The UK may have fallen back into recession, but there are plenty of young startup businesses continuing to buck the trend…

One such place, the now, infamous Silicon Roundabout, based in London, continues to go from strength to strength, with an assortment of such startups – both big and small, flying the flag for entrepreneurship and enterprise…

When you join these young start-ups together, with over 100 others  — including some of the biggest names in the business such as Twitter, MOO.com, Songkick, Wonga, Last.fm, Just Giving, Stack Overflow and Moshi Monsters, what you get is a Jobsfair, called Silicon Milkroundabout, aimed at attracting top talent into UK start-ups, offering over 800 jobs!

All these start-ups and more — 105 in total, offering over 800 jobs — are coming together for the entire weekend of May 26^th/27^th 2012, in the Old Truman Brewery warehouse on Brick Lane, east London. The goal will be to attract 3,000 of the brightest minds in the business and persuade them on the idea of joining a start-up.

Previous events have been focused on Software Engineering, but May’s event has been expanded and will have a day dedicated to the areas of Product Management, User Experience (UX) Design, Visual Design, and Intelligence/Analytics (the art of tracking and analysing the behaviour of users of a website, or a mobile or tablet application).

Pete Smith and Ian Hogarth, co-founders of concert alerts service Songkick, helped catalyse the movement a year ago. Smith said: “We booked out a bar in east London on a Sunday afternoon, filled it with 45 friends also running start-ups, and put the word out.

“We hoped that 100 software engineers would turn up. 500 did. That’s when we knew we were on to something, and the October event attracted nearly 1,500 attendees.”

Hogarth added: “Because all the start-ups are working together on this, we’re able to present a career category to people – ‘working for a start-up’ ­ and having one voice means that when great people are figuring out their next career move, we are considered alongside established options like ‘working for a bank’, ‘working for an ad agency’, ‘freelancing’ or ‘working for Google or Facebook’.”

And the testimonials have lived up to the hype.  Michael Acton Smith, CEO of Mind Candy and creator of Moshi Monsters, said:  “It was a fun and very useful event. We networked with other companies and met some amazing and talented people.

“There was a buzz about the place and we found Milkroundabout really beneficial to us.  We’re delighted to see the event extended to product specialists, as well as engineers this time round.”

The UK Government has also recognised the importance of Silicon Milkroundabout. Tech City CEO Eric Van Der Kleij said, “A recent report by the Boston Consulting Group showed the UK digital economy is worth £121 billion and is expected to grow at a rate of 10.9% a year through to 2016 – faster than most other countries in the G-20. These are exciting projections, but they are partly dependent on getting the right graduates into the industry and encouraging people to consider career opportunities with the many start-ups that are driving this growth.

“Silicon Milkroundabout does a fantastic job connecting talent with companies and job opportunities, strengthening the Tech City ecosystem and supporting the growth of the UK technology industry.”

The events in May and October 2011 attracted 1,876 jobseekers, 168 jobs were filled across 133 start-ups, and £2,016,000 was saved on recruitment fees. The attendees list revealed applicants from companies as diverse as Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, LBi, Guardian, BBC, Skype, Amazon, Barclays, Nokia, Time Out, and Microsoft.

This time there are 1,500 free tickets for each day – Saturday is “Product Management and Design”, Sunday “Engineering” – and they are expected to be filled well ahead of the event.

To register as an attendee, and for further information, go to siliconmilkroundabout.com.

FAQs for potential attendees are at: http://siliconmilkroundabout.com/faqs

If you are a start-up interested in exhibiting, send an email to startups@siliconmilkround.com.

We at TheEmployable wish Silicon Milkroundabout all the best for the weekend, and also, hopefully all the successful job seekers too!!

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