Dominique Bramwell is a Project Support Officer (PSO) currently working in Information Services. Dominique joined ENU in April 2016.
The PSO role encompasses a variety of activities to support the entire project lifecycle, from initial idea through to completion. The role requires strong organisation and communication skills and enables Dominique to interact with a wide range of people inside and out of the university. The constant mix of people and activities makes this role really interesting and offers endless opportunities to learn something new.
Dominique shares her career story in this Q&A
Dominique's top tip for career success is:
“Take any opportunity that comes your way, even if it doesn’t seem to obviously align with your career goals. It gets your name and face out there and I have found that opportunities taken tend to lead to more opportunities being offered.”
Tell us a bit about your career to date?
When I really think about it, my career journey started back when I became a business school student at ENU back in 2012. I had decided to give university a go at the age of 24 and moved myself to Edinburgh from Cornwall to start on this new path. I quickly got myself signed up to the Student Ambassador scheme and undertook a variety of roles across several departments until I ended up working consistently with the UK Student Recruitment Team. This set me up perfectly to apply for a role that became available just as I was finishing my final year studies and luckily, I gained my degree and was able to keep the role.
Initially my focus within the team was events which included the University Open Days. As these are fairly large-scale events, they gave me the opportunity to interact with a lot of people across the University. This was instrumental in helping me build up a network of contacts and allowed me to find out about and get involved with things that I may not have otherwise known about.
After a couple of years doing events, I decided I would like to try something new within the recruitment space, and my manager helped me move my focus to postgraduate recruitment. This was a hugely different type of recruitment, and whilst it still featured events, was a much more personal service and level of interaction with potential students which I really enjoyed and definitely directed my next move to the Global Mobility Team. This was a sideways move into a different part of the department that worked closely with current students and helping them achieve their goals of studying abroad as part of their degree. I was very unfortunate to start this role just a few weeks before the pandemic hit us here in the UK and so the next 18 months, whilst very rewarding in what we achieved as a team, was not quite what I had imagined it would be. I think I must hold the record for not sending a single student abroad whilst working in Global Mobility!
How did you secure your current role?
Speaking of the pandemic, that’s actually what let me to my current role in Information Services (IS). As we all started to work from home and Microsoft Teams was made available to everyone, I took it upon myself, as a self-confessed nerd, to start posting daily IT Top Tips on to the University social media platform we had at the time. This, understandably, caught the attention of Claire Taylor (Director of IS) who became quite curious about the random person posting information around activities happening in her space. Rather wonderfully, instead of shutting me down she reached out to me and asked me to be part of the official Microsoft Teams roll out project as a professional services representative. This gave me an insight into the world of IS project management which I quickly determined was where I would like to manoeuvre myself career wise. My absolutely wonderful manager in the Global Mobility Team (shout out to Sharyn Bennett) allowed me to spend a day a week working with the IS Project Team as part of my career development for almost a year. This experience ultimately led me to my current role as a Project Support Officer in the IS Project Services Team which is a step up and offers incredible opportunity for continued development.
What difference has working at Edinburgh Napier made to your career?
I have found Edinburgh Napier to be the most supportive place to work, which is what I have needed to develop and progress my career. In all honesty, I don’t have a career plan. My ultimate goal is to enjoy my job and to makes changes when I am ready for a new challenge. Edinburgh Napier has enabled me to do that in so many ways because of the supportive environment we work in. Whether it’s training courses, time spent with another team or re-focusing my role, I have been encouraged to develop my skills and knowledge. This not only keeps the day-to-day interesting for me and helps me grow my skill set but also benefits the University as they continue to get the best out of me.