Sara P.

From History Degree to Head of Consultancy, via Project Management

The start of my career was through a transport graduate scheme which gave me a great overview of the transport industry. I took a role out of the scheme as Business Support Manager. My biggest moves were professionalising in project management after delivering an IT project and really enjoying it. My next big move was into franchise bidding - this happened as a result of redundancy and turned out to be a great move. A baptism of fire and huge learning curve. I spent a year contracting at the Department for Transport and then moved into another Project/ Programme management role at Great Western. From there I was headhunted to look after Resourcing across the FirstGroup businesses - another learning curve and an absolutely lovely team. In between maternity leaves I moved into HR Projects and then finally into my current role.

My current position is as Head of Rail Consultancy. I work with a big team resourcing assignments and projects across our businesses and the industry. It's incredibly varied and involves dealing with a lot of change and dynamic situations. I cover a lot of different work including; liaising with stakeholders, managing client relationships, creating and supplying data and reporting to the team and clients, managing system admin that supports the team, supporting growth of the business, and liaising with internal stakeholders such as directors and accounts.

Variety and people

It's a really big team and so really varied. Different cultures, personalities and humours! It's a really friendly bunch of people who are good fun to work with and supportive. I like that every day is different and it's always a stretch and sometimes a surprise! I am often doing things I have never done before and so there's continued learning and development.

Give it a go!

I have worked on so many varied things and if you had asked me whether I could 'do' half of the things I have taken on, I probably would have said no. I think a flexible approach and being willing to try stuff is great for experience and development.

IT Delivery

It's an old one but was one of my first ever projects and I worked really tirelessly on it - it was big cross department IT system change with lots of integrations and complexities. There was a lot of stakeholder management with some senior people and a lot of pressure. I worked with the supplier and managed all the change control and it was just such a big project to land. I learned a lot about myself!