My career
25 years ago, I fell into recruitment. After studying Law at a university in Cardiff and working in Bristol, I wanted to move back to London, and I saw an opportunity for a recruitment vacancy which required no previous experience. It was an opportunity to get myself in.
When I joined NPL it was a start of a big growth spurt in terms of the company size. The focus for me was developing the team and continuing a direct sourcing model. My experience is working with an outsourced model, but in-house worked much better for NPL. I knew that in order for us to continue to grow, we needed to really look at our systems, processes and digital enhancements.
My challenges
I became very poorly with early onset psoriatic arthritis and at points I couldn’t use my hands and could barely walk. I made the decision to stop working. The company I was working for was brilliant – I had quite a bit of time off and then came back very part time. However, I just wasn’t able to work and focus on my health. So, I made the difficult decision to resign and didn’t work for about three years. During that time, I had a lot of medical and surgical intervention. It was a difficult time for me, but it was the right decision.