We’re creating 1,000 jobs in the next year: here’s how to stand out when you apply
We’re on a mission to drive the global transition to a green energy system, faster and more affordably. In the four years since we launched, we’re on the right path – we power nearly two million UK homes with green electricity, and our innovative energy tech platform Kraken is contracted to support 17 million customers around the world. We have over 1,000 awesome people in our team across offices in London, Warwick, Brighton, and Leicester, with more in Australia, the USA and Germany as well.
But we want to make a ‘big green dent’ in the world, and that means we need to grow even faster. We want to make the UK the Silicon Valley of green energy. As reported by Bloomberg, we’re creating 1000 new jobs in the UK this year – the tip of the iceberg that will be the UK’s future green economy.
If you care about doing right by customers, and working relentlessly to make the world greener, we’d sincerely love you to apply.
My name is Olivia, and I’m one of Octopus’ in-house recruiters.
Since the lockdown began in March, we’ve welcomed over 200 new people into our business.
In the process we’ve learnt more and more about what makes an application stand out. I wanted to share some advice on what we love to see when we’re looking for new Octopus teammates.
What we look for in Octopus Employees
Before your skills and experience, we’re looking for the right kind of person – the kind who is utterly passionate about our mission and who thrives working how we work. Some things to know about our team:
- We’re a tech company, leading the renewable energy revolution. We’re smart, agile and forward thinking, and we continually push our industry into the future through tech.
- We’re mission-obsessed. Across the business, we’re all relentless working to transform energy and drive decarbonisation.
- We put customers at the heart of what we do. At every level, and in every function of our business, we’re here to do right by customers first and foremost.
- We trust people to be grown-ups, and let them thrive doing what they do best. We don’t hire to fill small gaps in our functions – we find brilliant people, point them in the right direction and give them high levels of autonomy to do what they’re great at. To get a better sense of the kind of people and roles you might come across here, why not *meet* some members of our ever-growing team, like Wenye (Back-End Developer), Zoisa (Director of Octopus Energy for Business), Ruby (Operations Manager for Kraken Technologies), and Fiona (CEO of Electric Vehicles)!
- Everyone in Octopus has equity share options – everyone at Octopus Energy Group shares in its successes because we’re all working together to build it.
The best way to understand us, and the culture at Octopus, is to hear directly from the guy that built the company from the ground up – our founder, Greg. He explains that Octopus is built like a ‘dry stone wall’, where each employee - each building block - has their own unique shape which we carefully fit together (rather than forcing everybody into the same mould). You can listen to him and our Director of Product and Marketing Rebecca talk more about Octopus culture in our podcast, 'Inside Octopus Energy'.
Answer our questions
It’s always super helpful to understand why you're applying to work at Octopus. We ask all sorts of questions throughout the interview process to help us get a sense of your thinking. There’s one question in particular we ask every prospective team member when they apply for a job:
Why does Octopus Energy stand out to you?
This really gives us good insight into how you’d work in our team, so please do try and answer this and any other questions we’ve asked in the job spec.
What our process looks like
For all our live opportunities, once we’ve reviewed your answer, we’ll then take a look at your CV and any other relevant information. If you’re a Designer, we’ll look at your portfolio, or if you’re a developer, we’ll look at your GitHub profile, for example.
If you don’t see anything on our careers page but want to share your details as a speculative candidate we always welcome this too! The best way to do this is by following the below link 👇
What happens next
Once you’ve applied, we’ll take a look at your answer to our questions, as well as your CV and any other relevant information. If you’re a designer, we’ll look at your portfolio, or if you’re a developer, we’ll look at your GitHub profile, for example.
We get back to all our candidates (whether we think you’re right for the role or not) within two weeks of your submission.
We’ll then chat on the phone
If everything so far has gone well, we’ll give you a ring. This is an opportunity for us to get to know each other, to talk about ways of working, your experiences and tell you more about working at Octopus. Each role has a bespoke hiring process which we’ll also set out in this call.
We can’t wait to hear from you!
Published on 22nd October 2020 by:
Hey I'm Constantine, welcome to Octopus Energy!
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