If you’re applying for an Early Careers role such as a Graduate or Apprentice scheme, hiring managers won’t expect you to have a whole host of work experience to draw upon. They will, however, be looking to understand what kind of person you are, what skills you have, and what makes you tick! So don’t be afraid to talk about the sports team you play for or manage at the weekend, the examinations you’ve racked up for playing a musical instrument, your involvement in a community group or your passion for learning foreign languages!

Ever since I started as a handler, I’ve constantly pushed for positive change, working with different business areas throughout my tenure and learning from each experience. When I think back to my application to become a Performance Analyst, I was lucky I could pull experiences from my time as a handler and team leader. However, they weren't all huge changes to processes or massive improvements to performance. Nothing is too small; as long as you’re tenacious, inquisitive and excited by continuous improvement, you're already halfway there!

Throughout my career I’ve been on a learning journey regarding how I communicate. When I first started out, I was very shy and found it difficult to communicate confidently. I’d be nervous sending an email to someone I’d never met and spend hours over-analysing the content to make sure it was ‘perfect’ before sending it. As I sent more and more emails, met more people, and put myself out there for presentations, I grew in confidence but I still had a lot to learn. I’d often go into the specifics of everything and give people information overload because I was worried about missing something important. I got a lot of feedback around this and was regularly asked to “keep it high-level”. I really had to work at this, and I needed to get help from peers, mentors, managers and external research to understand what this meant, when it mattered and how to be effective at a higher level of detail. With years of practice, I am now much better at communicating and that’s helped me progress into a leadership position. This is just one example of me learning a skill which I thought was impossible. If I can do it, so can you!