[woodss]

Hi,

We've not had much luck trying to fill this position using employment agencies - candidates range from perfect coders without personality, to good personality but no coding skills, neither of which would be a good fit.

Basically we're a holiday company - we sell holidays from providers such as EasyJet, Jet2, Thomson, YouTravel and other major companies through our website. In order to get the holidays onto our website, we use the various providers' web services via XML response/requests which, while reasonably easy to a seasoned developer, is never the same job twice.

Our current website is hosted by an external company who we pay a large amount of transaction fees to, and as such we've begun bringing the site (and associated systems) in-house which is a mammoth task - integration with TravelCat (industry standard travel agent software) through both the site(s) and extranet we are building is just one of the issues we have but the main one is the lack of manpower.

We're looking to increase our team from 4 currently (including a UI designer) to between 8 and 10 by the end of the year just to deal with the amount of work involved.

THE ROLE:
You will be a developer on a young, enthusiastic team working on classic ASP-based web applications and sites. You will manage your own sub-projects and come up with cool ideas and additions to the software as and when you think of them - basically, if the team agrees, you're good to go. Although the role is for classic ASP, full training will be provided for migration to ASP.NET which will occur in approximately 6 months time - the site we're building at the moment is a "get to know how things work" site using technology (ASP) that the whole team knows like the back of their hand.

• Salary is £22k + target-related bonus, performance review after 3 months.
• 20 paid holidays per year + bank holidays
• Stakeholder pension
• Other stuff which will be explained during any interview.

Please note - the role is in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and you MUST be within commuting distance.

XHTML/CSS experience is a distinct advantage but by no means a must (although i'd be surprised if you didn't know the basics

NO AGENCIES PLEASE - WE USE OUR PREFERRED PARTNERS ALREADY.

Please reply to steve@swoo.co.uk if you're interested which is my personal e-mail. If you can show some cool stuff, great - a nice CV would be good too.

Cheers!

[funkyprem]

22 sounds quite low for the skills you're looking for mate. an extra weeks holiday might make things more palateable but I doubt it.

Sounds like a fun and challenging technical project though.

[woodss]

Thanks,

With regard to the salary, I think it is more than competitive in this area (North East) where the cost of living is lower than say, the Midlands or indeed the south.

Plus, after bonus you're looking at around £24k depending on your ability, and you have performance reviews ... plus the opportunity to work with a young team and be essentially a key team member, I don't think it's half bad.

Then again, i'm biased - but I know what the opportunity involves and if you're just out of Uni, with possibly 1 or 2 years experience (or even a demonstratable amount of experience via a portfolio) you're golden.

We'll look after you basically :-)

[funkyprem]

I think you might struggle to get a graduate who has a working knowledge of web services mate (although it's been a while since i was at uni!).

22K for a graduate is not too bad at all especially as you say in the north east.

[woodss]

Yea - As long as they have a strong grasp of ASP then we'll teach them all they need to know, but they will need the foundation as I say.

Definitely a great opportunity for someone though, I love it here

[woodss]

*bump*