Service Planner
BT Openreach

Isabella C

0:00:03 Hi, I’m Isabella C. I work for BT in Coventry as a service planner. A service planner plans links between a business and either one of their customers or a business and one of their other premises. It can send any kind of information. It’s like a dedicated private circuit that only then can use, so they’ll get the full bandwidth, so they’ll be able to send as much as they want down it.

00:00:30 My dream has always been to be a fashion designer but, because it’s quite a limited field, I didn’t want to just pursue fashion on its own, so I chose A levels that would allow me to keep my options open. I chose maths, economics, and art, and music technology. Probably halfway through the first year I just lost interest. I didn’t really like it that much, so I kind of wasn’t really motivated to do very much. I think I just wanted to earn some money as well, so I didn’t really work very hard and I applied for some apprenticeships at the end of the year.

00:01:09 My mum and dad probably would have, at the time when I first told them the idea, would have preferred me to stay in A levels, but, because I was still going to be doing education and not just going straight into a job, I’d still be able to progress and learn more, they were quite happy about it.

00:01:24 My dad has worked in local government pretty much since he left school and my mum, she didn’t do any further education because they couldn’t afford it at the time, so she just went straight into working. She has been working for Connexions for the last ten/fifteen years.

00:01:40 Well, when I was at school, we didn’t really get advised about apprenticeships. We were kind of pushed into going to do A levels, really, by our teachers and by our parents because they saw that as a way of keeping your options open but, looking back, I would have liked to have known about apprenticeships because, If I had have known, I probably wouldn’t have done A levels. I would have gone straight into an apprenticeship

00:02:05 Obviously, with the apprenticeship, you do an NVQ 3 and also have to do the first year of a BTEC for that, but after that I wrote a business case to get sponsorship to do a HNC in business and I’m just about to finish that in April, so that was a two-year course, so that’s like equivalent to the first year and a bit of a degree in business. I do get a day off a week to go to college for my lectures but the actual work involved outside of that, we don’t actually get any time to do in that day the actual assignments, and it’s all assignment based. So it has been difficult. It’s really hard to motivate yourself because you have to do it in your own time when you get home from work. When you get home from work, the last thing you want to do is continue working.

00:02:51 I love driving. I know that isn’t really a main hobby or interest but it is something I really like. My car is awesome. I’ve got a mini and it’s my favourite purchase. It’s just so good to drive because you can just throw it round bends and it just sticks to the road because the suspension is just solid, and it’s awesome.

00:03:09 I love shopping because I’m really into fashion. I’m quite into my style. I guess I’ve always been kind of creative in that way.

00:03:22 In ten or twenty year’s time, I’d like to be doing a job that I really enjoy, something creative, possibly in the marketing side of things, or PR, or ultimately fashion, but I don’t know if that will ever come off. I’d be happy to just be doing a job that I really enjoy, to be honest, and earning enough money.