TFI - Lesley Thomson
2 Mar 2018
The Friday Interview
What is your name?
Lesley Thomson
What do you do for a living in 10 words?
I have an HR consultancy, Lesley Thomson Consulting Ltd.
Where do you currently reside?
I live in a little village, Crossford in Fife.
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Who did you idolise when growing up?
Here I go not conforming to your questions. If you know me, you will know I don’t idolise people, but I do admire plenty of people now. When growing up, I enjoyed listening to a range of music and lots of good people crossed my path, but I’ve never idolised anyone.
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How many interviews have you had in your career?
Recently I have had a few interviews but overall in my career I have not had too many. The first of many was after I was made redundant back in 2009 but before then I had been with the same company for 20 years and had no interviews in that time.
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What was your worst one?
I had one last year for a company who shall remain nameless. They have a strong brand and it was surprising to me that I arrived at the interview to be interviewed by the Head of HR for 2 roles which I was unaware of. They weren’t roles I would wanted to have interviewed for, nor would I have given me the job(s). That was unprofessional and a waste of everyone’s time. The company hadn’t told the recruiter that they changed the roles. I should have stopped the interview, but I kept thinking, is it me that’s got this wrong.
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From your career so far, what has been your best job and why?
Working for yourself is pretty cool but it’s not something I am going to pursue in the short term. I enjoyed my time back in the early 90’s working for Hewlett Packard at the time. It was such a fabulous organisation to work for and the people were genuinely great people, many of whom I am still in contact with today. There were lots of development opportunities and I was sent off to work in California for 6 months.
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What did you want to do when you were a kid?
When I was a kid I wanted to be an air hostess or cabin crew. Now I can’t think of anything worse!
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What goals have you set for 2018 and beyond?
My personal goal is to secure a new role as HRD with an organisation who genuinely have a great culture and a strong brand. I also want to focus on my health and wellbeing which has become very important to me in the past couple of years. My daughters are at a crucial stage in their education so I want to support them as much as I can.
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What would you want to tell your 20-year-old self-knowing what you know now?
I did pretty good at guiding my 20 year old self back then and I still would say, dream big and you can achieve whatever you want. Stay true to your personal values and you’ll do just fine. If Plan A doesn’t work out, kick the crap out of Plan B.
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What memories do you have of your first ever job?
I worked in various jobs when I was younger. I used to work on a farm as a weekend house cleaner. It was hard work and I’ve never stop working really hard since then.
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What was the best advice you received at the beginning of your career?
I can’t remember so far back, back then we didn’t have career advice and support in the way we provide for our teenagers these days, but I knew I needed to work hard at no matter what I chose to do.
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What is an embarrassing thing that not many people would know about you? (for example, have you ever been on a game show or something similar).
There is nothing too embarrassing about me or what I’ve done but things which may surprise some are that I used to teach fitness, I have been interviewed on the Scottish News and I used to be in a band. That’s not too embarrassing is it.