Sarah Bearpark

Sarah explains how career coaching helped her get back into an engineering consultancy profession after a 13 year break.

Sarah enjoyed her career, working in an international multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy and qualified as a Chartered Civil Engineer. Like many ICE members, Sarah contributed voluntary donations to the Ben Fund but wasn’t fully aware of the services on offer and how it might support her later on in her career. Sarah had a career break to raise her family and to recover from a period of ill health. In early 2017, she decided the time was right to return to her chosen profession. However, her confidence was low after such a long break and she was unsure as to whether employers would be interested in what she had to offer. A timely email from the ICE Ben Fund about the Back to Work programme prompted Sarah to take up fully funded career coaching for members looking to get back into the workplace. The coaching helped rebuild her confidence and identify jobs that matched her interests and skills. She is now thoroughly enjoying her role as a Principal Environmental Consultant at Mott MacDonald.

Here's how the career coaching helped Sarah:

"I entered the coaching process assuming my old career in engineering consultancy was closed to me. My coach asked searching and challenging questions which slowly changed my thinking and led me to jobs that matched my interests and skills. By reviewing job adverts that I was interested in, she identified that I was attracted to technical, professional roles involving communication, and I could see that the role I had left at Mott MacDonald fitted these criteria.  My coach advised me to change my CV so that instead of being chronological (which emphasised my career break) it was skills based.  I found the accountability of the career sessions useful, particularly in rebuilding a network.  My coach encouraged me to contact colleagues I had not spoken to for years, and I had to step outside my comfort zone to do that. Knowing I had to attend my next session and explain my actions helped me to progress this."