Meet Sarah Martin – EMEA Talent Acquisition Consultant

Software, from vision to execution, is a people business – and at Micro Focus, our people are our greatest asset. Helping our employees build exciting and enriching careers is a key priority. At Micro Focus, we work hard to unlock the individual potential and collective capability of our workforce by investing in development opportunities, so that everyone has the freedom to carve out the career they want. For some, this means undertaking additional training. For others, it’s switching career paths entirely within the business.

Sarah Martin, Talent Acquisition Consultant in the EMEA TA Team, started her career at Micro Focus in the Inside Sales organization and then pivoted to a very different area of the business – a specialised recruitment role. Below, Sarah shares her experience moving from one department to another to grow her professional career – and how Micro Focus supported her on her journey.

To start off, tell us a bit about yourself Sarah.

Sarah: I live in Northern Ireland, in a very small village in Armagh. I’m a serious coffee drinker. I’ve received a few comments on how any time I’m on a call, I always have a cup of coffee with me! Outside of work I love to read, go for walks in the countryside, and, you guessed it, go for coffee with friends!

What can you tell us about your career journey with Micro Focus?

Sarah: My career journey at Micro Focus is a long story, to say the least! I joined the company in January 2021, after having graduated from university with a degree in German and International Tourism. I applied for the FY21 Graduate Programme for the Sales org within Micro Focus and, after an extensive recruitment and assessment centre process, I was very happy to hear that I’d been offered a position. I received 8 weeks of intense product and sales training, along with 13 other graduates that made up my intake that year. It was a thoroughly beneficial experience and really set me up to begin working in a professional and corporate environment. I worked in the International Sales teams as a Business Development Representative (BDR), covering the DACH region for roughly a year. And then at the end of the financial year 2021, I was offered a role on the EMEA Talent Acquisition team – and so I jumped ship.

Can you tell us more about this career transition?

Sarah: My interest in talent acquisition, retainment, and strategy took me by surprise. It was never something I thought I would go into, but after getting to know my team, apparently “falling into” recruitment happens for a lot of people. Whilst I was still working as a BDR, I was very passionate about the graduate programme and full of ideas for future intakes. My manager at the time was due to go on maternity leave and had contacted me and another member of our intake group to talk about future programmes. With our experience in event management via our hospitality backgrounds, she felt we would be great candidates to take over the running and management of the next programme whilst she was off.

The first question was, “Where are we going to get these graduates from?” And that’s where my interest in recruitment and pipelining talent began! After a while, I realised this might be something I could really enjoy and would like to work in, so I reached out to the head of EMEA Talent Acquisition. I spoke to them about my interest and how I was keen to learn more and explore that career path – and we eventually came up with a plan for my development. I shadowed one of the TA Team, who allowed me to join calls, ask unlimited questions, and showed me the processes. After a month or two, I was pretty certain that this was the route I wanted to take, and I was really pleased when I was asked to officially join the EMEA TA team. I haven’t looked back since.

Why is this career transition important to you?

Sarah: As a graduate, the journey from full-time education into the working world can be very daunting. There is an unspoken pressure—a lot of the time from yourself—that you need to know exactly what you want to do and have a career plan from the get-go, or else you’ll get nowhere. Micro Focus and its employees really helped me see that I could change my mind and move around as I grew and developed. I think it was Oscar Wilde who once famously said, “If you know what you want to be in life, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything.” This quote really embodies my journey and I now look to develop wherever my talents lead me. I’ll take any opportunities that present themselves to me in Micro Focus and grow naturally in areas that I enjoy working in.

How do you feel you make your mark at Micro Focus?

Sarah: Making your mark is something that I think a lot of people aspire to do. We want to leave places feeling like we’ve left them better than when we entered. I really feel like I make a genuine difference in the world doing what I do now. I get to talk to different people every single day. I get to help them find their dream job and feel like they, too, make a difference by doing something they enjoy. It’s so refreshing to hear candidates speak about their careers and aspirations with such passion—and to watch their eyes light up talking about projects or previous roles they’ve worked in and obviously loved. It’s even better when I get to call them up and let them know that they were successful and I get to welcome them to the team. I also get the opportunity to work with new graduate intakes, share my story with them, and encourage them to make their mark—and so the wheel keeps turning….

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Learn more about how you can make your mark with us at https://microfocus.com/careers.

This post was first first published on Home | Micro Focus Blog website by Majken Pullin. You can view it by clicking here