Business career
Business graduate Kate Fenton launched her own recruitment company after a career moving up the ladder at the Britannia Building Society. The now mother-of-two joined Britannia straight out of college, before embarking on a HNC in Business and subsequently a top-up to BA (Hons) at University of Staffordshire.
Kate said: “Although I was working at the time, my degree showed me which way I wanted to go with my career. The lectures were great and I still use what I learned now – such as employment law. We learned about HR, finance, marketing – it was a great, well-rounded course.”
Completing her degree part-time while working allowed Kate to progress from Customer Service Advisor to Senior Coaching and Development Manager between 2000 and 2010. After having her second child, Kate’s career took an entrepreneurial turn, but she has remained in Staffordshire, working in Leek and living in Stoke.
Working and learning
Originally living in Brown Edge, on the Staffordshire Moorlands, Kate attended Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College to study PE, geography, psychology and general studies.
“I left school in 1998 and went to the Sixth Form College from 98 to 2000,” Kate recalled. “After that, I’d had enough of education and decided to get a job full-time, which is when I joined the building society. After a few years working, I got interested in doing a degree and work offered to support me.”
She continued: “I was enjoying the job at the time but I wanted to progress within the company, into the business management side of things. They offered to support me on my HNC and then BA because it helped the business.
“The course was flexible, which was great because I could fit it in part-time, while working.”
Upon graduating in 2007, Kate was promoted to a team leader role at Britannia within a couple of years. She moved between departments and, after the building society merged with the Co-operative Banking Group in 2009, Kate took the opportunity to enter into Learning and Development, where she became a senior manager, responsible for uplifting the capability of 80 team managers across nine different sites around the UK.
Recruitment consultancy
After getting married in 2010, Kate had her first child in September 2011 and eventually left the Co-operative Bank in April 2013, before having her second child in February 2014.
Following a career break, Kate started working freelance in June 2015, with Leeds-based training provider JT Development Solutions. In May 2016, she established her own business, Antelope Recruitment Consultancy, in partnership with the managing director of JT.
“We’re based in Leek and I still live in Stoke,” Kate said. “We specialise in recruitment for the education sector and the construction industry. We’re mostly working with apprenticeship assessors at the moment, recruiting them for big companies across the UK.
“We want to continue growing and expanding into other sectors, get new clients and continue to build relationships. We are a delivery focussed recruitment consultancy, so we don’t want to take loads on clients and not deliver a good service. It’s going really well so far.”
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