The Sky's the limit for Inkfish people

"I just love the buzz and adrenalin round here," says Gary Wareham, Call Centre Manager on the SKY account at Inkfish's Queen Square office. 27-year-old Gary joined the company in 2003, when his friend Matt who was, and still is, an IT specialist there, suggested he give it a try.

Ducks to water spring to mind when Gary talks about his rapid rise. Nine months after starting work making outbound sales calls for 'Talk Talk" he was made a Team Leader on that account, responsible for 15 agents. A Team Leader is just that; he or she is the captain responsible for everything the team does, especially in meeting their targets. Three years on, and he's a Call Centre Manager working on the SKY account and part of the management team responsible for the development and management of 200 people.

One of Gary's colleagues on the SKY account is Lloyd Kingsbury, Team Leader, but also now heavily involved in recruiting. Besides the 'day job' he interviews prospective agents twice a week and is key in the assessment process. "Our agents need to be full of character, lively and positive," he says. "We need good people; only this week 29 people started."

But finding people with sales skills and aptitude is only the beginning for Inkfish. Another fast track recruit is Sarah Bradley, who joined the SKY account team in October 2006, and was promoted to Team Leader in June. Now in charge of the SKY account Academy Team, Sarah explains "It's a brilliant idea; we train our people from day one to meet the exacting standards required by SKY for all their customer contact. New recruits come into the academy where they are trained offline for a couple of days before they go on the phones. There they are coached by our in-house training team, Team Leaders as well as experienced agents, who work with them as they find their feet. When I first started, it was the intensive coaching that really launched me; and coaching goes on all the time, so a new agent's never alone."

Training is part of life at Inkfish. Gary has been through the Inkfish Management Syllabus (IMS), an internal scheme open to managers, and is now on a Chartered Management Institute course - run by Coventry University on site in Brighton.

And Sarah says Inkfish is a fantastic place to work. "It's great socially, with good people to work with and there's always something going on." In February, there's a 'Thank You' party at a 'secret', but very exciting venue, for all the SKY account staff and incentive programmes run all the time; the SKY account team recently ran a sales volume competition where there was a daily prize, worth around £100, and at the end of the week, all the daily winners competed to win some really fantastic prizes - such as a Play Station 3!

Sarah sums it up: "Working at Inkfish is amazing; it's hectic and always busy but we get, and enjoy getting, results. And I know I can target my boss's job because it's all about career progression, incentives and training me to get there."

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