When I was at university I did quite a lot of voluntary work including working at Niteline, which is a 24-hour support line for students. I enjoyed the training that we did and found it work interesting, which led me to thinking I wanted to be a psychotherapist or community worker. After university I did a year's part time course in counselling while also working as an Employment Advisor for disabled people which meant I had a caseload of clients that I worked one on one with to help them get back into employment. While it was rewarding when people found a job, I realised that the one to one working with people wasn't what I enjoyed, I wanted the energy that team working brings and also more variety in the work.

At this time, I was around 23 and I just felt too young to be a Therapist, I felt I needed more life experience! But I was still interested in working with people, so I started looking at jobs in Human Resources. It would have been difficult to move into a typical HR role so I looked at recruitment instead as it was more transferable. I ended up getting an in-house recruitment role where I was hiring people to work for an Energy company, and I've stayed in Human Resources ever since.

I don't feel I've had a lot of advice in my career to date, I wonder if maybe I should have sought it out more!

I was working in the Energy Sector for another organisation and recruitment agency contacted me about a role working at Fidelity International. At the time I had never considered working in Financial Services so I had to do quite a bit of research to work out how the role would be different from my current role and how I could address that in an interview. I attended four interviews, with my potential manager, her manager and also with people I would be working with.

There was also a personality questionnaire and an aptitude test. It sounds daunting but everyone was really nice and friendly, it also made me realise that working in Financial Services wasn't going to be all that different from working in the Energy sector! There were more similarities than differences.

On a typical day I would meet with some or all of the Learning and Development team and we would discuss our schedule of upcoming projects and learning deliveries. We would be discussing the design of training, who it should be delivered to, the technology or systems we use to deliver it, the organisation and logistics of how to actually make it happen and finally how we will communicate and promote it to fellow employees at the organisation. Often, I will also run a workshop on a topic such as Time Management, Resilience or Collaboration. This would usually be a 90-minute session using Zoom with about 15 people dialling in from different locations across the organisation. I would be presenting slides that explain concepts relating to the topics, as well as hosting group discussions and small 'break out' sessions to help people understand the topic and practice learning new skills.

There's usually an element of marketing to my day, this might be writing an email to colleagues to advertise a new course and get them to sign up or it could be writing a blog on our company networking page to get people thinking about a particular topic or creating content for a website to promote learning to help people perform their roles better. Normally, I have a few meetings, these could be one on one meetings with people who are looking to design and deliver training for their teams or large part of the organisation. This would involve trying to understand what it is they want to achieve, I ask things like: "what will people do differently as a result of attending this training?" Often people don't know!

Other times there will be project meetings, these will be for bigger items such as the implementation of new system that supports learning or putting in place a new approach to train salespeople. In these sorts of meetings, I am usually working with a project plan in excel, making sure we are on track with tasks, chasing up people or putting together documents to support the project such as guidelines or briefing documents.

I see the purpose of my role as helping employees at the organisation to learn and grow so that they are getting the most our of their careers, this goes hand in hand with ensuring that employees have the skills to do the work that the company needs to be operate and more importantly to be successful.

Sometimes I give presentations to senior people or very large groups of people across the globe. This certainly feels daunting as I want to come across as credible; that I'm doing a great job for the organisation and deserve to be there.

I like the challenge of it, making sure that I am an example of what I am trying to help others achieve - being clear and crisp in communication and engaging others when you speak.

Before I worked for an Investment company, I thought that investing was something that only wealthy people did, I didn't realise that it's possible for everyone. When I first started in the role, I had a project where I had to help non experts in the organisation learn more about investment and I ended up learning so much for myself! It's a great feeling being able to understand the basics of investment and know that you have the confidence to manage your own money for your future.

Yes definitely, my role allows me to help others to learn and develop and that is really rewarding, when people tell you that you helped them realise something that is going to help them in their life or career it's really satisfying. One of things I most enjoy about my current role is getting to work with people all over the world, it was brilliant when I got to travel and see people in person in some of our offices in India, Germany, Luxembourg for example.

There are some less fun aspects to my role. I find some of the administration around organising training sessions or sending out communications dull. You have to contact lots of different people; you think you have it all organised and then someone can't attend or the room isn't available or something else happens. It can feel like you are taking a long time to get a very small thing done.

To work in HR or Learning I do think you need to be interested in the world of work, what it means to people, what motivates people to behave how they do and make the choices that they make. Learning is becoming increasingly digital, so as well as a focus on how to engage people in face to face classrooms you need to have an interest in technology and how it can be utilised to help people make the most out of learning.

To work in Learning and Development I think you need to have a range of skills, including project management and organisation, creativity and design skills, the ability to make the complex simple and confidence in presenting and facilitating. All of this is learnable! I certainly did not start off with this skill set, I developed over the different roles that I had.

I don't think the subjects that I studied at school or university have turned out to be especially relevant or helpful for my career. Although the process of studying an arts subject did help. For example, the reviewing, planning, analysis that goes into writing essays, and the ability to be able to communicate your point concisely and persuasively in a class presentation, essay or exam.

These skills I use on a daily basis, so it has been more about the skill learned than the subject itself. While I've forgotten most of the maths I learned at school, I have found that percentages, ratios, the presentation of data, and the interpretation of graphs has featured in all roles that I've had.

I'm originally from the UK so did my GCSEs, equivalent to junior cert, in all the usual subjects then chose humanities subjects for my A Levels. Joint honours degree in English and Philosophy Postgraduate certificate in Talent and Career Management Various shorter certificates and qualifications in assessment and testing (for example how to design and run an assessment centre for recruitment and development of employees).

Lots of my friends don't work in corporate jobs and when I was younger I used to wonder if maybe I should have chosen something more glamourous or more obviously beneficial like a charity but over time I realised that I was really lucky to work for a corporate company. Firstly, you get a lot of benefits such as healthcare, bonuses, plush office environment, wellbeing initiatives, generous pension schemes and more which means your working environment is nice and you don't have to worry about money so much.

But the thing it took me a while to realise is that if you can make a difference working at a large corporate the difference you can make to the larger world is actually huge, when big companies start focusing on things like Diversity and Sustainability this can influence things at a global level. Working for an international company I also get to work with people all over the world and in the past I used to travel to some of our other offices in Europe and India which was fantastic as your colleagues would take you out to dinner and show you the sights. One time I got to visit the Taj Mahal

I think sometimes people think jobs in learning and development are all about delivering training courses but this is usually only one aspect of the role. A big focus of the role is project management, event organisation and designing and selecting relevant learning content. A key skill that is required is the ability to review and synthetize materials and content and to be able to condense these into easily understandable 'chunks' to help people learn something new or change the way they do things.

A passion for learning is obviously important, as is the belief that people aren't 'fixed' - that can learn and grow. I don't think a particular educational background is required, people move into learning from all different education and career backgrounds.

Planning and organisational skills. The ability to listen carefully and ask the right questions. Energy!

It annoys me when our team have organised a great opportunity for people, like a training course or event and people don't turn up at the last minute. I think it shows a lack of appreciation for others time.

I'm planning to undertake a coaching qualification

Public speaking and delivering training courses, coaching activities, designing training content such as videos, materials. Organising events. Writing communications such as newsletters and adverts.