Early Careers Development – Presentations

Dan Hawes is co-founder of Graduate Recruitment Bureau (GRB) – a recruitment consultancy helping recruiters source exceptionally talented Russell Group students and graduates for entry level and mid-level roles. GRB is based in Brighton and London and have clients from a broad spectrum of industries such as PWC, British Airways, Unilever, Tesco and Ocado. He is a CIM Chartered Marketer and GRB were recently awarded Investors in People status.

Throughout her career Kirstie has spearheaded the development of award winning products and services across the skills sector and is a passionate advocate of the role of digital and social media in transforming how people live, learn and work. Her commitment to this area was recognised when she was awarded an MBE in the Queens Honours for her services to e-learning in the FE/Adult sector in 2011. Her career highlights include nine years with learndirect where she was Director of Products, Technology and Marketing and created the first large scale brand and online offer in the provision of adult learning and online careers service which helped 11 million adults. Kirstie has helped to shape policy around skills in the UK and was part of the David Blunkett Task Force Group that established the Green paper: ‘Learning Age’, she was an active member of the Race Online 2012 campaign and part of the Government’s ICT review and the European Commission Review Team. In 2014 Kirstie was appointed as a commissioner on the future of apprenticeships for a commission chaired by Lord Glasman and Robert Halfon MP. Kirstie established the City and Guilds Industry Board, made up of a wide spread of employers and sectors, in 2014 as a way of connecting education and employers to inform the development of a quality delivery model for Apprenticeship reforms.

Shaun Meekins, Head of Early Careers Operations, Barclays Bank PLC.  Shaun has worked for Barclays for the last ten years in Senior Resourcing/HR Partner roles across a number of disciplines but most recently, and the last four years, as the Head of all Apprentice deliverables pan-Barclays-UK, with a focus on Foundation, Progression and Higher Apprentice on-boarding.  His team have created more than 2500 Apprenticeships in the last four years and were the first to launch theTraineeship Programme in 2014 and an all-encompassing, non-age specific ‘Bolder’ Programme in 2015.  Prior to Barclays, Shaun has worked for both Capita as Lead Resourcing Manager and also RBS in the capacity of Resourcing Partner.

Nick has worked as retail manager for both food and DIY companies. He worked for 2 years as aTraining and Development manager for a Healthcare organisation in New Zealand before returning to the UK and taking up a position with Tesco as an operational Personnel Manager. He has worked in a number of different functions across the business delivering a variety of roles including Group Performance Management, Organisation Design, Training and Development and latterly the design and delivery of both retail and office based higher apprenticeship programmes. He currently hasaccountability for all Early Careers programmes for Tesco.

An HR professional and early careers specialist for over 15 years, Paul has led and grown thegraduate, internship and apprenticeship proposition at AXA UK over the last 8 years.  Passionate about contributing to business success through the identification and development of talent, in improving the employability of young people, and in growing the profile of careers in insurance industry.  Paul is a key contributor to AXA’s global graduate initiatives including a new global graduate brand, an annual global graduate camp in Paris to bring leaders and graduates together, and the multi-award winning Great Global Adventure game.

Camilla joined Sky to scale and future-proof their Work Experience and TV Placements. In just under a year she has grown their work experience to 900 opportunities per year, developing the programme to include every department from Finance to Production, Software Development to Make Up. The programme has been awarded the Gold Work Experience Quality Standard by Fair Train. Camilla has extensive experience gained over a decade working with young people to provide them with meaningful opportunities. Prior to Sky, Camilla worked at GoThinkBig with 50 corporate businesses to create and develop tailored programmes for each business which pipelined the best young talent into their opportunities. Camilla’s career started in the charity sector where shemanaged national youth programmes at Terrence Higgins Trust and Catch22 giving her a wealth of experience working with different groups of young people and tailoring programmes to their needs.

Whilst I was at University I worked part-time in the HR Department of a Supermarket Chain – this ignited my interest in a people-focussed role. After University I started on the Graduate Scheme with IBM in a Business Operations role in one of our technical divisions, before moving into HR/Recruitment just over 2 years ago. I started supporting the Graduate Recruitment Team and for the last 14 months have been leading School Leavers and Undergraduate Recruitment. I am passionate about the fresh, innovative mind-set brought into the corporate environment by Early Careers and find it very rewarding working in this enthusiastic market.

James completed his CIMA to become a qualified accountant and has since spent the past 13 years working within a leadership role in BPP Professional Apprenticeship training.  James’s real passion lies with helping young people gain access to aspirational careers whilst at the same timesupporting employers to establish apprenticeship programmes.  James spearheaded the campaign to create the first ever government-approved apprenticeship for solicitors.  Prior to working at BPP James worked for Kaplan Financial and VA Tech. The focus of James’s role is to devise and deliver the strategy for Professional Apprenticeships and Financial Services which is aligned to BPP longer term plans. James has worked on some of BPP’s key corporate accounts including RBS, JP Morgan and Zurich.

Staring out on the Graduate Leadership Programme at Barclays, Emma worked her way up through various HR roles including recruitment, learning and development and talent managementbefore specialising in Graduates. After setting up the Corporate Banking graduate programme there, Emma left the world of Banking to become the Head of Graduate Recruitment and Development at Taylor Wessing Law Firm, responsible for the management of their trainee solicitor programmes. After navigating through the recession, Emma decided to return to the Financial Services sector as the Early Career Head of Programmes at RBS, responsible for the programme management function for all RBS Group graduate and apprenticeship schemes (from the point of induction to roll off). Now at BPP, Emma’s role as Head of Financial Services Apprenticeships and Strategic Partnerships is to work with key clients, supporting them to develop their early career strategies and design and deliver apprenticeship programmes that are aligned to their business needs.

James has 16 years’ experience in the student marketing and attraction and is a regular media commentator on careers and entrepreneurship – he has been featured in The Economist, Management Today, The Times, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph as well as on BBC Radio 4, Channel 4, CNN and on ITV. James is CEO & Founder of Bright Network, an organisation that connects 80,000+ graduate with over 250 employers including Google, McKinsey, UBS and Slaughter and May. Through helping the UK’s best and brightest graduates with high quality digital careers support, dynamic events and personalized support, Bright Network is able to help partner firms find the talent they need to grow their businesses.

Michelle graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a degree in Business Studies, and has followed a career focussed on Employee Development. Whilst working for Rolls-Royce Michelle has gained over 10 years’ experience in Graduate Recruitment and Development across functions such as Engineering, Operations, Commercial, and Customer Management. Michelle is responsible forevaluation, design and delivery of Graduate Development Programmes, focussing on standardisation, continual improvement and integrating Graduate Development within the Rolls-Royce architecture and strategy for developing future talent and high potential. This involves co-ordinating activities with global stakeholders and partners to develop global processes, communicating supporting strategy, and change management at all levels in the organisation.

Stacey graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a BA (Hons) in Human Resource Management. She held a variety of HR roles at Vodafone UK before joining Waitrose where she worked in the Partner Development team designing L&D solutions for Waitrose branch managers. Stacey joined Dyson in October 2015 in a newly created Graduate Development Manager role where she manages the development and rotations of Dyson’s significantly increasing graduate and apprentice population.