News

The IT industry’s innovative ways have now extended to their recruitment process with one company offering to pay a flat’s power bill when applying for a role within their company. Datacom Systems Limited has been coming to the University’s career expos for around eight years now, but last year changed the stakes with their “Powered by Datacom,” which pays the winner’s power bill over the three coldest winter months.

The “Powered by Datacom” promotion links in with the Company’s recruitment endeavours and requires applicants be in their final year of study, register their interest at the expo with Datacom, and be majoring in one of the disciplines Datacom are interested in, the list of which includes subjects as diverse as Anthropology and Applied Science, to Geography and Music Technology. Critic spoke with Simon Ferrari, General Manager at Datacom Systems Limited, who said their broad range of interested disciplines “reflects our appetite to think differently and look outside the box. [IT] is more than creating software and measuring stuff, it’s much more diverse.”

Ferrari continued that “it’s a vital thing finding new grads,” and the company wanted “Powered by Datacom” to be something that would “reflect the culture of the company as a creative and interesting industry.” He said that the prize “needed to be slow release, it needed to be of high value to students, and it had to be something the whole flat could benefit from.” The “brilliant” idea of taking the literal conclusion of the promotion’s namesake was something Ferrari identified with after having lived in Dunedin and experienced the lack of insulation and frugalities among flatmates in regard to heating.

The prize is capped at $350 per month, and Ferrari admitted “one of my fears was people passing out high voltage cables from one flat to another.” Last year’s winner Ella Hutching said that even in a flat of eight girls it was “easy to be excessive and max out the monthly allowance.” She said as a Computer Science student, Datacom was an obvious choice when applying for jobs and the competition was “just a bonus.” She said while an iPad or similar was an appealing prize, she probably would have sold it to pay for the bills anyway.

Datacom last year hired over 30 graduates from various disciplines, around 10 of which were Otago Graduates. They will be at the Careers Fair on 6 May, along with numerous other recruiters.