I joined Compare the Market during lockdown, and everyone in the department and the wider organisation has made me feel welcome. They’ve also shown that, despite not being able to go into the office, it’s still possible to form great friendships and it’s an honour working in such a great team.
Since joining, we’ve had many virtual socials and more recently lots more where we’ve actually met up in person – Compare the Market has always been famed for this and I haven’t been disappointed!
The company hosts lots of events, from regular things like booking out cinemas for their staff to enjoy the latest films with free popcorn and drinks, to bigger events where they’ll arrange for guest speakers alongside a great spread of food and drinks.
At Compare the Market, we’ve formed a product community where each week one of our Product Managers will share an overview of the work they’re doing within their team.
This is a great way of learning more about different areas of the business that I don’t always work with, and it’s led to lots of interesting follow-up discussions about how each of the teams can collaborate more. It’s also a great opportunity to post any questions you might have as there’s a real wealth of experience within the product community and always someone that can help.
Compare the Market are also dedicated to developing their staff. In my time here, they’ve funded a Prince2 Agile Practitioner course and I’ve been able to apply many of the learnings from this to my job as a Data Product Manager. They always encourage the teams to develop a way of working that suits the situation, and this is something I really enjoy about Compare the Market as it makes it much easier to add value and alter things that aren’t as streamlined as they could be.
In terms of ways of working, we operate with an Agile methodology, which basically means that we value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation and responding to change over following a plan.
While we still see value in processes and tools, documentation, contract negotiations and following a plan, we recognise that things need to adapt if we want to continue being a market leader in our industry.
We look to deliver work iteratively and incrementally with a test-and-learn approach to development – this keeps us close to our customer and allows us to pivot our focus when needed. We have innovation workshops and hackathons to help us keep up with the pace of change, and because the objective is also to have fun and be creative, we get so much value out of these meetings.
In addition, we regularly put aside independent development time each month to either upskill or focus on gaining a deeper understanding on a key topic of interest. Personally, I regularly attend external workshops to help stay in touch with what’s going on outside of the business, this includes conferences such as ProductCon, the largest product management conference. Compare the Market actively encourages all learning and development and will share interesting seminars/workshops that people might like to join.
What I also really like about Compare the Market is that they offer CSR (corporate social responsibility) days to all colleagues. Last Halloween, our team spent the day helping out at Sacrewell Farm setting up the Halloween decorations, it was a fantastic day putting out thousands of pumpkins and it really did help the team there get everything in place ready to open it up to the public. Compare the Market do many initiatives like this, including their upcoming ‘Big Sleepout’ where all money raised will go towards MyBnk’s homeless prevention programme.
In terms of charity contributions, Compare the Market have also supported me personally when I completed a 20-mile run combating 200 obstacles along the way – the business match-funded my contributions and this is something they offer to every employee.
Overall, I’d certainly recommend Compare the Market as a great place to work and develop.
Whatever your specialist area, wherever you are in your journey, we’d love to hear from you.
