I, unlike most of my peers, chose not to go to university so my working life began quite a bit earlier than others and my introduction to employment was not via the usual graduate route. I started my career in IT recruitment, which I did for about 3 years; I joined in a support role, but then moved into recruiting, account management and then team leader.
I then wanted to make a change into resource management, so applied for a vacancy with Lockheed Martin UK, who I had actually worked with previously in the recruitment agency. I was successful and was hired as the Resource Manager on a large government IT programme (c.300 people). The programme was a consortium between Lockheed Martin (as the prime), BAE Systems (or what was Detica at the time) and Logica, so the role involved working with the other two organisations as well as recruitment agencies and the HR teams within Lockheed. After almost 2 years in post, the programme contract came to an end so I decided to make another move, both in my job but also physically to London.
In 2015 I joined BAE Systems Applied Intelligence as an Operations Manager, managing the resourcing function across multiple clients and projects in our National Security account in London. After 12 months in the operations team, I wanted to make a change to work in a client-facing role and I was lucky enough to be able to make an internal move into the Business Analysis practice. In early 2016 I took on my first project role in our National Security client group, working as part of a business change team delivering a new IT system to customers and users across the UK. My next project role was in the commercial team supporting a multi-procurement programme within the Home Office, before I moved back into National Security.
In my current project I work in the resourcing work stream to set up and staff a new government body. This has allowed me to bring together all my previous resourcing and recruitment experience, with my more recent knowledge and understanding of the client landscape. It is definitely the most challenging, yet interesting, project I’ve ever worked on and I am looking forward to it’s completion in 2019.
Last year I also took on a voluntary role of leading the LGBT employee resource group, OutLink. in Applied Intelligence. With the support of OutLink and other colleagues, I have managed to successfully launch the Allies programme, communicate key LGBT dates, hold networking and social events, work with our clients on LGBT matters and grow the network by over 20 times in less than a year. I have also agreed to take on the role of co-chair for the network across wider BAE Systems (about 33,000 people in the UK), which I will be starting in June / July this year.