Virginia Hicks, MD at Comma Partners
“I enjoyed the break initially after working for ten years but quickly tired of the long days of job hunting especially once the clocks went back. So I created a routine of exercise and job hunting in the mornings and time off in the afternoon. I made the most of the outplacement provided by Thorn and this was fantastic personal development for me.”
Following four years in tennis administration, I decided sports sponsorship was a natural move and it was a really good step into the commercial world for me. I spent six years in the same company (Alan Pasco Associates) as the consultancy grew rapidly. I tired of it eventually and did not want to spend my life on new business. So I moved in-house with the Thorn arm of Thorn EMI where I was the PR and Events Manager for old high street brands Radio Rentals (and briefly Rumbelows too). Over the next few years, my role was mostly in events organisation but latterly took on the internal communications brief (newsletter and a massive re-org cascade I recall following a restructure). For the final year I moved to the Group office for Thorn plc which I think lived for about two years. I loved this corporate affairs role and my colleagues plus it was just 15 minutes’ drive from my house and I had my own office.
As Thorn unravelled, in 1998, Nomura stepped in and bought Thorn’s brands which led to redundancies all round at head office. This was unexpected, sudden and scary but also exciting in an odd way too and it was not personal as it affected everyone in the building. I enjoyed the break initially after working for ten years but quickly tired of the long days of job hunting especially once the clocks went back.
So I created a routine of exercise and job hunting in the mornings and time off in the afternoon. I made the most of the outplacement provided by Thorn and this was fantastic personal development for me. The coaching was particularly helpful and I followed all the advice and leads with great gusto even looking into recruitment at one point when a recruiter invited me to apply. Ironic given this is what I now do but more of that later. I also had coffee and lunch with as many people and recruiters as possible as I learned the value of networking.
One piece of coaching advice which I was resistant to but which I followed religiously over a period of a few months was writing letters (this was 1999) to all the heads of communication in the FTSE100 regarding my offer as a communications manager. In the cover letter I said (as coached) I would call the following week which I did. It was not easy to make those calls every Friday but I did get several interviews and conversations from that approach which inspired me to keep going. The call that delivered was to my old boss who was moving from Booker to set up a new IC function at GSK for the new manufacturing division. Honestly, she said to me, “good to hear from you, I have been expecting your call”. I met her a few days later and by gin and tonic o’ clock I had an offer with a good package.
This would not be so easy nowadays as reaching people through switchboards can be next to impossible and with the volume of communication people manage in their email box, it is probably difficult to stand out.
However, it was about persistence, taking advice, sharing stories and ideas with fellow job-hunters, following up every single lead.
I only stayed with GSK a couple of years as there was a merger and it meant a lot of travel but it was such a great experience to work with such fantastically talented people. While ill with a virus in the latter days, I was approached to take a head of role with Marks & Spencer by a recruitment consultant who I met back in those pre-GSK days and about six weeks later there I was working for my mother’s favourite brand!
The job hunting two years earlier delivered again.
Again a fantastic job and experience. There in my last six months, as my role again became redundant as it was re-specified, I met the lovely Colette Dorward who came in as an independent communications consultant to troubleshoot during the brand’s downturn, take-over bid from Philip Green and swap over of CEOs as Stuart Rose came on board. All very exciting. Colette had been one leaders of the famed SDL consultancy that created the management consultancy approach to strategic communication for big brands which at that time did not have in-house talent in internal and change communications. That had been taken over in the early 1990s and Colette was about to start up another communication consultancy, Comma Consulting.
About two years after I left Marks & Spencer to freelance and become a mum, I joined Colette’s company to set up her interim business and 11 years later I am still doing that; sometimes placing interims into brands I once worked for, often placing former team members into interim roles including one just recently with King’s College London and building my own business by doing things which I did not enjoy when younger like new business. So the connections resulting from that phone call to my old boss continue to fuel my career in many ways.
I have often wondered about luck and I think it is about being positive and channelling energy into what you do. My way out of redundancy was all about timing but as people say “ you create your own luck”. So that would be my advice. Believe in luck, be positive and always energetic (and if you are not in the right place for it on a day, take the day off).