How I became a working mummy: my professional background

I've always thought that learning a bit more about the blogger/writer behind the posts and pictures is interesting, so I figured it would be good to explain a bit more about who I am and about my background.

Blogging old school style - mirror OOTD's! This is what I wear at work.

I moved to London in 2006 to start my BA. I didn't really know what I was doing when I applied to university, and I applied to a wide variety of "fun" courses. I got accepted to a few universities, in London and in Scotland and Wales, and after lots of Googling and university ranking lists decided to go to London. Over the summer time I started to think a bit more about what I want to do and how to achieve it. Once I got to the university I promptly changed my degree into something I felt was more business oriented and would help me to have a professional career.

At university I became super-focused on starting to build my career. No Sir, I wasn't going to just go to university and learn something academic and write a few essays, I would build up my skills and explore different professions. I started my first year with some investment banking and law work experience. Determined to tick all the recruitment boxes for future summer internships I ran a large university society with links across the business community in London. During my summer holidays I did a bit of project management, a bit of finance, a bit of law and a bit of academic research, just to try out some different avenues. I also traveled abroad, volunteered, and worked at my university. As you can imagine, I was rather busy doing it all and trying to keep my grades up. It was quite an interesting (and slightly stressful) time to be in London with the financial sector (and all the adjoining sectors) in a melt-down. Lots of friends got burned, but eventually things started to get better and people started to find jobs.

After graduating with MSc, I started to look for work opportunities. A small company hired me to do research and off I went on building my career. After a while I felt like I needed something more, a bigger employer, and more opportunities. I was also aching to start a family. It all made for quite an easy decision - as my career felt like it was in a bit of a hiatus, we thought it would be a perfect time to start trying for a baby. Lo and behold, pretty soon I was pregnant, and waiting for my maternity leave to start.

My work week OOTD - last one is the casual Friday outfit

Once on my maternity leave I started to think of other options. What would I do? Would I go back? I always thought that I would take a short maternity leave, maybe a few months, and then move back to work. After meeting our little sweetheart it all changed - I couldn't leave our little bub, not yet anyway, and decided to stay home as long as it would be financially feasible. Mind you, as I only got SMP I knew it wouldn't be for too long. I didn't want to go back to my old place of work so I started to look for other opportunities. 

During my maternity leave I started my job hunt. It was a long slog of applications, psychometric tests, interviews, and full-on assessment centres... Eventually those long nights of typing cover letters, those long buggy walks my husband did that allowed me to concentrate on calculating percentages, and those quick breast-pumping sessions in the toilets in between multiple interviews paid off and I got an offer letter.

At times, I wished I had an intra-venous caffeine drip. After staying up all night with a teething baby, going to those interviews all bleary-eyed was one of the most exhausting things I had done. But I succeeded. In fact, I did it twice, and was in the great position of choosing between two offers. After lots of thinking and lots of emailing back and fro and calling both places and making multiple pros and cons lists I made up my mind, negotiated a start date to coincide with the end of my SMP, and focused on enjoying my last few months back home with my baby.

And some details - I'm no style blogger (for obvious reasons...) but didn't want to publish such a long post without any (sort of) relevant pictures

After all this waffle I guess you might be interested in what I am doing now. Well, I work in an analytical role for a large employer in central London. Let's leave it at that, as I've never been a fan of mixing my professional and social networking spheres together. But I can say that, although being a working mummy doesn't come without its challenges, I am very happy where I am and see it as a great place to build a rewarding career and little by little move on to bigger and better things.

So that's that for my professional background.

Would you be interested in reading about my musings on combining motherhood and a career?

You might also like: A week in the life of a working mum and Katie Piper on motherhood and designing a buggy

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