It’s never too late to reinvent…

I didn’t grow up imagining a career in the Civil Service. In fact, having been raised in a single parent household on a council estate in Essex , with three older brothers imagining a real career (and not some fantasy one i.e spaceman, pilot etc) was quite limited. Life was practical, sometimes tough, and less focussed on academic success.

I did fine in my GCSEs, but I didn’t stay in education. I dropped out of art college and took a job on the London Underground in my early 20’s, it was meant to last six months. It lasted nearly 20 years!!!

Those two decades were my work education though. I held operational roles on Tube stations, I was a full time trade union rep for a number of years, and spent a lot of time listening to people, advocating, negotiating, and dealing with situations where theory didn’t matter and clarity did. This time as a rep evolved an interest in employment law and I eventually moved into employee relations (poacher turned gamekeeper 😊) and during this time I decided to self fund my CIPD qualification, not because I had a grand plan, but because I could see it would open doors I didn’t yet know how to knock on.

When the opportunity for redundancy came, I chose to start again. At 39 I left London and moved to the South West, no job, no home, but a wife and two children in tow and a self-belief something would come good. The week I moved I was interview for a six month fixed term HEO role at the Met Office overseeing an Exit scheme. I assumed I’d be there half a year. I ended up staying for ten.

Having started out leading the exit scheme, I was promoted relatively quickly to SEO (after 4 months), then after the scheme was completed, I moved sideways to lead the recruitment team, a year later I picked up a specialist HR projects  (TUPE transfers etc), which I did until finally moving into a G7 People Development lead role whihc is where i found my passion.

It all sounds tidy written down, but it didn’t always feel like progress at the time, I was just willing to give things a go!

Adjusting to the Civil Service

Coming from an operational, industrial relation background into the Civil Service was a bigger shift than I expected. The pace was different, the culture was different, and the expectations around how people operated and communicated were very different too.

Promotions weren’t straightforward. Some of that was the system, some of it was mindset. I had to learn to speak the “Civil Service language” (success factors what??) not inauthentically, but in a way that showed I could operate at the level I wanted. I had to get comfortable moving from being the person who fixes things in operational roles to being the person who shapes direction and leads others. I had to learn that confidence isn’t arrogance; sometimes it’s simply not apologising for knowing what you’re good at which can be very counterintuitive to British culture.

Where I Am Now

After ten years at the Met Office, I joined UKHSA as a G6 in People Development which after a year expanded to now also include Culture, Leadership Develoment and Performance. The work is challenging in the right way and gives me space to focus on what I care about: building capability, supporting people’s growth and working environments, and cutting through unnecessary complexity wherever I can.

What I’d Tell Anyone Trying to Navigate Their Own Path

These aren’t rules, just observations from someone who didn’t take the conventional route:

• Your starting point matters less than you think. I didn’t take A Levels, didn’t go to university, and started in a job I planned to stay in for half a year. None of that prevented anything that came later.

• Mindset shifts are harder than skill development. Learning HR theory was easy. Learning to operate confidently in a new system, at a new level, took much longer.

• Promotion isn’t just about ability. It’s about visibility, language, timing, and being clear about what you bring. That can feel uncomfortable, especially if you didn’t grow up around people who talked about careers.

• You don’t have to have a plan. You do haveto notice opportunities when they show up though so remain open.

• Experience outside the Civil Service is an asset. It took me a while to realise that what I thought was a non traditional background actually gave me a perspective not everyone has.

Final Thought

My career hasn’t been linear, neat, or predicted by early choices., but that’s the point. There isn’t one route into the Civil Service, and there isn’t one type of person who “fits.” I hope my story is useful to anyone who feels like an outsider or late starter, and if it is great, if its not keep open and network, it’s often those who are around us that teach us what to do next.