Management - Case Studies

Mark Stickland

Aged 37, Major Mark Stickland’s regiment, the Royal Irish, was being disbanded and his commission was due to run out this year, so ‘it was maybe time to move into a second career.’ Service in the UK, Northern Ireland, Germany, Sierra Leone, Iraq and the Falkland Islands had developed skills in ‘decision-making, leadership, assembling a team and making it work, problem-solving, planning and administration’. He also held formal qualifications in ISEB Project Management and Systems Engineering, PRINCE2, and was a Managing Successful Programmes Practitioner.

His Career Transition Workshop enabled him to ‘really focus on the job-search which, up until then, had been on the back burner. It helped me to realise my transferable skills and to articulate them in a crunchy CV, which I then submitted to my company’s HR department via their website. There was no job advertised but I thought that I would start my networking close to home. I was asked in for an interview and, fortunately, they were looking to recruit people with recent experience in defence.

‘I am a project manager in a software house, SciSys, in Bristol, overseeing delivery of bespoke software for a variety of customers. I will often be involved in the tendering process. I will be allocated projects to deliver through a team of technical experts who will actually design, write and test it. I am conscious that I am just starting out on a second career and am therefore on a steep learning curve. The financial package as a whole is higher.’

Published January 08