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How to Pivot Like a Pro: Jeegna Chohan on Changing Lanes in Your Career · Work It Like A Mum

• 0:00
  Elizabeth Willetts: Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life.
• 0:14
  Elizabeth Willetts: I'm a working mom with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women Job Board and Community.
• 0:22
  Elizabeth Willetts: In this show, I'm honored to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business.
• 0:29
  Elizabeth Willetts: They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success.
• 0:43
  Elizabeth Willetts: Shy away from the real talk?
• 0:44
  Elizabeth Willetts: No way.
• 0:45
  Elizabeth Willetts: Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all.
• 0:50
  Elizabeth Willetts: Think of this as coffee with your mates, the mixed with an inspiring TED talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school.
• 0:57
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• 1:07
  Elizabeth Willetts: This is the Work it Like a Mom podcast.
• 1:10
  Elizabeth Willetts: This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women.
• 1:15
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• 1:26
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• 1:32
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• 1:49
  Elizabeth Willetts: Now back to the show.
• 1:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Work it Like a Mom podcast.
• 1:56
  Elizabeth Willetts: Today I'm delighted because I'm going to be chatting with Jigna Johan, who is the employer branding partner for one of my favorite businesses, sangaban.
• 2:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: I'm going to be talking all about her experiences of making a career switch, a career change, doing some retraining and how that came about.
• 2:16
  Elizabeth Willetts: So if you are listening to this and you are interested in switching career or retraining and how you would go about that, then this episode is for you.
• 2:25
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's going to be talking all about Jigna's experience of doing just that.
• 2:30
  Elizabeth Willetts: Thank you so much, jigna, for joining me today.
• 2:32
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's such a pleasure to chat with you and learn what about you and your experiences.
• 2:36
  Elizabeth Willetts: Hi, no problem.
• 2:38
  Elizabeth Willetts: Hi, liz, no, thank you, because you've got such an interesting career and now obviously you're doing something.
• 2:43
  Elizabeth Willetts: We were chatting.
• 2:44
  Elizabeth Willetts: Before we hit record.
• 2:45
  Elizabeth Willetts: It sounded like this was actually something that was quite a passion to you, because you mentioned marketing and obviously now you're in branding.
• 2:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: You didn't start off doing that.
• 2:53
  Elizabeth Willetts: Do you want to talk the listeners through your early career and what you were doing previously?
• 2:59
  Jeegna Chohan: Yes, sure.
• 2:59
  Jeegna Chohan: So, yes, like I said, I've not always been in the employer branding, so I'm the employer branding partner for Sangaban in the UK and Ireland.
• 3:06
  Jeegna Chohan: My background in my career actually has come from HR.
• 3:09
  Jeegna Chohan: So when I was at university, I studied HR.
• 3:12
  Jeegna Chohan: I've got my, you know, I've done my masters in CIPD, got my CIPD in HR and then, as I was going through various HR roles, I decided I wanted to specialise down the recruitment route.
• 3:22
  Jeegna Chohan: So then, a few jobs after that, I was more of a recruitment consultant, always in-house, for companies, and then, in 2017, I joined at Sangaban as a recruitment consultant.
• 3:34
  Jeegna Chohan: By that time, I think I would say I'll probably do recruitment for about 8 to 10 years, I'd say, and it was, you know, when I joined the company, I knew it was somewhere where I could progress and, you know, maybe try different routes, because all I've ever known at that point was HR and recruitment.
• 3:51
  Elizabeth Willetts: And then what was it then?
• 3:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: So you did the recruitment there.
• 3:53
  Elizabeth Willetts: You were doing it quite a while actually.
• 3:55
  Elizabeth Willetts: It looked like you were doing it for a number of years, and what then prompted you to want to have a change then?
• 4:01
  Jeegna Chohan: Well, one of the things that always stood out to me in my initial interviews when I joined Sangaban is my manager well, he's still my manager now from even from the interviews is the recruitment function was very new.
• 4:12
  Jeegna Chohan: When I was joining.
• 4:13
  Jeegna Chohan: I was one of the first ones to be part of the team and he always and I always remember, and he always said if recruitment doesn't work out for us, and he says, no progression down this route, where do you think you'd like to go?
• 4:24
  Jeegna Chohan: And I always just said marketing or something within communications.
• 4:28
  Jeegna Chohan: It's always been an area that I've been interested in, but I've had no experience at all, but I just sort of threw it out there.
• 4:34
  Jeegna Chohan: And then it was about I think it was around in 2019 when the Sangaban joined the apprenticeship levy schemes with the government and we're all encouraged as employees to have a look, see what's of interest to you, know further your, your learnings, and there was a digital marketing apprenticeship there that I looked at and it kind of sort of all kicked off from there really, I didn't know you'd done that, I didn't know that the company had done that, that you'd that you'd join this apprenticeship levy and then everyone was encouraged to basically what to take an apprenticeship if something was of interest to them.
• 5:08
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, usually with the apprenticeship you have to really have it as part of your role.
• 5:11
  Jeegna Chohan: So I looked at the recruitment options but I was very you know it's quite over qualified for the courses they were doing.
• 5:17
  Jeegna Chohan: So I managed to get this.
• 5:19
  Jeegna Chohan: I went through the sort of modules and the guide of this digital marketing course and I managed to link each bit to how I would do it in my job or link it to recruitment.
• 5:28
  Jeegna Chohan: So a big part of it was around job adverts and you know, marketing is all about advertising as well because I did that and I put a case forward for myself and how I'd make that course beneficial to my role.
• 5:42
  Elizabeth Willetts: It worked.
• 5:42
  Elizabeth Willetts: And then how talk us through the course things.
• 5:44
  Elizabeth Willetts: How long was the course so?
• 5:46
  Jeegna Chohan: initially it was meant to be, I want to say about a year and a half.
• 5:50
  Elizabeth Willetts: Was it a lot of work Like did you get time off to do it?
• 5:53
  Elizabeth Willetts: How did you juggle it with your job?
• 5:55
  Jeegna Chohan: So when it's part of this government scheme, it's an on the job kind of training.
• 5:59
  Jeegna Chohan: 20% of your time has to be through learning or doing things that will support the course and you know, you write, you're doing lots of courseworks had classroom based training I think there was about three or four over the whole period.
• 6:12
  Jeegna Chohan: You have online assessments and after each module you have to go to classrooms and do assessments there as well and sort of final pieces.
• 6:20
  Jeegna Chohan: So it was like you're at university but working and studying at the same time.
• 6:26
  Elizabeth Willetts: So, from all the companies, then doing your course at the same time, to do it.
• 6:29
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, there was.
• 6:30
  Jeegna Chohan: So when we had our classroom based training, my local center with the apprenticeship company was in Birmingham, so there was a class of maybe about 10 people.
• 6:39
  Jeegna Chohan: I'd say, and yeah, for all over different companies, same kind of profession.
• 6:42
  Jeegna Chohan: I actually was the only one from like recruitment, but everyone else was more marketing, either wanting to learn more or learn a whole different area.
• 6:51
  Jeegna Chohan: It was great, great to meet new people from all over the UK in their different companies.
• 6:57
  Elizabeth Willetts: Wow, it was meant to be a year and a half and you got the time off then to go and study.
• 7:02
  Jeegna Chohan: Yes.
• 7:02
  Jeegna Chohan: So it would be a sort of like a week every quarter.
• 7:05
  Jeegna Chohan: I think it was all a bit more than that.
• 7:07
  Jeegna Chohan: You'd go and do classroom training but 20% of your week would be either doing something in your job related to the apprenticeship as well.
• 7:17
  Jeegna Chohan: But then during that year as well I became pregnant.
• 7:20
  Jeegna Chohan: So I carried on with obviously working as long as I could and within that my apprenticeship as long as I could.
• 7:26
  Jeegna Chohan: So I'd say I did about a quarter of the course before I finished for maternity leave, and then the idea was to sort of pause it and then be off for the year I was off and then come back and then pick it up when that time came.
• 7:39
  Jeegna Chohan: That was sort of when COVID and lockdown and all of that happened.
• 7:43
  Jeegna Chohan: So then it got delayed even further for I'd probably say another four or five months Now, as you can imagine, going back to a course that had started and picking it up after.
• 7:55
  Elizabeth Willetts: You have to feel like you did a lot of refreshing, you know definitely even just to get into that frame of mind again to but digital marketing itself must have completely transformed during that six months because of COVID.
• 8:09
  Elizabeth Willetts: Like everything must have gone online, it must have been even more like important and zoom and yeah it was, and there was no classroom based training after that.
• 8:19
  Jeegna Chohan: So it was all just like how we do.
• 8:21
  Jeegna Chohan: How we do everything.
• 8:22
  Jeegna Chohan: Now it's all online on teams, you know, having meetings online, submitting.
• 8:26
  Jeegna Chohan: Even my assessment was online.
• 8:27
  Jeegna Chohan: So someone had to literally log onto my like screen see what my screen was as well so they could see I wasn't cheating or anything like that.
• 8:35
  Jeegna Chohan: So it was a yeah, completely different, but it was all good.
• 8:39
  Jeegna Chohan: I got there in the end.
• 8:40
  Jeegna Chohan: It was like a never ending course, but I've done it and I finished and I passed and I've completed that now.
• 8:46
  Jeegna Chohan: So I've got qualification in digital marketing now as well, and is it all?
• 8:50
  Jeegna Chohan: fully funded, then yes, it is.
• 8:51
  Jeegna Chohan: So if no one's ever heard of the sort of apprenticeship government levy, it's something that companies bigger companies sign up with the government and they have to put in a certain amount of money, which all goes to people's learning and training.
• 9:05
  Elizabeth Willetts: So if somebody's listening to this in HR for a company and they don't have it, what are the benefits do you think for companies to sign up for it?
• 9:12
  Elizabeth Willetts: Where are the companies?
• 10:05
  Jeegna Chohan: It's really good because it just encourages people to sort of learn new things or expand on their current learnings.
• 10:12
  Jeegna Chohan: Like I said, it usually has to be linked to what you're doing.
• 10:16
  Jeegna Chohan: You know there's so many around there, around apprenticeships for engineering as well, loads of technical skills and I think from a HR perspective as well, it will increase employees' morale, motivation, retention as well.
• 10:32
  Jeegna Chohan: I guess would be the biggest thing.
• 10:34
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, I think you're the first big organisation I've heard that does that like.
• 10:38
  Elizabeth Willetts: Has this apprenticeship levy within their organ or other companies?
• 10:41
  Elizabeth Willetts: Don't shout about it if they have it.
• 10:43
  Jeegna Chohan: Oh OK.
• 10:44
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, it's a really big thing for us.
• 10:45
  Jeegna Chohan: You know we always want, because if you don't use the money that you've got to spend on it, then you kind of I think you just lose it.
• 10:52
  Jeegna Chohan: So that's why it's really encouraged to just try and do some stuff.
• 10:56
  Jeegna Chohan: I think a big popular one as well that I hear of is leadership apprenticeships.
• 11:00
  Jeegna Chohan: There's a lot of people within the company that.
• 11:02
  Elizabeth Willetts: Do that as well.
• 11:02
  Elizabeth Willetts: If you've done one and now you're stepping up to management, could you do a leadership one, for example?
• 11:07
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, you can.
• 11:08
  Jeegna Chohan: They don't limit you at all.
• 11:09
  Jeegna Chohan: Oh my god, I love that.
• 11:11
  Jeegna Chohan: I'm not looking, because I am a learning.
• 11:15
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yes, look at that.
• 11:16
  Elizabeth Willetts: I love being like a lifelong learner, I just I think it really boosts your confidence as well.
• 11:21
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know to learn something new.
• 11:23
  Elizabeth Willetts: And then you think, oh, I can do that now and, and especially as far as his mom is going to know, you're a mommy.
• 11:29
  Elizabeth Willetts: Actually, it's so nice to do something for you.
• 11:32
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, it was.
• 11:33
  Jeegna Chohan: It was really good and I did like and I found it so interesting and I have to give credit to the company that we did it with as well.
• 11:40
  Jeegna Chohan: The teacher that I had Was so good, so engaging.
• 11:43
  Jeegna Chohan: He just made it so interesting and fun and I used to like going to the classroom trainings and I still keep in touch with this teacher linkedin as well.
• 11:52
  Jeegna Chohan: It was, yeah, it was really interesting.
• 11:54
  Jeegna Chohan: I learned so much and don't get me wrong, there was a couple of bits in there that were very sort of probably digital related that won't be of use for me.
• 12:02
  Elizabeth Willetts: So, for example, we were doing a lot of coding and a lot of technical stuff, which which went really way over my head, because that's that's not me, but it was interesting A bit of a basic knowledge on you if you ever need a little error on a website where it shouldn't be something but I think what's that nice talking to you as well is how supportive sangabang sound did like they were when you got pregnant, because I know you know there'll be a lot of people listen to this whose employers aren't supportive, who that suddenly would have been a problem, you know, if they'd invested in an apprenticeship, and so talk us through how they supported you, I guess, during your pregnancy and then your return.
• 12:41
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah and yeah, sangabang really supportive and really big on sort of diversity and inclusion side of things and equality.
• 12:48
  Jeegna Chohan: So when I was, yeah, when I said I was pregnant you know it was my first one I didn't know About anything, how you do with work I just had to tell my manager remember, had the giggles and I don't know why, but he thought I was saying I'm leaving.
• 13:03
  Jeegna Chohan: But obviously it wasn't.
• 13:04
  Jeegna Chohan: It was really supportive.
• 13:08
  Jeegna Chohan: The payroll team really supportive, because I didn't know how it would work with pay.
• 13:11
  Jeegna Chohan: So you know, this down with me went through every month by month.
• 13:15
  Jeegna Chohan: This is what's gonna happen, this is how you get paid.
• 13:17
  Jeegna Chohan: And then with the apprenticeship as well, that you know I can say there's a whole team for a friendship.
• 13:22
  Jeegna Chohan: They were really supportive as well.
• 13:23
  Jeegna Chohan: So, yeah, when I came back as well, they sorted it all out.
• 13:30
  Jeegna Chohan: So really, really supportive, made me feel better in.
• 13:35
  Elizabeth Willetts: Well, you've got compressed hours, don't you know?
• 13:37
  Jeegna Chohan: Yes, so since coming back from maternity leave I've been doing compressed hours.
• 13:41
  Jeegna Chohan: So I still do my full time hours, but over four days rather than over five days.
• 13:44
  Jeegna Chohan: So then I have the Fridays off to sort of be with my son, and you know we just used to go out, do do things.
• 13:51
  Elizabeth Willetts: Just the two of us.
• 13:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: How supportive were there when you put in that flex for working request.
• 13:56
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, really good.
• 13:56
  Jeegna Chohan: No issues at all.
• 13:58
  Jeegna Chohan: And I, you know, my manager said let's try it, see how it goes, and if it's working for you as well as us, then we'll carry it on.
• 14:04
  Jeegna Chohan: And I've been doing it for about three, three and a half years.
• 14:08
  Jeegna Chohan: Is it your son's just started?
• 14:09
  Elizabeth Willetts: school.
• 14:10
  Elizabeth Willetts: Is that right?
• 14:11
  Jeegna Chohan: Yes, he's just, literally last week, started school, a big boys school, for the first time my neighbor, so her little girls just like school with mine.
• 14:20
  Elizabeth Willetts: She has Tuesdays off and she's like I'm just gonna have them off for a bit.
• 14:23
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think Friday's about one time off, but she's gonna go on.
• 14:27
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know you're nice thing, yeah.
• 14:30
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, I'd be nice just to sort of have that time to do these stuff that you don't really get to do.
• 14:35
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, I mean, obviously there's never ending stuff is there to do, so it's quite nice To have that day.
• 14:40
  Elizabeth Willetts: So you did your apprenticeship in digital marketing and we still working in recruitment at this point, yes, so.
• 14:47
  Jeegna Chohan: I was still working in recruitment, I was linking it all to sort of job advertising, you know, using keywords and boolean searches, that kind of thing, so I could always make them join up together.
• 14:59
  Jeegna Chohan: When I came back off maternity leave and when the course started up again, I was still doing recruitment for a while and then it was probably more towards the end of my course is when this employer branding opportunity came about, which was perfect for me because I've got that sort of recruitment experience and that HR background, but also this digital marketing side as well now, and it was just a great fit for my experience and where I wanted to go as well.
• 15:23
  Jeegna Chohan: And it's not within marketing employer branding, but it still sits within HR Because it's all about attracting people into the company.
• 15:33
  Jeegna Chohan: When I tell people what my role is, a lot of people who are not from this industry or know about employer branding I just describe it as it's like marketing for people to come and join the company rather than marketing for products.
• 15:45
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, absolutely Do.
• 15:46
  Elizabeth Willetts: You applied for the role.
• 15:47
  Elizabeth Willetts: I don't know if you probably didn't know what the competition was like when you applied, but you know how supportive was Sangeban when you applied for the role.
• 15:55
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, again, really, really supportive.
• 15:57
  Jeegna Chohan: I can never fault the support that I get and it was a great.
• 16:01
  Jeegna Chohan: It was a great fit because I was obviously proving myself within recruitment.
• 16:04
  Jeegna Chohan: You know I wanted to progress and me doing the apprenticeship shows that I wanted to progress.
• 16:08
  Jeegna Chohan: I'm really happy with the company, had no plans and I still don't have any plans to ever leave and it just fitted in just really nicely.
• 16:17
  Jeegna Chohan: I was able to take a lot of my learning and actually use it and you know they've been really we've had no employer branding person within Sangeban for the UK and Ireland, so it's been a great opportunity for me to just experiment as well, see what's been working.
• 16:32
  Jeegna Chohan: We've, you know, we've just constantly been improving things, doing things differently, and it's so far to which what it's working really well.
• 16:41
  Elizabeth Willetts: Employed branding differ from recruitment, then what's?
• 16:44
  Elizabeth Willetts: How's your job different now?
• 16:45
  Jeegna Chohan: Yes, it's not about finding candidates and speaking to them, getting them interviewed, that kind of thing.
• 16:52
  Jeegna Chohan: It is the initial part, so it's about attracting them.
• 16:55
  Jeegna Chohan: So it's about, you know, using different places to advertise.
• 16:59
  Jeegna Chohan: You know, I've worked with the recruitment team on recreating job adverts and what kind of keywords to put in there, and working with our internal teams to update our careers website as well.
• 17:10
  Jeegna Chohan: But it's essentially it's about showcasing to external people as well as internal people, that Sangaban is a great place to work.
• 17:18
  Jeegna Chohan: We've got a massive range of roles and different brands within Sangaban and areas you can work in different locations.
• 17:25
  Jeegna Chohan: It's just so big that a lot of people have never heard of Sangaban, but it's absolutely huge and it's all over the UK.
• 17:30
  Jeegna Chohan: So it's about just getting that message out there to people that that were here, this exists.
• 17:35
  Jeegna Chohan: These are all the roles, and big part of my role is on social media now.
• 17:39
  Jeegna Chohan: So I go around meeting with our colleagues, I get video stories from them or sometimes you know, images, but I always get people to give me, in their words, you know, their journey about how they've progressed or what they've done, and then we showcase these on our employer branding social media pages now as well, so we can tell the world about it.
• 18:01
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's interesting.
• 18:01
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think you are a pioneer because there isn't.
• 18:03
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think you know.
• 18:04
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think it's going to get more and more popular.
• 18:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think a lot of bigger companies will start having dedicated employer branding teams or people.
• 18:12
  Elizabeth Willetts: What have been the benefits to Sangaban of having someone dedicated to employer branding?
• 18:17
  Jeegna Chohan: I think it's all freed up that space from different loads of people might have done little bits here and there to do the attraction side of things, but now it's all dedicated to me.
• 18:25
  Jeegna Chohan: So I've got that time to go and see people get their stories, get their testimonials, you know, showcase what they do in their day to day.
• 18:33
  Jeegna Chohan: And I can quite mobile so I can travel around to our different sites as well, and it's just it's freed up that little bits of times or these ideas or plans that everyone's had and it's, you know, something that I can actually execute as well.
• 18:46
  Jeegna Chohan: It's just great to go around meeting other passionate people within Sangaban that you know love their roles, love the company and I do love that side of my role and I just meet so many interesting people.
• 18:58
  Jeegna Chohan: It's nice to have their input as well as all of this.
• 19:02
  Elizabeth Willetts: So talk if people listen to this and they think, oh, it sounds really good but Sangaban isn't a household name in the.
• 19:07
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know it's not like boots I'm trying to think of a Coca Cola but it's a company that is in every part of our lives to tell people who you are and what you're doing.
• 19:16
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, sure, so a French owned company.
• 19:18
  Jeegna Chohan: As you can tell from the name, we're in the construction and manufacturing industry.
• 19:22
  Jeegna Chohan: So within the UK we've got so when I said brands before, we've got 30 different brands.
• 19:27
  Jeegna Chohan: So if you imagine sort of like an umbrella which is Sangaban and then underneath are our different brands, so some that people might have heard of would be sort of British Gypsum or ESAVA.
• 19:38
  Jeegna Chohan: So British Gypsum may plasterboard and plaster, which obviously go into everyone's homes.
• 19:44
  Jeegna Chohan: Esava make the insulation.
• 19:46
  Jeegna Chohan: Sangaban originated from making glass and we've got a plant in the UK as well that makes glass from scratch as well from the sand grains.
• 19:56
  Jeegna Chohan: So it is in, it's in the construction and manufacturing industry and you just you see it everywhere but you'll never really realise it on the manholes, is it Pam, pam, sangaban?
• 20:09
  Elizabeth Willetts: Pam is every manhole.
• 20:10
  Elizabeth Willetts: You just, you know, in your house it's literally a company that is all around us, which is great, yeah, and when I joined as well.
• 20:18
  Jeegna Chohan: you know you're going to be in queue and you see all these brands that we've got and I would get a little bit geeky and excited.
• 20:24
  Jeegna Chohan: Oh there's, that's my company.
• 20:25
  Jeegna Chohan: Another one you can look out for is on your glass.
• 20:29
  Jeegna Chohan: So I've got I've seen it in my car in the glass windows a little Sangaban logo.
• 20:34
  Jeegna Chohan: You sometimes see it on trains as well.
• 20:36
  Jeegna Chohan: It's great.
• 20:36
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, it is the company that you know, we live in, I suppose, and live on, you know, walking on the pavements and stuff.
• 20:43
  Elizabeth Willetts: So what kind of roles do you tend to?
• 20:46
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know what sort of people are you interested in hiring, what sort of roles do you recruit for?
• 20:51
  Jeegna Chohan: So we have everything and anything from sort of your head, all the head office functions.
• 20:55
  Jeegna Chohan: So obviously, within HR, marketing, finance, payroll, we've got engineering roles, technical roles, we've got roles that are in sort of science labs as well, where they do a lot of testing.
• 21:05
  Jeegna Chohan: So science roles we've got, you know, typical sales and customer service roles.
• 21:10
  Jeegna Chohan: It is pretty much anything you think of.
• 21:13
  Jeegna Chohan: You know we would have something at one point in time.
• 21:16
  Jeegna Chohan: It's such a massive company like even, just like I was saying, within the UK we've got about 5000 people that work, and that's just on the UK and Ireland side.
• 21:25
  Jeegna Chohan: It is literally your niche?
• 21:27
  Elizabeth Willetts: mine aren't, you as well, so there's often jobs you know that would be potential local to your home based as well.
• 21:33
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, and do people need experience?
• 21:35
  Elizabeth Willetts: I mean, I suppose it does depend on the role, but do people need experience of working in the manufacturing and construction industry?
• 21:41
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, like I said, it would probably depend on the role we do.
• 21:44
  Jeegna Chohan: I do know I saw some, like there were some graduate positions a while ago.
• 21:49
  Jeegna Chohan: We do have lower level roles as well, where they're happy to train and, again, like I said, give that opportunity to people to have an apprenticeship course to help them progress as well within the roles.
• 21:58
  Jeegna Chohan: But then you do get your more technical roles that will require certain levels of experience and qualifications.
• 22:04
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, brilliant.
• 22:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: So where can people go on the website that you've obviously been spending a lot of time on to see what roles you're recruiting for?
• 22:12
  Elizabeth Willetts: Maybe register SCV?
• 22:15
  Jeegna Chohan: So it's our Sangamang careers page.
• 22:17
  Jeegna Chohan: So it is.
• 22:18
  Jeegna Chohan: So it's spelt saint and with hyphen gobanecouk for slash careers.
• 22:23
  Jeegna Chohan: I don't know if you'd you put it in the link or anything here, but I know the recruitment team used LinkedIn as well, so you can follow the LinkedIn pages.
• 22:30
  Jeegna Chohan: I'm happy to share our employer branding social media pages with you as well, if you wanted to link that as well, and that's probably a really great starting point for someone to probably see an inside of what.
• 22:41
  Jeegna Chohan: You know how I describe our social media pages is like what life is like to work at Sangamang, that you see stories and posts and everything from our actual colleagues.
• 22:49
  Jeegna Chohan: You know we film it.
• 22:50
  Jeegna Chohan: It's not scripted.
• 22:52
  Jeegna Chohan: I don't tell them what to say or anything.
• 22:53
  Jeegna Chohan: I, you know I'll ask them questions and they will just honestly answer it.
• 22:56
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think what's nice about your organization is that people stay for years and if I see someone that they've been there for like 20 years and you think I mean that's some, a company that's doing something right and people have moved around within the business.
• 23:08
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, and because it's so big as well.
• 23:10
  Jeegna Chohan: When I used to do recruitment, I would that was my key selling point was how big it is.
• 23:14
  Jeegna Chohan: And if you move around within Sangamang, but maybe to a different brand or a different location, but you'll still class as an internal move.
• 23:21
  Jeegna Chohan: And yeah, I think you're right, there's people that stay for years and it's saying something about how the company is in, the culture is, and you know people enjoy it.
• 23:29
  Elizabeth Willetts: You obviously retain as well all your benefits, don't you?
• 23:32
  Elizabeth Willetts: If you move internally.
• 23:33
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yes, yes, of course.
• 23:35
  Elizabeth Willetts: So what would you say to somebody listen to this that's interested in?
• 23:38
  Elizabeth Willetts: Perhaps you know career switch a bit like you've done how you know?
• 23:42
  Elizabeth Willetts: What would be your advice to somebody about going around that?
• 23:45
  Jeegna Chohan: My biggest advice and what worked for me was if, especially if you go into a different area, that we think of training in a different area is to find do your research first, find out maybe what modules or topics you would cover in that course and really link it to your role, and just is to benefit you as well as the company and your manager of how you're going to make it work and how it's worthwhile for them.
• 24:08
  Jeegna Chohan: And I think that was key for me was you know, instead of just going and say I want to do a marketing apprenticeship, I really linked it to my role and within recruitment and how it would be beneficial to all parties.
• 24:20
  Elizabeth Willetts: I know that's what I tell people as well on the point of place for working requests and that obviously can work for a lot of things, but it is about how does it benefit them as well?
• 24:27
  Elizabeth Willetts: Okay, so thank you so much for joining me today.
• 24:30
  Elizabeth Willetts: How can people find you?
• 24:32
  Elizabeth Willetts: Connect with you?
• 24:34
  Jeegna Chohan: Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn, so I'm happy for anyone to connect with me or ask me questions on LinkedIn.
• 24:40
  Jeegna Chohan: You can find me.
• 24:41
  Jeegna Chohan: And again, liz, I'm happy if you want to share my LinkedIn profile Preval, I active there.
• 24:45
  Elizabeth Willetts: Thank you so much for joining me today.
• 24:47
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's been an absolute pleasure to chat.
• 24:49
  Jeegna Chohan: No, thank you so much for having me, liz Nice, speaking with you.
• 24:51
  Jeegna Chohan: Bye, bye.
• 24:55
  Elizabeth Willetts: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like A Mom podcast.
• 25:00
  Elizabeth Willetts: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend.
• 25:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode.
• 25:13
  Elizabeth Willetts: You can also follow my recruitment site Investing in Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram.
• 25:19
  Elizabeth Willetts: Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dream.