How the FDM Returners Programme Revamped My Career

Throughout life, not everything goes to plan. For many people, the prospect of taking a career break is unavoidable whether this is due to family, medical or personal reasons. Our Returners programme is open all-year-round giving men and women across the UK the chance to reclaim their skills and confidence in the workplace when they decide that the time is right to return to work. Imrana Schneider is one of our Returners Programme consultants and joined our London Academy in October 2018 after taking a career break following redundancy. She shared with us her journey and achievements over the last six months.

Prior to my career break, I was working as an IT Change Manager for BT, based on the British Airways Account. I took up an offer of voluntary redundancy and I took a one-year career break after 23 years of continuous working. I was itching to get back to work and at around the six months mark I started searching for opportunities, which proved to be a lot harder than had I imagined it would be. I went for several interviews but kept getting rejected, which knocked my confidence more and more. I don’t think the rejection was down to my skill set, because I had a lot of transferrable knowledge, but due to the gap in my CV.

FDM first came to my attention after I decided to start searching online for ideas on how to get back to work. I came across the Women Returners website where it listed ‘return to work’ programmes which seemed to be the answer I was looking for. Amongst the list of available programmes, I found FDM. What attracted me the most to FDM was the acceptable criteria – a gap of 12 months plus. When searching across the other programmes, the majority of the companies would only accept returners who were two years plus. There were a lot of different companies’ programmes on offer, but FDM were the only ones who appealed to me.

I began my training at FDM’s London Academy six months ago and don’t get me wrong, there were times where the course got very stressful with training and preparing me for interviews, but I kept going. The training was great and the fact that I got there in the end and managed to secure a placement with Newton Investment who are part of BNY Mellon, made all of the worries and stress worthwhile. Some of the skills, especially Excel, I have transferred here on-site.

The seven weeks are very full on and at the beginning and I did start to feel overwhelmed, but once I reached week four, I started to see my achievements in action. By this point, I realised I had learnt so many skills, passed my exams and I also managed to be placed with an amazing client. I am very happy with how everything has gone.

If you are looking to return to work after a long career break, then our returners programme is for you.