Reed.co.uk and Godel were recently named finalists in the 2022 Digital Technology Leaders Awards. The combined team has been shortlisted for “Mobile Project of the Year.” Winners will be announced at a live awards ceremony on Wednesday 6 July in London.

We spoke to Tom King, Senior product Manager at Reed.co.uk to learn about his role, the shortlisted mobile team and what he looks forward to the most about the upcoming awards ceremony.

What’s your favourite thing about being part of the Reed & Godel Mobile tech team?

Coming into the team a year ago, you could tell straight away there was a great culture that we have built with Godel. A lot of the time when you work with a third-party business, it’s hard to create a team culture because they are essentially a separate organisation. At Reed, and working with Godel, it’s the most unified I’ve seen in a team in terms of culture, and ways of working together – Godel are really just part of the group.

For me, as well as working with intelligent and really open and creative people who are very willing the try and test new things, I’d say the best thing about being part of the Reed/Godel mobile team is the culture and how everyone gets along so well. We also do a lot of team bonding to really cement the relationship within our team.

Can you describe some of the projects you’ve been working on with the mobile team?

The past 6-12 months have definitely been a candidate-driven market. There has been a surge in vacancies, and employers are trying to find skilled candidates. For us at Reed, we have had a big focus on improving the way we match candidates with the right employer. When a candidate looks on Reed.co.uk for a job, it will be for a job they genuinely want to apply for as quickly as possible within our Reed experience. This is a key challenge we have seen across the industry as the race to fill vacancies with skilled people has rapidly increased since the pandemic.

We look to champion the candidate in terms of their job searching experience and being very empathetic that everyone is at different stages and searching for a job for different reasons. We have been putting emphasis on driving candidate feedback from recruiters and employers and passing that feedback on to the team. We have also introduced factors like average salary etc. to try and give candidates as much information and context to their job search as possible rather than just leaving them in the dark.

What made you get into a Product Manager role?

In my career, I’ve always been fascinated by problems or excited by the problem that we’re trying to address. I originally started the early stages of my career playing football professionally and then I moved into working for the FA at Wembley Stadium, which was my first step in moving away from a very sport-focused problem.

What’s nice about working for a company like Reed is that the problem is quite universal, in terms of everyone having gone through the process of trying to find a job and the troubles that come with it. I’m just intrigued about some of the challenges, looking behind the curtain at applying for jobs, looking at how challenging that can be and trying to fix that.

Why are events like the Digital Technology Leaders Awards important to the IT Industry?

There’s big importance on the exposure and being able to show off the work we’re doing to a wider audience. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for the teams to get the well-deserved acknowledgement for the work they’re doing, demonstrating some interesting features and really impressive outcomes for the business – to get that acknowledgement on a wider scale is excellent for both the Reed.co.uk and Godel team.