Silicon Milkroundabout is a London job fair for tech professionals. It’s attended by more than 2,500 people with over 150 companies represented, including for the first time in more than 5 years, PDS.

By participating, we hoped to raise the profile and awareness of Parliament as a digital employer. It gave us a chance to showcase some of the amazing work that we do and demonstrate our culture to potential candidates.

Job fairs like this one are an important part of building our talent pipeline. In the weeks following the fair, we saw an increase in the response to our live job ads – 858 applications, which is second only to 965 applications in January 2022 (as people search for roles in the New Year), and 1,411 in September later that year, which followed a social media advertising campaign.

A team effort across Parliament 

Our initial plan was to have a small space – we didn’t want our stall to look bare or empty. But then so many colleagues from different teams volunteered to come along that we needed a much bigger area to fit everyone!

Alongside our fantastic volunteers, we had lots of help from so many teams across Parliament, including the PDS Communications team who created flyers, banners, and a great video showcasing our organisation, all at short notice.

The Facilities team helped to get all our various deliveries from across the parliamentary estate to exactly where they needed to go, the Print Services team ensured our banners and flyers were printed to specification, and the Procurement team worked with us on merchandise.

Silicon Milkroundabout was the first event the newly formed recruitment team had organised, and as fairly new employees ourselves, we were grateful for all the support.

The job fair begins

Everything was ready for the event to begin – and both days were fantastic. We had colleagues from customer experience design, change and engagement, software engineering, content design, and our business partner team. We spoke with lots of potential applicants and even had the chance to talk with some similar organisations (our recruitment competitors, if you will!).

People were surprised to hear about the benefits that Parliament offers as an employer and the sheer range of roles that we have in our organisation. And everyone agreed: it was great meeting people face-to-face after two years of pandemic restrictions. We had so many items delivered to the event, including our very popular PDS water bottles, and in the end we left with just the TV and two small boxes.

It was a great way to reach people who might otherwise not be thinking about a career in Parliament. We’ll be back for the next one on 13 and 14 May!

We have lots of roles in PDS – browse our current vacancies to see if there is a position for you.