I’ve worked in the public sector, the private sector, I’ve worked in manufacturing, I’ve done jobs I probably didn’t see the value of at the time and would have dismissed, like working behind the bar in a club – those kinds of jobs. But then I’ve also worked in HR in graduate recruitment, then I moved to the other side of it and switched from recruiting to placing as a recruitment consultant, so that was quite an interesting balance looking at both sides. And then I worked with students, placing them in part-time work, and I’ve then moved into the careers service now and really enjoy the guidance and preparation side of it, and the networking and putting employers in touch with whoever might be useful to them in the University.

Video Transcript

There’s no typical careers counsellor; they come from all sorts of backgrounds which is what’s needed really in a good careers counsellor. You can’t come straight out of university and go straight into careers counselling; you need experience of a variety of roles, you need to be working in industry. So we have careers counsellors here that have trained in, as I say, manufacturing, engineering; we have a careers counsellor that studied history of art then worked in the City, a really wide variety of roles. So no, there’s no typical careers counsellor.

Team working’s really important. If I’m dealing with an individual employer I then need to be able to feed that back to the team, so I need to have an awareness of what everybody’s role is, where they may be interested in the employer that I’ve been speaking to and how they might be able to expand the relationship and work with them. So [it’s about] information sharing within the team and recognising everybody’s role.

I really enjoy working with students – I meet some fantastic students who achieve amazing things and go out and really I think they’re really very valuable to society and to employers, actually. We turn out some great graduates from here.