Thanks to Faye Heaton for taking time to share her thoughts on the importance of presentation skills and confidence and insights into leading client teams. Faye is a Huddersfield based Senior Consultant who has been with Dufrain since 2016. Read her thoughts below.
1. Tell us a little bit about what you do?
I’m a Senior Consultant at Dufrain and for the last 4 years I have worked in various requirements roles, defining the requirements for development work such as redress calculations and identifying affected populations for remediations. At the moment I’m leading a client team of 3 colleagues on a regulatory reporting project, and I’m a people coach to 3 Dufrain colleagues as well.
2. Can you tell us a few details about the favourite part of your job?
Everyone who’s worked directly with me probably knows that I have a strong (strange?) love of documentation, so working in requirements and roles that require the definition of processes is perfect for me. I also love testing development work and trying to break jobs as a peer reviewer too!
3. What does a typical day look like for you?
I work 4 days a week so a typical working day for me usually starts with me checking my emails and updating my to-do lists at the start of the day so that I don’t lose track of any actions. Given my love of anything documentation-based, it’s probably not a surprise that I love a complex to-do list as well! My day is then pretty variable, depending on whether I have lots of project meetings that day, or whether I can dig into some documentation and data.
4. Which company value resonates with you the most?
Collaboration is the most important value for me because I love working with people towards a common goal, and learning from each other.
5. What would you say has been your most significant achievement or the one you are most proud of whilst working at Dufrain?
My proudest moment was probably when I worked as the sole requirements colleague for a remediation project calculating a complex redress calculation. I lead a team of developers in that role, and I was really proud that the calculation we created was so bespoke for each very distinct sub-population, and that we achieved that in a short time frame while all working remotely (before remote working as we know it now was even a thing)!
6. Who inspires you the most within Dufrain?
Inside Dufrain, the people who inspired me the most have been the people that have lead the projects that I’ve worked on over the years, both at client site and within internal projects. I’ve taken something valuable from every one of them, whether it’s their confidence and approach to presenting, their analytical and planning skills which set the project up for success, or how they focus on putting collaboration at the heart of what they do.
7. Which work benefit or perk is your favourite and why?
Without a doubt, private health care. I’d been on the NHS waiting list for surgery for 9 months and I was advised that it would likely be another year for the surgery. On receiving my private health care login details, I immediately booked an appointment and within a month I’d had my surgery. I couldn’t rate it higher because it saved me from another year of pain!
8. What’s the best advice you can give to someone who wants to work for us?
To really own your particular skills and be proud of them. We have lots of fantastic colleagues who are skilled in multiple advanced technologies and coding languages, but if you’ve been working as a BA or Project Manager, or in a generally less technical role, please don’t feel like there isn’t a place for you at Dufrain because there absolutely is. Own those skills and don’t feel like you need to downplay them or exaggerate your technical skills to fit in here, because all your skills will be valued.
9. What skill do you think everyone should learn?
Presentation skills and confidence, because you could perform some terrific work but nobody might ever find out about it if you haven’t spoken up and presented that work or your experience. At Dufrain, we have some new initiatives to help develop those skills so it’s never too late to focus on this.
10. What is your favourite hobby?
Probably video gaming still, although I do read a lot and last year I started embroidery. When I was 3 or 4, my brother was misdiagnosed as deaf and I started learning basic sign language, and even though I don’t remember any of it now, I find I talk a lot with my hands and that I need something to occupy them all the time. So having a controller, book or a needle in my hands seems to do the trick!
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