Meet Ian. He is the Fostering Recruitment Co-Ordinator at Somerset Council, and an alumnus of UCW studying Business Management and Sustainability! We caught up with him to see how he’s doing after graduating.
Ian’s role involves managing a small team whose overall objective is to increase the number of foster carers recruited to Somerset Council. His role is both operational and strategic, involving managerial duties as well as planning and business transformation.
We asked Ian what a typical day in his role looks like: “My typical day is varied. It could include any number of duties including attending visits to foster carers with one of my team for quality assurance purposes, analysing current trends and data, negotiating packages for foster carers transferring form other agencies, completing employee supervision, chairing and preparing team meetings, writing reports and strategy documents, arranging and attending events and producing details statistics to review performance against targets and sufficiency.”
This role is clearly very varied, with no two days being the same. We asked Ian how he was able to prepare for this: “I think the key thing that prepared me for my role was the project management module of the course, as understanding the principles of change management and communication has particularly supported me in ensuring my work has been embedded in a sensitive and effective way.”
Playing a big hand in Ian’s success at UCW were the lecturers. Ian emphasised their importance to his journey saying: “I cannot stress enough how supportive, knowledgeable and engaging the lecturers on the business management course. The course content was so well structured and detailed which meant we were provided with the toolkit to succeed throughout. I was also in the position where I was in my role during my degree, and I was able to share situations I had encountered and talk them through in a really productive way which was so helpful to my own development.”
The lecturers weren’t the only think that Ian enjoyed about studying at UCW, the smaller cohort than at typical universities also played a big part. This also helped with his favourite module, Globalisation where informal debates and discussions could more easily take place. Speaking about this module, Ian said: “it is really fascinating to see the impact how the practices of some business are often adopted by the wider business world as well as the huge impact macro-economic factors can have on industry and businesses. I really enjoyed the fact that this module was adapted throughout to reflect the changing global situation on an almost weekly basis.”
Finally, Ian wanted to mention the support offered by UCW, saying: “What struck me during my time at UCW is no one gets lost or forgotten about – everyone is made to feel important. It is a great place to study!”
A huge thanks to Ian for speaking to us.
To find out more about Business Management with Sustainability, click here.
To find out more about studying in Business, Accounting and Operations, click here.
