Coming up to graduation, I toyed with the idea of a graduate scheme in Human Resources for a rather large motor company, who shall remain nameless – and pretty penniless too as it happens. I then changed my mind and thought HR was a stupid career choice for a Scientist and a certain waste of my parents money in my education (little did I know the turn my career would later have). I opted instead to take up an Engineering role. I decided that too was a stupid idea as it was too far to travel and meant parting with ‘the other half!’ That plan fell on its head and I was back to square one. What do I do?

To follow my degree as a Geologist with the British Geolological Society it would mean moving up north. I couldn’t travel 50 miles round the M25, I certainly wasn’t prepared to relocate and there wasn’t much geology to study in London. Realising that my dream to work in forensics wouldn’t fund the lifestyle of an ant, it wasn’t realistic despite being well qualified to do it and pretty knowledgeable with the subject having been a fascination of mine since the age zero. See what sacrifices I had to make for the man of my life – that sensitive kind poor man that took pity on me, and married me…

Having spoken to some awful and unprofessional recruitment agencies to talk about graduate placements, in a weird turn of events and something which in my experience did not happen very often, I spoke to one particular agent who owned her own business. She was very professional, successful, hard working, knowledgeable about her subject and was actually helpful. After a few hours of conversations I became interested in the role that she did. Yep, I was going to become one of ‘them’. Other than estate agents, possibly the most detested of industries in the UK - recruitment.

Still to this day I am not 100% sure what attracted me to recruitment, it isn’t the most pleasant of roles to have to do a lot of the time, but with a blood sucking final year student living with me in a flat we rented together, someone had to fund his continued alcoholic student lifestyle and I was damned if I was going to put myself out for him too much with relocating and all! I followed the pound signs and into an IT Recruitment agency. At least IT was technical, a bit of a challenge I told myself, even if it is totally irrelevant to the degree I studied!