Steve's Story

What do you do now, and what does your current work involve?

 

I’m currently the director of my own student recruitment and early careers consultancy, Curious Consulting, which I founded in 2018.

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I support student employers with their recruitment campaigns and selection processes. I’ve helped one client over the last five years launch a new graduate opportunity within their organisation by advising on their initial marketing and brand strategy, as well as supporting their virtual assessment centres as an assessor interviewing students and graduates who have applied to their wider leadership programme.

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When I’m not focussing on delivering for my clients, I use the rest of my time planning, marketing and delivering The Queer Student Awards, an annual event celebrating the fabulous and often brave work that LGBTQ+ students do in schools, colleges and universities across the UK, which I founded during the pandemic.

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In the next 12 months, I’m planning to deliver more consultancy work that focusses specifically on LGBTQ+ inclusion and mental health and wellbeing in the workplace after gaining two new qualifications in both areas that add to my own lived experiences as a gay man living with depression and anxiety.

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What do you regard as your first career or the path you originally started out in?

 

After a few temp jobs after graduating, my first “real” career was as a secondary school Geography teacher in Essex on the two-year Teach First Leadership Programme.

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I received six weeks of initial teacher training during the summer holidays and then went straight into a full-time timetable, teaching students from Year 7 through to Year 13 studying towards their A levels, gaining my QTS and PGCE on the job.

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Have there been any other careers, roles or industries you’ve worked in along the way, including any detours, pivots or unexpected chapters in your career journey?

 

I decided to leave teaching after qualifying and joined the Teach First student recruitment team as a recruiter responsible for hiring students onto the programme from universities across London. After that, I transferred over to their leadership development team and worked as a coach and mentor for trainees starting their journey as a teacher, before moving on to a role as an employability advisor for an educational charity.

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That role was short-lived as funding was cut when the new government came into power in 2010, and I was made redundant. It was very unexpected, and after a summer of job hunting I was referred to the professional services firm EY, a friend worked there at the time, and after my CV was bounced around different teams I was offered an interview in their employer brand team.

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I had none of the prior experience that you would normally need, but the manager of that team had seen my experience working in schools with young people, which was a new target audience that they wanted to build a relationship with. I was offered a role and by the time I left, nearly eight years later, I was leading the employer brand and communications strategy for their national apprenticeship programme.

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During that time I also developed a passion for fitness after running the London Marathon, and studied to gain a personal training qualification, which led to me working freelance with my own clients as a side hustle in the evenings and on weekends.

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I left my role at EY in 2018, without another job secured, after suffering from burnout. After spending a month travelling around Asia and Indonesia to recover, I returned to London and founded my consultancy, which made a profit for the first time last year.

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Looking back across your career so far, what prompted some of those changes in direction?

 

I left teaching because I had started the Teach First two-year graduate programme with the intention of moving on to something else afterwards, and nothing had convinced me that teaching itself was a long-term career plan for me.

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I did, however, discover my passion for working with and supporting young people as a teacher, so I’m incredibly thankful that’s where my journey began. My next role as a student recruiter for Teach First didn’t feel like work. I was paid to talk to students all week about their own career plans, and that sparked a new passion for employability and skills development.

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I was fortunate that EY then found me at a time when my confidence had taken a big hit from being made redundant, and that the manager who hired me saw potential in me that I couldn’t see at the time.

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Even if I hadn’t burned out there, I think I still would have eventually left and started my own business, as I’d reached a point where I felt like taking on a new challenge.

 

I remember at the time feeling increasingly restricted, and when I was asked to work across two teams it might not surprise you to learn that I quickly became overwhelmed by the additional workload. Oddly, the mental exhaustion and fatigue that followed gave me the confidence I needed to move on.

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Were there particular moments, opportunities or realisations that encouraged you to try something different?

 

I’m quite driven by recognition, and I’ve learnt that’s not always something you will get from others or in the way that you expected, or felt you deserved. But as soon as I’ve started to feel underappreciated in my work, it has often nudged me towards changing path.

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Thinking back to the time I was made redundant, I had no desire to work in a corporate role at the time, nor had I ever wanted to. I didn’t want to go back into student recruitment either, but I learnt so much during my time there about how to be strategic and the importance of measuring impact that undoubtedly influenced my decision to start my own business.

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Everyone probably has their own “aha” moment, which happened during the pandemic too. Mine was the realisation that the business I’d created wasn’t the business that best aligned with my own values and who I am as a proud gay man. The pivot I made in 2020 saved my business from failing and gave renewed purpose to the work that I do.

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What were some of the biggest challenges you faced when changing path?

 

The biggest challenges in my career happened when I started as a teacher, when I joined the corporate world at EY, and when I started my consultancy. These were all moments when I had moved into a new space in my career where I had little or no expertise in what I was doing and felt massively out of my depth. They were all times that demanded a lot of grit, I’m northern so I have buckets of that anyway, and resilience, which you only really develop by working outside of your comfort zone or by persevering when things get difficult.

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When I left teaching and moved to corporate, I really struggled with not having a timetable that told me where I needed to be and what I needed to focus on. When I started to burn out, I struggled to ask for help because I didn’t want people to think I wasn’t capable of doing my job properly.

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When I left corporate to work for myself, I struggled, and still do to a degree, with the lack of security and control that you have when you are self-employed. There’s a huge amount of freedom in working for yourself, but you have to learn to focus whilst constantly evaluating things and pivoting quickly where needed.

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What helped you most in navigating those career transitions?

 

Talking to people. Whenever I have made the choice to change career paths, I have always sought out people that I already knew in my network or new contacts who already work in the area I’ve decided to pursue next.

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There’s only so much that a job description or a careers website can tell you about what it’s like to work somewhere and to do the job that you’re interested in. You get a much more honest and realistic take on what to expect if you choose to change the path that you’re on.

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I’ve also been relatively fortunate in that the majority of my managers have been professionals who have supported me in my career transitions, even if that meant losing me as part of their team. I still remember the meeting with my career coach at EY about a week before I handed in my notice where she asked, “Do you need my help figuring out how to stay in this role, or my help in finding out what’s next for you and your career?”

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What has surprised you most about where your career has taken you?

 

Owning and running my own business wasn’t something I had planned for. My father co-owned our family business with my uncle when I was growing up, and I saw how hard they worked and the hours that they dedicated to it.

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At the time I didn’t want that for myself, but now that I have been working for myself for longer than any of my previous career paths, I can see why they loved being their own bosses, that said, I can also see why people prefer to work for someone else. Working for yourself, particularly in the way I do where I’m the only employee, can be very lonely, and whilst I am good at practising self-care I do have to stop myself from falling into bad working habits.

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You also have to sacrifice a lot. The pandemic hit just as I was starting to find my feet as a business owner and set any progress I had made right back to where I had started. By the end of 2020, I’d left my life in London behind and moved back in with my family in Cumbria in order to keep the business afloat.

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After living in London for 14 years, I hadn’t considered that living back in the countryside might be where I could rebuild my confidence and for the business to start to thrive. Six years later, what felt like a sacrifice at the time was actually one of the best decisions I’ve made for myself and my career.

 

What practical advice would you give to someone who is considering a career change but isn’t sure where to begin?

 

If you’re a right-brain thinker like me, who is often driven by their emotions and has a lot of creative ideas floating around in your head, and you’re considering a career change, I’d recommend taking your time and putting effort into formulating a plan.

 

I don’t regret the changes I’ve made in my career path, but I will now happily admit that some of the decisions along the way were quite spur of the moment, and I made mistakes that could have been avoided if I’d slowed down a little bit.

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Sometimes you need to make the big and bold moves, it can be incredibly empowering. However, it’s always good to have a clear plan on how you are going to get somewhere.

 

Looking back now, what key lessons or reflections would you share with others thinking about changing careers?

 

Take some time to be honest with yourself about what you’re looking to change in your career and why. Try to be objective and take people that you work with, and things that you can’t control, out of the equation when you do this. You might not need a career change, it might just be a new challenge you are looking for in the same role, industry or a new workplace elsewhere.

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Consider what else will change if you change your career. Will there be an impact on your personal life? Are there some short or long-term sacrifices that you’re going to have to make to get to where you want to go? Ask yourself whether you can realistically make them, and if you can’t, what the perceived barriers are.

 

No matter how much you plan for a career change and how confident you feel about your decisions, make sure you have some contingency plans, especially if that career change involves making the move to work for yourself. I couldn’t plan for everything in my career to date, redundancy, burnout and a pandemic were all unexpected and came at points when I didn’t have a plan B. I’ve since learnt to try and plan for 3, 6 and 12 months into the future.

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To explore Steve’s work, connect with him on LinkedIn, visit www.TheQueerStudentAwards.co.uk, and follow @InMyExqueerience and @TheQueerStudentAwards on Instagram