Company: Oracle
Date: 2018-02-12
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Oracle SCC - excellent concept, with random results in execution
Pros: Context: Malaga SCC pre-sales has been set up as a cost cutting organisation and a talent pool for the field pre-sales teams of Western Europe.  The concept is that field pre-sales delegate work to you, and as a result you become more and more experienced. Then when an opening in said field team opens up, you’re ready to snap it up with minimal training and for a lower cost.

- You’ll meet so many young, interesting and exciting people from so many different backgrounds. It really is a microcosm of the European Union. I loved this aspect of the role.

- For me this was a really eye opening experience. I’d heard of culture shock. I’d read about it. And I’d always just presumed myself immune having a fairly liberal upbringing and having visited several countries throughout the years.  However the difference between visiting somewhere for a holiday for a couple of weeks/months and actually living there is immense! Totally eye opening. It’s one of those few experiences that you only get to do when you’re young and void of dependents.

- The SCC scheme really can behave as a potential fast track to your career. (Notice the keyword potential!)
Cons: -Despite the people generally being excellent. There is a rather large disparity in experience. For some people this is their graduate job, for others; they’ve had many years of experience prior to joining. This needs to be better streamlined. They need to decide whether this is a graduate scheme or if it’s just an junior level position. The result of this was that there are some bright eyed graduates who develop massive egos. And some experienced hires feeling as if their prior experience was worthless.

-Furthermore, the recruiters seem to sometimes misunderstand the scheme in its entirety. Many people are under the impression that said field position is guaranteed if they perform well. However, the unfortunate matter of fact is that it boils down total chance most of the time. By this I mean the chance of a field position opening up when you’re ready is completely random. Naturally this results in much frustration for some people, as they feel stuck. Which is only made worse by the zero promotion policy within the department. (Which makes sense considering how the whole concept of SCC Malaga is to cut costs.)