What I love most about my job is giving my team the freedom of concern. Because when you have no concerns, you will always present your best self.

Up next is Sam, one of our Customer Care Supervisors

I’m one of the supervisor for the Cuckoo Customer Service team. My role is to ensure we deliver the best service for our customers and that the contact center is running as smoothly as possible. However, my main role is telling top-quality dad jokes to lift the staff's morale on a daily basis.

What I love most about my job is giving my team the freedom of concern. Because when you have no concerns, you will always present your best self. Seeing them grow from day-one agents to Team Leaders/trainers is what I come in to work for.

Show & tell - show us an item that represents you

If my house on fire this is the one (and only) item I would save. 

Reading comics as a child helped me conquered my dyslexia, Gorillaz are my favourite band, and they are also my girlfriend's favourite band - which is how we met. 

So, this item represents my past, present and future; and the three main loves in my live. Comics, Gorillaz, and my girlfriend...not necessarily in that order. 

SAM_SHOWINGITEM_1.mp4

I would choose a Penguin as an exotic pet because they’re so cute! 

🎣 We can go fishing together, and collect rocks to my 80s playlist. Plus, they can slide on their bellies to the kitchen to get me snacks and penguin bars!

What is the worst haircut you've ever had?

Well, I'm bald now. But back in my college days I had shoulder length hair until one day I was waiting at a bus stop with a girlfriend and an old man mistook us for two ladies. Since that day I've kept it short

If you'd like to join our Flock and hear Sam's Dad jokes on a daily basis, visit our careers page to see current vacancies, or say hi 👋

The Good Eggs interview - Sam

Welcome to the next instalment of our Good Eggs series, where we find out more about our incredible team here at Cuckoo.

I wanted my nickname to be Dee, so that people could say 'Hi, Dee'.

Up next is Heidi (or Dee, as she once wanted to be called), our Offers Manager. 

 I'm the Offers Manager at Cuckoo and sit in the Commercial team, part of my role involves constantly reviewing the market and working up proposals to create a fair offering for our customers. 

What I love most about my job is that I get to work with a lot of different teams, bringing everyone together to find the right solution for our customers.

Show & tell - show us an item that represents you.

To represent me, I’ve brought some coffee cups along with a baby toy because, in my free time, I arrange meetups for mums (and dads if they like) to come together and meet like-minded people.

heidi silent.mp4

And when you're not bringing people together, what's your perfect holiday destination?

I do love Dubai, sunshine whenever you want to go. Food. Drink. Beach. You can’t go wrong.

Finally, did you have any childhood nicknames?

I didn’t. But I wanted one. So I made up one for myself. I don’t know if that’s a cool thing to do or not, but, it was Dee. I used to like the fact that people could say “Hi Dee”. Now looking back it probably wasn’t cool.

If you'd like to join our Flock and work with good eggs like Heidi, visit our careers page to see current vacancies, or say hi 👋

Welcome to the next instalment of our Good Eggs series, where we find out more about our incredible team here at Cuckoo. 

The Good Eggs interview - Heidi

Tell us a bit about what you get up to outside work

In my spare time you’ll probably find me outdoors hiking across the UK’s National Parks. I love to travel and usually choose my travelling destinations around how much hiking potential there is! 🥾

When I’m not busy globe trotting, I love to do puzzles - all sorts of puzzles. Jigsaws and even 3D ones! I have also played the piano for over 25 years and I’m currently trying to teach myself how to play the harmonica - although admittedly, it’s more difficult than I thought it would be.

When I first heard about Cuckoo, I was initially attracted to its ethos. This was confirmed when I met with Cuckoo’s CEO and Founder Alex Fitzgerald and was even more inspired by what Cuckoo do. I realised Cuckoo was the place to be for a developer like me who is eager to learn and work with the latest Technologies 🤖

Any Cuckoo highlights and achievements so far?

Since joining Cuckoo, I’ve had the opportunity to get involved in some really exciting projects. One of which was Cuckoo’s re-design of the brand. I was blown away by the speed and quality of the features! Due to the hard work across many teams in the business, the brand re-design was launched in August and has since been nominated for multiple awards 💪.

I then moved to the platform team, where we are responsible for rebuilding the backend architecture. We are allocated some personal development time, so I chose to use mine to study and sit the exam for AWS Practitioner -  and I passed 🎉. I love that as a team, we all work creatively and really challenge ourselves to push the boundaries and find new and innovative ways to achieve results.

I always have sesame seed breadsticks next to me, and chocolate.

Favourite things about Cuckoo and the Tech Team?

The people! Every day I looking forward to our daily stand-ups. We talk about general stuff and work updates! We always spend the beginning of standup chatting about our days outside of work, and it always ends up with all of us laughing until somebody says 'maybe we should do an actual standup now', and that person is probably still laughing while saying it. The banter is always on point! 🤣

Everybody is open to listen to any ideas that come from anybody at any point. We all want to improve our development experience, so people are free to suggest ideas for new features, or ways to change processes for the better. I also love that there are no silly questions or bad ideas.

If you could invent any technical product in the world, what would it be?

Any framework that generates email snippets! 📧 I was working on a project where we were allowed  to research and look into the correct framework to generate email snippets - none of the existing ones are actually fit for purpose. 

Why would you recommend Cuckoo as a place to work?

Its an eggscellent company to work for! You will work on the latest tech with some VERY talented people - and even though most of us work remotely, the team are all really friendly and approachable. 💛

Meet Georgia - she has been working in tech for over 6 years and has been part of the flock here at Cuckoo since June 2022.

Dev Diaries: Georgia

At the start of the year I decided to embark on the not so fun journey of looking for a new job. As frustrating as the process was, I was determined to find a company that ticked all my boxes. I wanted to work for a brand that I believed in and where I saw myself building a future. One day my husband shared a LinkedIn post with me from Cuckoo. It was the first I’d heard of them, but they were on the hunt for a Talent Acquisition Specialist! I began scoping out the brand, keen to learn what they did, their values and their culture. It didn’t take much to persuade me that this was where I wanted to work. They had me at Start-Up. I LOVED everything that I saw!

Approximately one month, two interviews, and one task later (all painless -  I promise), I was handing in my notice at my current job after accepting the role as Cuckoo’s first EVER Talent Acquisition Specialist.

So - back to day one.  4th April 2022, my first day at Cuckoo. Starting a new job can be very daunting, particularly when you throw in the added element of remote working, but I can candidly say that my leading emotion was excitement! The day began with an onboarding session with Rosie (my manager). After going over bits of essential HR, the rest of the morning was spent familiarising myself with the key systems and desperately figuring out how to use a Mac. (Still trying to get my head around that one).

As a Talent Acquisition Specialist, my role touches the whole business and it is vital to build quality relationships with the team. My afternoon was a cocktail of meet and greets, looking into future growth plans and sitting in a couple of meetings (where the majority of the info flew way over my head - but surely that’s how everyone feels on day one right?) The cherry on the already very tasty cake was receiving many ‘hello’ DM’s via slack from my new colleagues. Each one welcoming, warm and so genuine.

As far as day ones go, mine was as close as you can get to perfect. Just the right amount of fun, learning and bedding in. But here’s the thing… I believe my first day ran so smoothly due to the detail that were poured into my onboarding process. Here’s why:

Believe it or not, it’s still common practice to offer someone a job and have very little (or no) contact with them until they join the business. Thankfully, this wasn’t my experience with Cuckoo. The Talent Lead (Rosie - my now manager) kept in touch both via email and phone. She checked in with me throughout my notice period and made sure all was okay. She informed me of any changes and ensured I had no unanswered questions. There were absolutely zero surprises!

My laptop and other equipment promptly arrived more than one week before my start date. This allowed me the time and space to set up my user space and log into Slack and Notion (two systems I hadn’t previously used) and have a little play around. As an extra bonus Cuckoo sends out swanky ‘swag packs’ to all new starters, filled with Cuckoo merch and goodies. I’ve previously had the clunky and unfortunate experience of starting a brand new remote role, and found myself still awaiting my equipment on day THREE. That’s right, you read it correctly, day THREE! In Cuckoo’s case, any stress was completely eliminated and this made the start of the day painless and actually enjoyable.

Not sure how, but I ended up being front and centre of the team photo at Cuckoo HQ!

Cuckoo includes a ‘meet the team’ stage within its interview process. This is an informal meeting with a couple of team members that you’ll be working with if you’re successful. Not only is this somewhat unique (I’d never done anything like that before), it’s also a really lovely way of humanising what can often feel like a robotic and rigid experience. This was a standout part of the process for me. I met with two real life Cuckoo employees and was able to hear about their experiences of joining the business and the day to day culture. How refreshing, right?

Also, some may call it coincidence, but I like to call it perfect timing. During my notice period Cuckoo decided to have a team party! Woo hoo! What a privilege (and break from the kids) to travel down to London for a team day brimming with introductions, food, vision casting, games, drinks and more food! Without a doubt this made my first day feel way more personal. I already felt acquainted and had met most of the team prior to officially joining the business.

So, if you’re about to join the flock, reading this and wondering ‘what will my first day look like?’ - you really are in for a treat! So much energy, time and focus is ploughed into giving candidates the BEST recruitment and onboarding experience they’ve ever had. We work tirelessly to refine our processes and remain people focussed. So, guess what? It’s only gonna get better!

Well, I can’t really talk about my first day at Cuckoo without prefacing it with how it came to be…

The Good Eggs interview - Sam

Tell us a bit about your role

Show & tell - show us an item that represents you

What is your dream exotic pet?

What is the worst haircut you've ever had?

Join the Flock.

More from Cuckoo

The Good Eggs interview - Heidi

Dev Diaries: Georgia

My first day at Cuckoo

How fast can you go?