I started in the Civil Service as a clerical assistant straight from school. I was given the opportunity to attend college as a day release student, this helped me gain additional qualifications that helped me progress my career and over the years I have worked my way up through the ranks. One of my favourite roles was as an accommodation officer where I planned floor moves, dealt with suppliers and resolved building issues. I've had many varied and interesting roles during my career, including an IT Developer and worked on various VAT projects and provided on-call support. I then moved to be a team leader, heading a development team which gave me staff management experience and allowed me to continue to build my technical knowledge and learn about resource and project management.

As Recruitment Lead for CDIO Borders & Trade I manage a small team who complete all internal recruitment for our Directorate. I lead on workforce planning and recruitment which has included producing and maintaining a workforce plan detailing our recruitment strategy. I work closely with the CDIO workforce planning team regarding building our capability across our CDIO locations, ensuring that we do not exceed our allocations in the new Regional Centres or Specialist sites, ensuring plans and activities reflect the wider Strategic Priority. I prioritise and allocate recruitment campaigns to the team, always considering their workload, leave and recruitment experience. I lead the team on all new processes around recruitment.

I enjoy the challenges that being recruitment lead brings. I have a small team of recruiters, who deal with all our permanent recruitment for CDIO Borders & Trade. Processes change quite quickly and over the last few months there have been organisation changes as well, so feel that I am always learning and updating my knowledge.

Always be yourself, it you make a mistake then admit it, we are only human. Listen to the views of others around you. Treat staff how you would like to be treated but bear that everyone is individual and treat them accordingly.

Before COVID my team were nominated for a HMRC peoples award, where we were invited to a ceremony in London. It was lovely for the team to be recognised for all the hard work that they do.