Celebrating Women’s History Month -  ‘Being a new working mother at Form3’

Within August 2022 my world as I knew it came crashing down when I (alongside my team) were informed we were being made redundant due to a restructure. I had a lot of emotions, my imposter syndrome was high but mostly the overarching worry of what this could mean for me as a successful working mother, could I still have a successful career as well as be a great mum?

Luckily, I was able to answer that question very quickly, in the guise of the Form3 Senior People Partner interview process. Everyone was so warm and welcoming and were genuinely interested to know more about me as a person, what I wanted from the role, how I wanted the role to work and what I might need as well of course as assessing my capabilities to fulfil the role. This was such a refreshing take for an interview process especially as the candidate market was hot and I was itching to be part of this impressive culture.

All Form3 job adverts encourage candidates to discuss flexible working arrangements within the interview process, not only this but the recruiter actively started the discussion about flexible working which was a huge relief for me. Having had prior history within interview stages at other companies and having to broach the topic of flexible working to quickly be shut down had left a sour taste about having to do so again. However, I was blessed with being supported by such a wonderful internal recruiter who highlighted that my 4 day working request was common amongst many other Form3 employees and Form3 would happily support effective upon joining.

This was so breathtakingly refreshing, there would be no trial period, no waiting period until a probation had been passed and no ask to be flexible and work on my non-working day which is a day I spend with my very young daughter. Form3 understands how important it is to have time with family. I couldn’t quite believe my luck, so of course had to say yes to joining!

Since becoming part of the Form3 People Team, I haven’t looked back, I am able to achieve my aim of having a successful and well supported career by peers and my stakeholders, as well as being a present mummy. I’m able to drop and pick my daughter up from nursery due to working remotely, have a day in the week just for the two of us and be stretched and fulfilled in my career. Yes, I may still have imposter syndrome but who wouldn’t, when you work with such a talented bunch of people.

If you would like to read more on this topic, we recently became MotherBoard signatories, a community, content & meetup series, and charter designed to drive positive change throughout the UK technology and data. You can find the blog post here, Spotlight on Form3 Chief Operating Officer (COO), Eimear O'Connor.