Where did you work before coming to FI?

I started my career as an Accountant working for an NHS trust as an Assistant Management Accountant. Then, I moved to a manufacturing organisation – Autosmart, where I worked as a Management Accountant and gained my CIMA qualification.

Once qualified I moved into teaching and worked for Finance Business Training for 2 years, teaching Management Accounting papers in ACCA and CIMA.

I then worked for BPP for 7 years. To start with I worked within the undergraduate qualifications and I was a tutor and module leader, designing the material and writing the exam for the module Financial Decision Making. I moved back into teaching professional qualifications for ICAEW, CIMA, ACCA and AAT teaching Management Accounting and also Financial Management.

In 2014, I joined the online live team and the majority of my time was spent teaching professional qualifications online using Adobe Connect. I also had the role within the team of designing what a best practice Adobe Connect room should look like and embarked upon a project to have a best practice Adobe Connect room and teaching guidance set up for each professional qualification paper within ACCA, CIMA and AAT and ensuring each paper had an Online Live subject manager.

In 2015 I had the opportunity to cover the role of Faculty Manager for the Birmingham centre. This involved line management, freelance tutor management, writing the course timetables and allocation of courses to tutors, and assisting in budget preparation for the centre.

Finally, I joined FI in March 2019, when I was looking to be part of a smaller company, and build on all of the experience I had amassed to date across my industry and training roles.

What is your role at FI and what do you teach?

My role at FI is Head of Online and Midlands programmes. I still teach around 20 days per year, focussing on Financial Management papers across all qualifications. My role involves scheduling courses for both our Midlands centre and online live courses. Also, I’m responsible for the line management of our 6 Birmingham tutors and the recruitment of new tutors to the team.  I design pathways for our apprenticeship programmes for Birmingham and also for the public sector, and work on enhancing the delivery of our online live courses.

What originally attracted you to become a tutor?

I really enjoyed my time as a student and enjoyed any training aspects within my roles as an accountant. I had thought about becoming a teacher previously but wasn’t sure I wanted to teach in school education.

I enjoyed my job as a management accountant but producing a similar set of accounts every month did not give me the variety that I wanted from a role. Teaching a new set of students each exam sitting and taking on new papers to teach means that every day can be different.

What is your favourite thing about working at FI?

My favourite thing about working at FI is having the ability to make a difference. Being a smaller and agile company gives you the ability to get involved and if you see something that could be made better, then being able to speak up about it, be listened to and able to action your ideas.

What are the main challenges of being a tutor?

As a new tutor, the challenge will be receiving a question in class from a student and you may be unsure of the answer.  Hopefully, this challenge will be short-lived, as once you have taught the same topic a few times you will anticipate the questions and build them into your explanation. It can feel quite scary the first time you teach but it will become easier with time, so don’t be too hard on yourself! Preparation will be key to begin with, but don’t be afraid to say you are unsure – you will find out the answer, students would much prefer that than be given the wrong answer.

Interested in a career at FI? Learn more about careers at FI.