Did you always plan to work in finance and accountancy?
Not by a long shot! As a child, I would flit between wanting to be a milkman, a brain surgeon and everything in between. I still did not know what I wanted to do when I left school and university.
I fell into finance when a friend of a friend showed me a job advertisement for a role in restructuring at Baker Tilly. The job sounded really interesting and the rest, as they say, is history.
What was your past career experience before working as an FI tutor?
I first joined Baker Tilly in the Corporate Finance Restructuring Department, specifically the Special Investigations Team. The team dealt with high profile bankruptcy cases and other contentious insolvency work such as fraud cases. The work was extremely interesting and I achieved my Certificate of Proficiency in Insolvency (CPI) qualification as well as learning a lot on the job.
After several years with Baker Tilly, I made the move to Deloitte’s Corporate Finance Restructuring department. I began working on larger restructuring and insolvency cases including big high street names such as Wedgewood, Woolworths and Blockbusters.
At Deloitte, I also began studying for my ACCA qualification whilst at Deloitte. I was one of the first students to qualify with First Intuition London and adored my time studying ACCA. During my time studying ACCA, the seed was planted for my future tutoring career.
After almost 7 years with Deloitte, I took a career break to start a family and moved back to Kent. In 2017, I approached Ian, Managing Director at FI Maidstone about a potential tutor position with FI and started my tutor role later that year.
I can honestly say that tutoring has been the most rewarding and enjoyable role of my career. I feel very lucky to work with the amazing staff and students at FI.
If you could give one piece of advice to FI students as an FI tutor, what would it be?
Start question practice almost as soon as your course begins. You won’t have covered all of the syllabus at first, however, your tutor will be able to advise you on questions that you will be able to attempt with the material you have covered.
Practice as many questions as you can before the exam and repeat questions you have struggled on. Practicing questions and self-marking them is one of the best and fastest ways to learn the material. Starting this early will put you in good stead.
Find out more about studying at FI and our course options
