The Business Bulletin
Spotllight on…
Spotlight on Sue Pardy Sue runs face2faceHR; a small franchise and she looks after the Milton Keynes area. She has been doing that for five years. She helps small businesses with their HR. Most small businesses need HR, but they don’t need a permanent full-time resource, so Sue can be that resource. She can be the outsource support; supporting MDs or finance managers who sometimes get lumbered with HR! She can help with recruitment through to terminations, if that’s what’s needed; and everything in between – the good, the bad and the ugly!
How did you come to be doing what
building, covering for absence, and
secretary to the personnel manager.
you're doing today?
holiday. It was a really good and
I learned a huge amount from
I fell into HR. I didn't do a degree in
interesting job, because the National
her. I did a diploma in personnel
Trust is very interesting, and it has lots
management at night school at the
of different departments. I used to get
University of Westminster a couple of
the gigs in personnel.
nights a week which took two years.
HR - there wasn't a degree in HR when I was graduating. I did English literature, which is a really lovely subject. But it doesn't necessarily
And because I'd been in there a
After five enjoyable years with
specify a career that you could
while, they always asked for me and
the National Trust, I went to work
go forward with. I struggled with
I realised that I quite liked personnel
for the National Health Service in
getting a job and went back home to
and I then applied to become the
Bedford. That was a baptism by fire!
Blackpool, which is where I was living at the time with my parents. And my mum said, “Well, you need to get a job. So how are you going to do that?” I went to a postgraduate secretarial course, and I learned shorthand and word processing skills. I had 100 words a minute shorthand at one point! I came out with a postgraduate, secretarial verification, and still didn't have a job. I was lucky enough to become secretarial assistant at the National Trust. I was known as a “floater”! That was the term that they
Most of my clients find that I’m very practical. I’ve got a lot of common sense because HR is about common sense.
called us, because there was about six of us and we floated around the
Issue 15 – Operations and Resources | 31
