I started my career as an accountant for no better reason than a lot of my friends at school were going into the “professions” because of the attraction of having a qualification which at that time meant you could pretty much expect to have a “job for life”.
I qualified and moved straight into industry as the profession held no attractions for me (or many of my friends in the same situation) and went to work for a textile company who were developing their retail division.
I enjoyed it as it enabled me to use my financial background in a very commercial environment.
I learned a lot about the retail industry and business in general. This sparked a real interest in computers and systems, such that it led me to change careers completely and go into the computer industry.
This was not a good move and after 3 years I was pretty unhappy with where I was. Things came to a head when the company I was working for made major manpower cutbacks in the course of being sold and I exited the organisation one Tuesday afternoon.
As the saying goes “when life throws you lemons, make lemonade”
The trouble was I didn’t even have any lemons!
It’s not the case now as we grow them in the garden in Spain (together with oranges)
I decided to talk to a career coaching company and they put me on the path to working in a totally different industry. As my mentor at the time said “You’re interested in finance and you’re interested in systems, but your greatest interest is in people”.
Quite a revelation, but it resulted in me joining that company in the end and the rest, as they say, is history.
During my 20+ years in the business, I have worked with people from pretty much every industry, profession etc you can think of, and at all levels in an organisation. One of the things I love to do is to take seminars, particularly when you are helping people who have just been made redundant.
You can see people’s self esteem and self confidence rising by the day when they see that they have so much more to offer than they thought they had.
Helping people is a passion with me.
My hobbies are movies, reading (usually 3 or 4 books on the go at once mostly, business and politics), and to keep fit, walking, swimming and martial arts.