Experienced hire

Transcript

I’m Ernst & Young man and boy, so I joined from university, I’ll tell you when, 1986, a long time ago, and I guess my first…I’ve always looked at things in sort of with a five year horizon, and my first five years was all about getting my professional exams, getting that qualification out of the way, and then really wanting a couple of years to kick back and think, where do I want to go with my career, so, I succeeded in doing that, and after that five year period was over, I really thought I wanted some international experienced, and I applied, and was accepted onto our global mobility programme and spent a year and a half in the US. I was married at the time, so Heather and I went to the US and we had a most fantastic experience there. Coming back, although in theory I was supposed to come back and stay with the UK firm as it was then for a number of years, I really wanted to continue with the international piece, so I had applied and been accepted to go to our Singapore office and Heather then was pregnant and we decided, actually, you know, valour, and it was a bit more sensible just to stay where we were, so we did that, and at the end of that second five year period I’d sort of reached management in the firm and was on partner track and really felt I wanted again to do something different, so I started a transactions business in Belfast from scratch. We didn’t have one. Was admitted as a partner at a fairly young age, I was 31, and then really built that practice over the next five years, and we built it into a market leading position, very exciting really. All of us who were involved in that had a great time because as we grew the business, everyone was getting promoted through the ranks and we went from having three people in the first year to 34 in the sort of fourth year, and it was a very successful business. I guess I then looked at the next five years, and thought well what now, I can continue to do transactions. I thought about going to London where there are just bigger transactions and I guess you can apply yourself in a more international stage, instead of which, I really went into more of a management role combined with that execution so I became managing partner in Belfast, and then when we were talking about the whole EMEIA, I came down and took a head of market role in Ireland to really develop a growth strategy for the Irish practice, and so that was quite an interesting five years because unbeknown to me, it was taking me more out of front line client service, which I really love and growing the business and into more of a management role, which if I’m really honest, I didn’t really see myself ever going into. I’ve always enjoyed the buzz of client work and dealing with great clients and winning work. So, then the opportunity came up. I guess I was asked to take on the managing partner role and I’m in the midst of that now, and I guess my role’s split into three bits. I still try and do some transaction work and that keeps me sane. That’s probably about a third of my time. I spend a third of my time in the market trying to unlock new accounts, build relationships trying to win work, and a third of my time is really in the leadership piece, which is all about selling the strategy for Ireland, sort of motivating the leadership team and the partners and trying to be as visible a role model as I can to our people.