icould - Careers Advice, Choices & Ideas

Hayley Miller

00:02 My name is Hayley Miller I’m the chief executive for the Birmingham local education partnership. I’m tasked with running the Birmingham local education partnership, and ensuring that we deliver great new buildings for the local children and young people of Birmingham. We have four construction sites that are operational at the moment and I have over 30 projects that are in development, so yes an extremely busy job.

00:27 I absolutely loved school and it was very focused on sport. I played hockey for a district level in Scotland and that was really my forte, I did very well academically as well but sport was really what got me excited. I was fortunate enough to also do well enough at school by 5th year, in order to leave early at aged 17 and go to university. So I chose sport science not surprisingly given my interest in hockey, biology and psychology and the psychology interest at that point was because my father was a volunteer counsellor but very much from the university was about the experience of going away from home, meeting people and becoming more independent.

01:09 I remember phoning up my dad and saying, there’s a pub crawl and at the time I didn’t drink, I said, should I go out, he said, you do what you like Hayley, it’s your life now you go and do it and I think then I suddenly realised that actually the choices I made were going to be mine rather than my parents. My family are self employed they were in the car industry, so yes I’ve always had a self employed family and they think I’m mad for being employed by a large global firm.

01:38 I spent my first year after graduating on a very low salary, as an assistant to Imperial Cancer Research trying to get the relevant experience in mental health in order to do a doctorate in clinical psychology and to be quite frank got bored, cos I’m a very impatient individual and it looked like it was going to take a number of years to get through a bottle neck of training so, decided I would rethink and went back to university after a year out to do a masters in occupational psychology.

02:10 I came to the end of it and was a little bit disillusioned, I felt I’d spent by that time 6 years and hadn’t actually got a career so at that point I really didn’t know which direction to go in and at that time I decided to join up for a short service commission for the Royal Air Force as an officer, the challenge for me then was actually can I go through basic training as an officer for 6 months and get myself physically fit and mentally able to lead a team of men as you need to do as a commissioned officer, and that to me was a completely new challenge and I had 5 fabulous years in the RAF where I did an awful lot of adventurous training which are things like going and doing rafting, climbing, skiing, all as part of self development in the Royal Air Force cos one of the very frustrating things in the military is every 18 months you move around and you completely up sticks and you move to another base without your friends and without your necessarily your family if you’re married and so you keep having excitement by new challenges but you never have control over where you’re going next.

03:22 I decided actually I probably could make my own choices out in civilian world rather than being told what my career would look like in the RAF and so I felt coming out would give me more control.

03:36 I like waking up in the morning and not knowing what the day is going to hold, I like thinking that there is opportunity round the corner at every turn, so if you gave me a 5 year plan of my career I would probably be depressed, I would say every job and every opportunity is an experience and makes you the person you are. So I don’t regret any of the decisions I’ve made and I don’t think I’ve made any wrong decisions and I wouldn’t be sitting here with the skill set I’ve got if I hadn’t had such a varied background.

04:05 End

Hayley Miller

Hayley Miller My name is Hayley Miller I’m the chief executive for the Birmingham local education partnership. I’m tasked with running the Birmingham local education partnership, and ensuring that we deliver great new buildings for the local children and young people of Birmingham. We have four construction sites that are operational at the moment and I have over 30 projects that are in development, so yes an extremely busy job. I absolutely loved school and it was very focused on sport. I played hockey for a district level in Scotland and that was really my forte, I did very well academically as well but sport was really what got me excited. I was fortunate enough to also do well enough at school by 5th year, in order to leave early at aged 17 and go to university. So I chose sport science not surprisingly given my interest in hockey, biology and psychology and the psychology interest at that point was because my father was a volunteer counsellor but very much from the university was about the experience of going away from home, meeting people and becoming more independent. I remember phoning up my dad and saying, there’s a pub crawl and at the time I didn’t drink, I said, should I go out, he said, you do what you like Hayley, it’s your life now you go and do it and I think then I suddenly realised that actually the choices I made were going to be mine rather than my parents. My family are self employed they were in the car industry, so yes I’ve always had a self employed family and they think I’m mad for being employed by a large global firm. I spent my first year after graduating on a very low salary, as an assistant to Imperial Cancer Research trying to get the relevant experience in mental health in order to do a doctorate in clinical psychology and to be quite frank got bored, cos I’m a very impatient individual and it looked like it was going to take a number of years to get through a bottle neck of training so, decided I would rethink and went back to university after a year out to do a masters in occupational psychology. I came to the end of it and was a little bit disillusioned, I felt I’d spent by that time 6 years and hadn’t actually got a career so at that point I really didn’t know which direction to go in and at that time I decided to join up for a short service commission for the Royal Air Force as an officer, the challenge for me then was actually can I go through basic training as an officer for 6 months and get myself physically fit and mentally able to lead a team of men as you need to do as a commissioned officer, and that to me was a completely new challenge and I had 5 fabulous years in the RAF where I did an awful lot of adventurous training which are things like going and doing rafting, climbing, skiing, all as part of self development in the Royal Air Force cos one of the very frustrating things in the military is every 18 months you move around and you completely up sticks and you move to another base without your friends and without your necessarily your family if you’re married and so you keep having excitement by new challenges but you never have control over where you’re going next. I decided actually I probably could make my own choices out in civilian world rather than being told what my career would look like in the RAF and so I felt coming out would give me more control. I like waking up in the morning and not knowing what the day is going to hold, I like thinking that there is opportunity round the corner at every turn, so if you gave me a 5 year plan of my career I would probably be depressed, I would say every job and every opportunity is an experience and makes you the person you are. So I don’t regret any of the decisions I’ve made and I don’t think I’ve made any wrong decisions and I wouldn’t be sitting here with the skill set I’ve got if I hadn’t had such a varied background. End

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