STEM Graduates into Business supports local company, Vualto, to recruit during pandemic
Find out how they did it
VUALTO Ltd set out on a mission to design, develop and deploy pioneering technology, delivering high-quality video streaming solutions globally. With Plymouth as its head office, this global company are experts in cloud-based ‘over the top (OTT)’ video delivery and orchestration and work with clients ranging from the European Parliament to telecommunications giant Cosmote.
In this dynamic and innovative market, keeping up with new technologies and developing their workforce is key to VUALTO’s success. To support this, they turned to STEM Graduates into Business at the University of Plymouth to help with recruiting a skilled graduate.
Victoria, the company’s HR Manager, explains why they chose this route…
“Succession planning is crucial to keeping our business at the forefront of an ever-changing market and we quickly identified the need for a Graduate Developer to join our team. Working directly with the University of Plymouth made complete sense to us, as we could tap into their recent graduate market easily. They took care of the advertising process and were able to present us with a number of potential candidates that all had the skillset we were looking for.
"With the added bonus of a financial incentive from the STEM Graduates into Business project, it really was a win-win situation for us.”
Recruiting during a pandemic
VUALTO hired University of Plymouth Computer Science graduate, Kristien Oliver-Purdye to work with Senior Developer Sam Bewick and Technical Lead Chris Jones, on existing and new projects. Unfortunately, the timing of this coincided with the start of the UK's first national lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and VUALTO employees moved to work from home. Victoria explains:
"In these unprecedented times, we were determined to use creative solutions to support the recruitment and induction of new staff.
"It was important to us that we continue to improve our offer to clients and Kristien is a part of that. Our Software Support Engineers were able to deliver all the equipment Kristien needed to his home (from a safe distance of course) and we used Slack to communicate with Kristien and the wider team, guiding him and getting him up to speed with current projects, processes and systems. For the induction process, we utilised our learning and development platform, Looop, which includes 101’s on all VUALTO’s products as well as relevant training.”
Inducting a new employee remotely
VUALTO’s values as a company mean, despite the physical distance, Kristien, along with other employees kept in regular contact with team-building exercises, including company quizzes and daily challenges. The company's Mental Health First Aiders also checked in with each employee regularly.
“As a company, we have tried to help and support Kristien in getting to know the team in an informal way and he has integrated really easily into the company. Despite the challenges at this time, Kristien is already a great contributor to the team and the business."
"We are so glad we made the decision to work with the STEM Graduates into Business team to achieve such a positive outcome for our business, even during a pandemic.”
Project funding
STEM Graduates into Business is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Utilising this funding, the project aims to:
- Address SME innovation challenges through graduate internships focused on transformational business projects
- Raise leadership and management capability levels in SMEs, particularly regarding recruitment and employment
- Create a growing network of graduate-employing SMEs across the area, leading to longer-term opportunities for graduates and their retention in the local economy.
This project will run until 30 June 2021, regardless of Britain’s departure from the European Union.
More information about University of Plymouth projects funded by the European Development Fund
