Tell us a bit about your current job. 

I am the Customer Services Supervisor for the commercial team at Tarmac for the London and South East Team. I’ve been here since March 2019 and we opened this office on 01 April 2019.

What and where did you study after school?

After my GCSE’s I went to another local school for sixth form and studied Health and Social Care. I decided that wasn’t for me. At 18 I went to Thames Valley University and studied Culinary Arts Management, I only got a certificate as I left early in my second year after being ill and deciding that it wasn’t quite the right time or place for me. Then in my early 20’s I studied and passed a diploma in Environment and Development by distance learning with the Open University whilst working full time in retail.

How did you get from answer 2 to answer 1? 

When I left TVU I was working part time at Marks and Spencers. I was lucky enough to be kept on during the recession and got the opportunity to progress to be a Section Co-Ordinator when I was 21. This involves the day to day running of the shop; so managing a team of 25, dealing with restocking, till points, date checking, and all the customers! I ended up working in three different stores, and working in all the departments. When I left I went to work as a Contracts Administrator for an engineering company, from there I went to be a Lead Administrator. Then I temped whilst I looked for a job and a company I really wanted to be at!

How does your formal education feed into your present career (if at all)? 

Probably my Culinary Arts Management degree has helped me the most in my present career. We did modules in accounting and that’s always very useful in a commercial setting. Everything is about profit margins! We also learnt silver service waitressing so I learnt to have a real focus on high standards of customer care.

What things have you learnt outside of formal education that have been helpful to your career?

I volunteer at the National Trust and take people on guided tours around a park and share my knowledge. This has made me much better at presentations and talking in front of a group of people. I used to get really nervous but I’m not so bad now.

What are the really useful skills for someone in your job to possess? 

I think being analytical is good. There’s a lot of numbers in any sales job! Being personable, and being able to take criticism well. Working with customers can be challenging sometimes. Also I think getting a IOSH in Managing Safely has helped me to understand how important safety at our asphalt plants is.

What does an average day at work look like for you?

I either start at 7am or at 9am, I swap weekly with my colleague. So I’ll get in. Go round the team, say hi. Then I’ll look at my emails. See if there are any urgent issues I need to be aware of or deal with. I’ll run a report to see how many sales we converted the previous day, and look at how many phone calls we handled. Then I’ll do a Dayboard Meeting, which is where we get one person from each team and huddle together to go through the figures from the previous day. We’ll discuss why they were good or bad and if there is anything we need to know or change for that day. I’ll have lots of emails through the day discussing commercial things to do with the rates we sell our products for. I’ll have to reply to all of these and action any points, or pull data from our systems to make reports for senior management. Then I’ll usually have either a 121 with someone in my team or an internal or external meeting to attend. In a 121 we’ll look at how the individual is performing and discuss any issues or development to help them progress. All throughout the day I need to monitor our phone lines and add more people to the call queue to answer as we get busier. At the end of the day I’ll make a list of what I need to do tomorrow and go home between 3:30 and 6pm. I am lucky and do get to go out quite frequently to visit our asphalt plants and our quarries, or to go to meet customers. I also get to volunteer with Solutions for the Planet through my work, which means I go into secondary schools to mentor the children.

What’s the best thing about your job?

The thing I love most about managing people is helping them to develop. It’s great when you leave a role to watch someone you’ve built up in your team take your place.

What’s your least favourite aspect of your job?

Having to wear orange hi-vis on site visits! 

What advice would you give to someone seeking a job like yours? 

Get as much work experience as possible in anything to do with customers and administration. It all helps. Be open to learning to use any software, and get good at Excel. I use graphs and pivot tables a lot to make reports. In terms of managing people, I’d advise anyone just to always aim to be fair and make yourself approachable. You’ll get much more from your team if they can be honest with you and trust you.