Read on to learn more about Alet’s experience on restarting her career with us, her advice on overcoming application struggles and how she’s upskilled herself since joining.
Can you introduce yourself, length of career break, when you joined BT what role you do now and what you did pre career break?
Hi. My name is Alet Bamford. My career break was 20 years. (Bit of an overachiever in that regard). The career break was not meant to be that long, but if you move back to the UK and then fall pregnant before you had a chance to look for a job - that is what happens. Even when the kids were slightly older, I realised I would be working solely for childcare money and decided that I might as well bring up my own children.
My last role was IT support, and I was in a smallish company doing a bit of everything. Updating databases, training, and getting printers to print. I’m now a Service Performance Analyst in BT Business.
Can you tell us about your experiences searching for a role after a career break? What were some of your challenges?
In a certain sense it is a guessing game about why you are overlooked. If you are applying for jobs and you just hear nothing back, you must make some assumptions. I just assumed that it was because of my long career break.
I even did a cyber security bootcamp with a company that BT sent a cohort of 30 people to. So, it is well recognised. Still after that I did not get anywhere. It can be very demoralising; it is very difficult to convince somebody of your worthiness if you don’t get interviews. I applied for other roles from the career returners website and did not have any success at getting interviews.
There is also a variety of other small problems that is not always obvious but has an effect. Things like building a working wardrobe, the different way offices work now than even just a few years ago and just building up confidence. This is a particular female problem.
How did you find the BT recruitment process? what advice would you give to others applying?
Applying for this role was quite easy as I had already applied for various roles in BT, so the information was already in the system. I initially saw the ad and thought that they were looking for people with a very advanced skill set. A friend told me about it and encouraged me to apply.
I got a call from the recruiter one afternoon and I had a nice long chat with her. That must have done the trick, as I was offered an interview.
The recruiter was very helpful and encouraging. That really helped with my confidence and her tips for the interview really helped a lot as well. She told me to look on YouTube at competency-based interviews. That really helped a lot as it was not something I knew anything about. To a certain extent I am not sure what made me successful, but maybe just being myself was good and showed that I have a lot of enthusiasm to be helpful and learn.
For any other people out there, don’t give up hope and believe in yourself. It is not always easy to do that but stay strong. Get as much support as you can and reach out everywhere.
Can you tell us about BT's Restart programme? What have you found most enjoyable and helpful?
BT Business’ Restart programme was designed for experienced professionals who’ve been out of the workplace for at least18 months, offering specialised support and coaching Career Returners to help you step back into the workplace.
The programme has been useful for all of us. Just having the support of the people on the programme and all the sessions. It gave you a time to ‘settle in’ and get used to being part of the workforce. Just doing a full workday is an adjustment, also commuting and all the other little things. The workplace has changed a lot from 20 years ago, but even from before Covid it has changed a lot and most of us returners did not use to work on Teams the way it is used now.
Last time I worked YouTube and Facebook didn’t exist and to Google something was not a verb. Having a group that was in a similar situation to you was extremely helpful and the first few days our WhatsApp group was very busy even at night. When the Teams group was set up we moved onto that and still ask each other questions on there that we might find slightly ‘awkward’ to ask to other colleagues.
The sessions on getting to know BT was very informative and made us all feel proud to be working for a company that wants to be the most trusted and not making the most money. We also very felt very quickly that BT wants you to develop as a person and build a career. I am sure not all companies work like that.
What support have you got from the business, your team and manager throughout? How would you describe BT's approach to Returners/Career breakers?
I have been lucky in the sense that my team are the majority in the same physical location. I literally sit in between my Line manager and my buddy. They moved desks to accomplish this. My line manager was very supportive in the first induction month and told me that I should concentrate on attending all the sessions arranged for us.
Even though all the sessions were great, and I loved attending them, at times it left little time to learn the actual role. It is a trade-off between the actual role and settling back into the working environment. My gap was the biggest of all the returners and it was definitely a shock to the system to put in a full day of work and commuting. Tiredness was a slight problem in the first couple of weeks, but we gritted our teeth, went to bed early and got through it.
My buddy was (still is) extremely helpful and patient showing me the ropes and telling me about all the systems we work on and where to find everything. I did have a dip at some stage where it was hard to be corrected on mistakes regularly. I mentioned it to my manager and she said that it is an aspect that is hard in the beginning, and that my role has got a long learning curve. Now I see it all as learning opportunities. As long as I learn from my mistakes.
How would you describe the culture at BT? What is something you learned that surprised you or what did you not expect joining a large organisation like BT?
We have all mentioned in the beginning that we found that we were all impressed by the culture at BT. In life you get the impression that when you get a role and you want to move on or up, you would have to apply for another job. The first impression of BT is that you are seen as a person that should be developed and encouraged to get ahead in your career.
My Campus, our AI-powered learning platform, is a brilliant tool and has huge opportunities for you to improve yourself. I found it extremely helpful in the beginning to be able to go and do introductory courses on all the software that I needed to learn or needed a refresh on. I found a good piece on collaboration in MS (Microsoft) 365, which is a big part of how things are done in the working environment these days.
I knew that BT was a big enterprise but did not really realise how far reaching it is. Running 999 call centres and keeping planes in the sky is very important to society as a whole. Just recently, I saw an article how BT is going to repurpose technology to start making charging stations for electric vehicles. Sustainability and helping the national infrastructure at the same time.
