlook and desire to develop their knowledge that matches Fujitsu’s values and attributes in a demanding environment. We have also developed a bespoke practical test that allows a service leaver to demonstrate hands on the extent of their IT knowledge. We’ve been testing this over the last few months and are very confident that it can support our need to recruit talented engineers with stacks of potential, however is presented in a way that maximises the chances of understanding the service leaver’s true capabilities.

Successful selection from one of these centres, will result in the individual being offered a fixed term contract with Fujitsu which will provided accelerated development and exposure to our substantial support / service environment. During this fixed term contract, the candidate can expect to work in a number of our support teams and therefore gain significant amounts of knowledge and experience.

Lastly, you may be asking why should I join Fujitsu? There are a huge number of reasons, however some of the main reasons are:

• One of the World’s Largest IT companies with over 170,000 employee worldwide
• Specifically designed development programme that will give unrivalled exposure to one of the largest IT systems in Europe, with some of the most complex and industry leading services
• Familiar environment – Defence and National Security Business unit works with the UK Ministry of Defence and Security Agencies and therefore followed the same security procedures as service personnel
• Exposure, training and development in an ITIL aligned Service Management Organisation with work primarily around supporting Desktop, Server, Storage and Network environments from a 2nd Level remote support centre.
• An IT organisation that has global partnerships with the world’s leading IT Providers including Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix and VM Ware
• A socially responsible business awarded Platinum Status by Business in the Community, a two year partnership with UK Charity Shelter and continued support Defence Sector Charities - SSAFA and Toe in the Water.
• Excellent record for internal development and promotion.

Kevin Old is just one Service leaver who has made the successful transition from the military into Fujitsu

Kevin served for 16 years in the Royal Marines, reaching the rank of Sgt and working as a Clerk for the latter part of his career. Kevin considers all of the experience he gained during his Service career to be useful in civilian life but particularly feels that being able to work as a group as well as individually has stood him in good stead.

As a medical discharge and with only 3 months to discharge, Kevin knew he wanted to move into the IT sector so used a CTP Preferred Supplier to complete a course in IT Installation and Support. He felt the course was well structured and delivered and on completion he received the MCSE qualification.

The resettlement training Kevin undertook also assisted him with finding employment and he started working for Fujitsu as a Mobile Engineer; one of four job offers he had before completing the training course.

Kevin has developed his career with Fujitsu since starting with them 12 years ago and has been in a Project Leader role for the past 2 months. As a Project Leader, Kevin plans and delivers projects of various scales and is currently working on a very large bid.

Kevin has faced some logistical obstacles whilst settling into his job, having moved back from working in Germany for the past 10 years. He says Fujitsu have been great and “very supportive” in helping to resolve these obstacles. He says “when Fujitsu put that they are a people company they really are”.

Kevin has this advice for other Service leavers: “There is a whole new career out there and the sooner you think about what you want to do the sooner you can put a plan into place, and get the right training and help”.

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