It had been three years since graduation and I would never have thought I would be in a situation where I had the pleasure of working in 4 different companies, 4 different industries with many memories to take away. At this point I was extremely grateful for the years of experience I had already obtained, boosted by the comparison to what I have accomplished since university. This comparison leans more towards my strength of mind compared to my outlook on the working world back then.

PROGRESSION POINTER 11: However this may come across, click the pause button on your life! It’s crucial to just take a step back and understand what you have accomplished and what challenges you have overcome just to be able to show appreciation to yourself and maintain that motivation.

I had now reached a point where I was contemplating a move within the same industry but into a new role entirely. In all honesty, this was an extremely scary thought at the time as my willingness to move out of a tax related role to an accounting based role felt like taking a step back, especially as I was going back into a graduate level role three years after graduating! Did I just waste the last 3 years of my life learning technical skills for a job that I wasn’t even going to continue with?

Reflection was key to really understand my situation here. I have developed my softer skill sets and my perception of various potential career paths all alongside the working world of finance.

Here’s a VERY brief summary of my key learning points to this point:

• If I had hadn’t joined Company 1 I would have never learnt how much small appreciation from one single individual will go a long way!
• If I hadn’t joined Company 2 (supermarket) I would have never learnt the importance of having a positive, happy and motivating environment with colleagues who love to have fun, in order to make work not seem like work.
• If I hadn’t joined Company 3 (data analyst) I would have never learnt that…pure data analysis was just not for me…simple as!
• If I hadn’t joined Company 4 (big four firm) I would never have learnt the importance of maintaining your ‘human nature’ of caring no matter how senior you grow within an organisation.

PROGRESSION POINTER 12: Every single day in your life is something to add to your ‘life CV’. There are so many features that companies are looking for that would never make it onto your actual CV, which are again not ever mentioned at school or university at least from my experience! Remember that people are just people, and if you show that you are real when going to interviews, you’ll find the company and role sooner or later that fits you.

My next move was to Company 5, a medium sized accountancy practice, where I had learnt a LOT about people and the importance of a close community, to be covered in my next blog post…