Cornerstone Design & Marketing has strengthened its offering, hiring two new full-stack developers, Pete Collum and Mo Ali.
Collum and Ali’s appointment brings the Oldham agency’s headcount to 19. In total, six new recruits have joined the team in the past 12 months.
Together, they’re working on a range of development projects for public and private sector clients, across leisure and gyms, local authorities, manufacturing and retail.
Pete Collum spent time working for the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Bank of New York Mellon, asset management specialist Arrow Global, and the Systra engineering consultancy, before transitioning to software development.
He said: “It was really interesting to learn how IT teams work, dealing with data, clients and lots of variables. I met some very skilled developers there. I also went on a three-month bootcamp with Code Nation, learning different software languages and creating different projects.
“I knew about Cornerstone Design & Marketing for a number of reasons. As a MMU graduate, I have access to the university’s online career hub, where I saw the Cornerstone developer vacancies advertised. I applied, had a couple of interviews online and completed a mini website project before physically visiting the Cornerstone office, which is really nice.
“Because of the COVID-19 restrictions, the number of people working in the office has been limited and we’ve also worked from home. But we’ve been made very welcome and had good support. It’s also nice to be working with… Mo, and bouncing ideas off each other.”
Mo Ali previously worked for two agencies in Manchester and Oldham prior to joining Cornerstone. Ali said: “Joining Cornerstone gives me the opportunity to develop my skills and experience including working on custom-built websites. There is a good variety of work here which I enjoy. I’m using a range of HTML, CSS, WordPress, PHP and JavaScript languages and software. As I develop, I’ll be moving on to the Laravel framework and developing larger scale websites.
“I’ve been made very welcome at Cornerstone and had good support in settling-in. The national lockdowns and other restrictions have meant we’ve had to work in the office and at home at different times, but everyone has been really supportive. We’ve still been able to meet all the different departments, either in the office or remotely, and got insight into the different services at Cornerstone, from creative and digital to PR and the print room.”
