Hello. My name is Chris Perkins. I’m a Client Director at TMP Worldwide UK.

I’ve been in the career coaching business for seven years and in HR consulting for fourteen. Now my focus is on what employers do to attract, retain and engage the very best people. I believe the key to this is how they brand themselves and what sort of experience they provide to job candidates and employees alike. My own career has included sales, retail management, L&D, HR generalist and internal and external consultancy roles.

My earliest memory of a career aspiration is when I was about four years old and told a caricature artist I wanted to be a train driver – I still have the picture he drew:

When I was at school I thought about joining the police force, but a love of DJ’ing and a newly discovered aptitude for Economics led me to Stirling University to study Marketing – and get involved with the university radio station.

When I left I had two career objectives: to not commute and not wear a shirt and tie. I’ve since done both. A lot. But actually, I came to discover that I quite liked looking smart for work and I enjoy travelling.

The original plan was to open a record shop. All the funders I spoke to said I needed to put some money into it myself and get some retail experience. So I started looking for jobs in shops.

I got one and pretty quickly found a career opening up. I decided I wasn’t ready to start my own business and focused on the career opportunities I could see where I was. After four years in retail sales and management roles, I stumbled into HR – and after three years in generalist and L&D roles I moved to the States and worked for a global training and coaching company. I moved back to Scotland and continued with the same firm for a further five years. I was then headhunted to join the world’s largest career transition company.

After three years there, I was approached to join Fairplace to build the business in Scotland. I managed and delivered a range of assignments for clients in Scotland and London, from individual director-level career coaching programmes to large-scale career transition projects.

From there I was persuaded back to a practitioner role as an internal HR Consultant at a large retail bank. That proved not to be for me so I returned to Fairplace, which had grown to become Fairplace Cedar and cover career and talent management.

Then in early 2014 I joined TMP. It feels like things have come full circle, combining my Marketing degree with my HR experience at last!

Views expressed here are my own and not those of my employer.