As a Senior Sales Coordinator within the Business Solutions Team, I am responsible for responding to initial employer enquiries and proactively working with SMEs to identify training solutions to meet their business needs and bridge their skills gaps, to up-skill existing workforces, and to maximise opportunities to help instil a culture of growth for local businesses to thrive. Having joined South Devon College in June 2021, I feel very lucky to say that I have enjoyed every minute of working with our fantastic portfolio of local businesses here in the Southwest and have developed many strong working relationships, particularly within the construction sector.

As a Partnership Coordinator, I took ownership of liaising with employers and apprentices to facilitate the onboarding of new apprentices and supporting them through their programmes. Working within the Construction apprenticeship field, specifically Site Carpentry and Maintenance Operations, my role embodied many different facets, ranging from conducting onsite health and safety assessments to facilitating new apprenticeship enrolments, ensuring everything I did from start to completion was Government funding compliant.My role as a Partnership Coordinator has pushed me out of my comfort zone and has exposed me to a whole world of new experiences, all whilst opening my eyes to the challenges and opportunities available within FE and HE. Building meaningful working relationships has been the most enjoyable part of this role, I and look forward to developing these relationships in my new role as Senior Sales Coordinator.

As a Personal Banker, I worked to meet the daily banking needs of the Co-operative Bank’s biggest customer base in the South West at the Plymouth branch. I dealt with clients on a one-to-one appointment basis, ensuring they get the most out of their banking based on the services available to them. I worked to KPI-driven objectives across several different key business focus areas, ranging from banking and investment opportunities to borrowing and protection assurances. Building meaningful, lasting relationships with both my personal and SME clients, allowed me to ensure my customers’ finances were protected, profitable and tailored to suit their needs. I would take pride in owning my work, offering my service as the first point of contact for my clientele when they needed any assistance or account management functions, whilst advocating The Co-operative Bank’s ethical values.

In my role as a Customer Service Officer, my responsibilities included processing large cash transactions, bank transfers and bill payments, generating leads and booking appointments for our Personal Bankers, whilst dealing with general enquiries. Adhering to strict controls and internal processes was also a big part of my role. I was expected to always remain vigilant to potential financial crime indicators, vulnerable customers, and escalating risk events if required. I thoroughly enjoyed working within a target-driven, competitive sales environment, with the use of KPIs to track my individual performance against the network objectives and I had been highlighted for my significant achievements in relation to our performance objectives.