First & foremost Mell, Congratulations on your recent promotion to Principal Associate Director! Can you tell us a little about your career pathway with Marks Sattin to this point?
Thank you! I would say my career pathway at Marks Sattin was a pretty standard one - I started as a consultant in the investment management team approximately eight years ago. I worked my way up to senior consultant and then moved into a principal role and progressed to principal associate director from there.
The principal route at Marks Sattin is different to a manager in that you don’t manage a team. Instead, you solely manage your business unit. It’s essentially like running your own little business within the larger company. While of course I get involved in strategy and knowledge sharing, I’m not directly responsible for anyone else’s performance or development. This route suited my personality better as I have more autonomy and control.
How did you originally acquire your role with Marks Sattin?
I had been working in financial services and investment management business before I got into recruitment. I originally had a support role in a family office and I worked my way up to a marketing assistant role for a fund, where I helped create presentations to attract new investors into the funds that we managed.
Recruitment was appealing to me because I was looking to move into something that was more lucrative and had greater earning potential. I liked my job but my earning potential was capped. The opportunity to earn a base salary and then commission on-top of that sounded exciting to me. Recruitment is very much about soft skills like listening, interpreting and building rapport and I felt like I had learned a lot about this from already working in a professional environment prior to getting into recruitment.
What would you say has been your biggest learning from your eight years working at Marks Sattin?
When you begin your career in recruitment, you are naturally more closely managed at the beginning. However, when you gain some experience, you also gain independence, which is exciting. Some of my biggest learnings came at this stage in my career, for example creating and maintaining relationships with clients and candidates, managing my own diary, targeting higher level roles and, in turn, engaging with more senior candidates.
What do you want to bring to the table as a member of the leadership team?
I would say a different perspective, being a female in a male dominated environment, and having experience in financial services prior to getting into recruitment, helps me to see things with a fresh pair of eyes. Many people on this career path go straight into recruitment as their first job after full-time education. I think having worked outside the industry with some of the businesses that are now our clients gives me quite a unique understanding and perspective.
What are your stand-out achievements or best memories with Marks Sattin to date?
My best achievement/memory so far is making a placement in my first six days with the business - I’m proud of this considering I was brand new to recruitment! I approached it like a project, I concentrated on the keywords within the job spec and studied candidates’ CVs carefully. I spent time talking and listening with them to find the right match for the client. There were lots of celebratory cake and well done emails, it was great!
Another proud moment is obviously being promoted to Associate Director.
