With jobs in television production, manual labour, sports marketing and IT, Gavin Hooper had achieved wide ranging career experience in a number of different sectors before branching out into the business of Learning and Development. The move led to a role as an L&D coordinator with children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent, responsible for the training and development of a workforce of 500 staff and a wide volunteer network.
My manager encouraged me to take a CIPD Level 5 qualification
Gavin’s position was eventually threatened by redundancy and, as a result, his manager encouraged him to undertake a CIPD Level 5 qualification in Learning and Development in order to obtain a formal qualification for the work he was doing. After exploring all the options, comparing prices and the structure of the course, Gavin chose Reed Learning’s online learning programme which offered the best value for money.
Working with my personal adviser
Reed Learning’s online learning programme offers complete flexibility and allows candidates to study at their own pace, fitting it around other commitments and from anywhere in the world. Key components of the course are the online materials provided via the Virtual Learning Environment and the support of a dedicated personal adviser.
The pair settled on arranging their one-to-one consultations over the telephone and developed an extremely effective working relationship as Gavin explains:
My tutor was superb. He adapted to the fact that I can be quite long-winded and helped me enormously to become more concise. He was also very supportive at a difficult time in my career, offering suggestions and giving me contacts above and beyond what he had to do!
His knowledge was excellent – he was a friendly and calm presence at the end of the phone, and although I never met him in the flesh, I took a lot of solace from that. He was adept at guiding me to explore areas that I hadn’t considered, and to stay focused when I was between jobs. He helped me with my choices for the non-mandatory units and was a really useful sounding board for a range of ideas I had. He was also very good at keeping me down to a manageable limit on the word count.
My new job in the construction industry
Now, having successfully completed the qualification and achieved Associate CIPD membership, Gavin is working as a production manager specialising in eLearning with Built Intelligence, a company that creates training materials for the construction industry in the UK. With the qualification under his belt he is hoping to move up the career ladder and use his skillset to empower others to learn.
