Ellie Long, Global Head of Early Careers @ Rolls-Royce

Welcome back to another episode of The Garage Guide. Today we're joined with Ellie. Ellie, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, so I think There's a lot of different ways we could take this, this episode, but I think an interesting place to start is talking about your experience at university and, and how you saw your, your career, you know, while you were at university. Obviously you're at Rolls-Royce now, um, which I'm not sure if you expected, you know, when you start university ending up here, but yeah, just talk me through what you're really thinking about your career while you're at university.

Yeah, so I guess if I track back a teeny bit, when I was going to do my A-levels at school, school, I wasn't necessarily the most kind of like typical academic person, and I kind of went with, you know what, I really enjoyed doing business management at A-level, so I'm going to do that at uni, and it's going to open up a breadth of opportunity. And I kind of had these aspirations that I was going to work maybe for a really big kind of glamorous retailer doing something like cool, like traveling the world, being like a buyer or something. I went to uni, did business management, But for me, it was— that's, that was the point where you started to understand actually what more roles and jobs there are. And I think, um, I've got parents who kind of done the same job for most of their, their lives, and you start to unpick when you see how real businesses work, the scope and the vast amount of kind of opportunity there is. And that's why I look at a company like Rolls-Royce— you can build a whole career moving around Rolls-Royce because of the size and scale of it. Um, And I was fortunate enough that the degree that I did through Nottingham Trent University gave me 2 years' worth of kind of real-life work experience, which coincidentally I did through Rolls-Royce, but have left and kind of come back to them into this role. But doing that helped open my eyes to actually what types of jobs there are out there, and I can't emphasize enough how much firsthand experience and opportunities to actually see see businesses and how they work and how they run is what will help kind of spark that, that's where I can see myself moment, or that's something that really interests me, that's what links to my skills or experiences.

Yeah, from the outside looking in at your role at Rolls-Royce, your responsibility is in HR and sort of employer branding and all things, you know, getting the best talent working at Rolls-Royce, but how would you yourself describe what you do on a day-to-day basis?

So I know I'm biased, but I would say I think I have one of the best jobs at Rolls-Royce. So, my title, where we like to put really glamorous names around what people do, so I'm Global Head of Early Career, but essentially that means I look after everything from attracting early talent into our organization, right through that recruitment process, but also then the support and the development and the mentoring that comes from being on one of our graduate or apprenticeship programs. What does the design of that program look like, and how do we make sure that that's linked to our kind of future skills strategy, Then also working with those individuals and the colleagues, the great colleagues within my team, working with our graduates and apprentices and offboarding them into what their kind of permanent position looks like. So it's that whole life cycle of early careers, and I say it's one of the best roles because for me it's like that X Factor moment when you can offer someone their first job and you can kind of give them that opportunity. I really think me and my team have got the responsibility of raising aspirations and changing the diversity makeup of our organisation. Early careers is one of the biggest levers in terms of changing your talent, diversity, and skills mix that you've got, and I think it's a really exciting time with the way that the economy and our kind of business world is changing, and the fact that the jobs that we're recruiting for now don't currently exist, and the skills we need for the future are skills that we're still learning about. The young people that we attract in are going to be the people that are going to be doing that, and so that's why I think it's really exciting.

And you mentioned change in the job market. Obviously, whether it's a Rolls-Royce or Veeam, you've had, you know, extensive experience in the employer branding and HR world, and I'm curious how you think it's actually changed from a, yeah, from a graduate's perspective when they look at their career how are they actually finding out about the different opportunities from Rolls-Royce? And if they don't know already, you know, what are the different careers that are available in Rolls-Royce?

Yeah, so, um, I think I'll start at the point in terms of what's kind of changing. For me, there's this real shift, and a lot of big organizations now will talk about being kind of skills-based and shifting to a skills-based design. And we're kind of moving away from people having traditional jobs or kind of having very linear careers and focusing more on actually what are the skills that you have, what are your values, what are your behaviours, and actually how do you use that to start to tailor and make up a career. So I'm really proud of the fact that actually at Rolls-Royce, a graduate from any degree background can apply to one of our graduate programmes because we're much more focused on what are the skills that you can bring, what are your personal values, what are your behaviours, and actually the whole of our process has been set up to allow those individuals to come and tell us about that. It's not meant to be a test, it's not meant to be sit there and how do we tick off all the perfect things to make sure you're going to be the brilliant Rolls-Royce graduate or apprentice. Actually, come and tell us about what degree you've got, so history degree, come and tell us what you've learned, what are the skills, what are the things that are really important to you, um, what are your favorite things about studying that, and let's shape that into what a career could look like at Rolls-Royce. So, um, I always find it a really hard question to answer what's the perfect graduate or what's the perfect career or where graduates might go because genuinely the opportunities are massive because we're focused on actually developing people's skills around the skills that we need as a company to succeed and where our skills gaps are and what the focus of role choice is, if that makes sense.

Yeah, and I think it's a really refreshing outlook on it because I think, you know, for right or wrong, graduates can feel like the job market can be quite cold and lonely and a bit manic-depressive at times, you know, you get one interview, you don't, or whatever, but it sounds like your goal is to mould people into being the best version of themselves in their career, which I love for one, and I'm, you know, I'm curious what that actually looks like practically then, because, you know, you say people, you know, they've maybe they've done a degree because they were good at school, like a bit like yourself, or, you know, they tried out some different jobs out of necessity to earn a wage while at uni, or whatever it is, I think there still is a bit of confusion around how you can actually gain these skills while at university? Like, what are the actual options available? So from Rolls-Royce's perspective and yourself, like, what would you suggest students do to try and actually explore their career before they get to that graduate stage or, you know, apprenticeship stage?

Yeah, so I would work out what are the things you like and what are things that are important to you from a career, and that is very individual. So sit down, I don't know, write a list of all the things that are really important. Do you want a job because you want to earn lots of money? Because you don't You know what, that's absolutely okay. I think we shy away from sometimes talking about that as an ambition, but actually, do you want a role, a job, because you want to earn lots of money, you want to be really senior, you want to kind of have responsibility, you want leadership, or do you want a role that's going to give you innovation, or do you want a role that's going to be creative, or actually, do you just want a job that you can do that's 9 to 5 and you can go home and gives you a really good social life and flexibility? And start to think about all of the things that you want to look for in a job. Start to think about all of the skills that you think you've got. Again, they're really individual to you, and if you're struggling to do that, think about all the things you do in your spare time that you actually— sorry, you play on the football team, think about all the things that you— the skills you might use in playing in that football team. So your collaboration, if you're the team captain, leadership, actually resilience because your football team keeps losing all of their games, I don't know. Start to kind of map all of that out, and you'll start to be able to join lines between all of this. I'm a really visual person, so I'm like a get lots of colourful pieces of paper and felt tip pens and mind map it. But you start to kind of build out pictures of kind of who you are, and don't do that thinking like, oh, it needs to match this company, or it doesn't look like my friends, or whatever. Do that really individually for you, and then you can kind of start to work out actually where you might want to gain more experience. If leadership is something that really came up and you really wanted to manage people and you know that's something you really want your career to have, you can then start to think about how you might look to develop that skill as you go, kind of go through your university journey. But it's not a right or wrong answer, and this is the real shift that I kind of want universities and graduates to feel comfortable understanding, is actually if you want to be an engineer and you just want to be a technical expert and you want to kind of design cool products and innovation is really important to you, and actually be the leadership, but it isn't, that's okay. If you actually really want to be a future CEO, that's also really okay, and Rolls-Royce is looking for both those types of people. So it's sort of building that picture of who you are, and that might change over time, that might develop over time, and then starting to look for where you can have those opportunities. And again, we've really seen a shift. I think COVID was a real blessing in the sense of moving away from focusing on graduates needing lots of work experience and the traditional type of experience that would have demonstrated those skills, And so our process has really been designed to set people up for success, to say, come in, tell us about you, tell us about all of your experiences, all of your life experiences. So if you were a young carer, that shows so much about who you were. And so it doesn't matter if you've not got a part-time job, because actually you can show lots of experience and a lot of those skills that you might have kind of mind-mapped through that experience. Equally, if you've done Duke of Edinburgh, that's a fantastic thing to talk about. Not one is kind of better or stronger than the other, and so it's— I think it's getting out of that comfort zone of thinking, oh, I have to have had the part-time job and I have to have done this and I have to have done this. Actually, there's so much you can talk about that I think young people don't realize are things that they can talk about and things that demonstrate those skills.

Yeah, and even though I'm pretty early on in my career journey, I can already identify the importance of having a why locked down you know, whether it's in entrepreneurship or in your career, or just why you stick at anything longer than maybe you're meant to. And, you know, if you use this podcast as an example, like, I started it, you know, because I wanted to help myself actually learn what you could do in a career sense amidst everyone else around me going into consulting and banking and law. I didn't feel like I fit in there, and from that sort of hopelessness or desperation, I, you know, I built something that my why was so locked down, you know, from the beginning that vanity metrics or anything that you normally associate with building a podcast didn't really come to mind. It was, you know, can I bring people along this journey with me in building career awareness? So I think the other thing is it comes off, it's really infectious when someone has that, that energy, they know why they're doing something. So I guess in terms of translating all what you're saying there, these different experiences you can have When you go into the interview, people will build it up into their head as being like this massive, you've got one shot, but really what you're saying is, you know, just really just say what you've been through and say it like truthfully to yourself.

Yeah, yeah, and actually you're interviewing us as much as we're interviewing you, so when you come in, you need to think, actually, is this a place that I could see myself working? Are these people that I can see myself working with? Is this an organisation that resonates with all of those things that I've written down on that list. There are some organisations where you might have to work longer hours, you might be expected to work weekends, there are some organisations that have got different types of benefits, have got different types of cultures, and so that's why it's really important to kind of engage with the organisation multiple times to really kind of sense-check that, and it's okay to self-select out and say this isn't the right company for me. But yeah, absolutely, when you arrive at a Rolls-Royce Assessment Centre, and I'd love to try and come up with a better name for calling it an assessment centre because it really shouldn't be as scary as that sounds, and we've tried to make it as friendly and as kind of soft as you can. It's only half a day, we do our graduate assessment centres virtually, but we want to hear about you, so we— and we're not trying to get the best person from the day or the best two people from the day, actually everyone that comes on that day might might get an offer. But yeah, we really want to hear about the individual, and I think, so one of the activities we do is kind of, we call it a passion presentation, and you have a set amount of time to do a presentation. You get time to prepare it beforehand, and it's on a subject of your choice that isn't something to do with your university degree, and it's something that you might have learned or taught yourself, or you've researched, or you've invested time in that is yours, and you talk to us about why that's really important to you, why that links to your skills and your values and your behaviours, and why that might be of interest to Rolls-Royce. And the reason I love that is because we see people doing it on things like Pokémon cards, we see people doing it on the kind of like that virtual fantasy football thing, we see someone did it on knitting and they talked about how like knitting linked to coding and they wanted a career in IT because when you learn to knit you have to learn to read the different instructions. I mean, it is— you are bringing yourself, and that's the point, is that actually when you're at Rolls-Royce, we want you to bring your true authentic self to work. We want you to be yourself, so why wouldn't we start that in the interview process?

Yeah, I think there'll be graduates listening to this now, like, sort of a new reinstilled hope and faith in what they can actually achieve in their career and how they could, you know, persuade a company that you're the right person. And I think What you were saying there is great in terms of the accessibility of it, you know, and when you look at, you know, diversity and inclusion in a company, if that's what you're assessing people on, it makes enabling social mobility and everything like that, like, really way more tangible. So, you know, that's one example of what you and your company are doing to promote social mobility, but are there any other, like, things you're doing as a corporation to really harness the talent we have all over the UK?

Yeah, I think, so personally, I think social mobility is one of the biggest challenges we face as a kind of UK society, and I also think it's one of the biggest opportunities for us to readdress the balance. I think the gap between those that have and those that haven't is becoming bigger, and COVID only made that gap bigger, and there's so much scary research and data out there now, and I don't want to scare graduates at all, but actually it's data and research that's showing us as an organization that we really need to kind of do more and to support more young people, which is really good because it's giving us the license to actually really push and drive change. But I think for us at Rolls-Royce, the biggest shift we've seen in the past couple of years is we've started measuring more about social mobility. So it's a really hard topic to try and measure in the same way as gender or ethnicity or other kind of D&I attributes because it can be quite subjective and it can be quite hard to try and categorise someone. I always use the, um, example— it's in a really interesting, um, text about social mobility— and but that David Beckham's kids would be classed as socially mobile if you looked at the first in their family to go to university because he didn't go to universities and As much as I love David Beckham, his kids are clearly not from a lower socioeconomic background. So how we measure it and how we kind of talk about it, I think, has been a really big shift for us because we've got some data and so we know where we need to improve. And I'm not going to sit here and say that we're perfect, and I think a lot of big organisations will try and cover things up. We know that we need to do more, so we're doing a lot more in schools. We're starting a lot earlier in terms of our engagement interaction and trying to kind of inspire young people. Insights programmes is a really big kind of game changer for us, and we know that if we interact with people earlier on and we bring them in earlier on, and the more we do with them and the more we have touch points and kind of bring them into our world and break down some of those barriers and misconceptions they might have, the more successful they might be in kind of later processes and joining us. But it's a work in progress, and I think A lot of people in similar roles to me put a lot of time and attention in kind of your upfront attraction piece and a lot of budget and going out and doing all of this great kind of on-campus marketing and engagement, but I say unless we set people up for success the second they apply to us, they can kind of go through that process with confidence. If we've not put a lot of time and attention to that bit of the process, all of that upfront stuff is wasted. And so that's the real kind of, I guess, message for me to students is we've put a lot of time and effort and attention in and care into that process. And then is the process post-offer as well? So if we've got a young person who may be from a low socioeconomic background, or they may be from, I don't know, I guess a diverse background, we've done a lot so that when we give them that offer we can really support them up until day one and now, I guess, through their programme and offboarding and whatever that might look like. So little things like candidate care calls, so every candidate gets a candidate care call when they have their offer to talk to them about what kind of adjustments and support they might need, and that's not the traditional stuff, that might be, I'm a young mum and I'm joining the graduate programme and can you help me with contacting local schools for my children because I'm going to have to relocate. We've got all sorts of these kinds of examples and for me it's been about what we've done in that space, and how we set people up for success as they start their career.

Yeah, I love that, and I think what's great there is that you've covered every stage of careers in terms of like when you first start hearing about it when you're at school, you know, what is a career, you know, what does it mean, what can you do, and then like all the way through university into the job, and I think it is really interesting with actually when you start caring about your career. Like, I think there's such a chicken and the egg thing in terms of part of you thinks that it should come to you and you like, you know, isn't this the school's job, isn't this other people's job to provide me with the awareness, and then there's the other side of you which is like, oh okay, ultimately it's only going to be— it's me, no one can actually tell me what I want to do. So I think especially when you're at school, about like 16, 17, 18, I was definitely not a model student, you know. I've interviewed people on this podcast, so I speak to some people that were doing everything while they were 16, 17, 18, and it is refreshing to know that it's never too late. But I think, what would you say to someone who's a bit younger, you know, maybe about to go to university, and how can they start thinking about their career in a healthy way and not put too much emphasis and pressure on it, but actually start like just really cultivate a career they want to work in? Because as you said before, it's, you know, you spend so much time there, you have to make sure it's something you love.

Yeah, and I kind of come back to the point about working out what it is you enjoy and what it is you want from a career, and that can absolutely change as you go through. I mean, we're going to spend, what, like 45, maybe 50 years— it's quite scary— at work. So those motivations and what you look for and what you want from it might change. And have the confidence not necessarily to follow what your friends doing and what your friends are saying, because they're not going to be the ones that are working the job that you're working. But I would— if you're kind of going to go to uni, absolutely have a, have a great time and enjoy yourself. I would focus as early as possible, because this is, this is the other thing you see, is graduates kind of sometimes leave it quite late, and the nature of the way that graduate recruitment cycles work is that you can't necessarily always do that. But as early as you kind of want, and as early as you feel ready to start looking at your career, Start thinking about what those skills are. Sit down and write, if, like, a list. If you were to describe yourself to a friend, or your friend was describing you to someone else, what are the things they would talk to you about? And start to kind of capture that and think, right, these are my values, these are my behaviours, these are my skills, these are things that I'm good at, this is who I'd kind of be known for. And then start to look at actually if that stuff you want to continue, if that stuff you want to stop, is that stuff you want to do differently and more of, and that will start to kind of shape that. That next kind of career path.

Yeah, I think we've spoken a lot about what Rolls-Royce looks for in graduates and your employment process, but I want to focus a little bit more on yourself and your own personal career journey. Obviously, I think you initially were working in something that wasn't for you in Rolls-Royce. You know, as you said, you came back into it in the right industry, and you absolutely love your job, which is great, but Talk me through that, the actual learning process of being post uni in work and actually, like, you know, moving through the company, sort of, you know, looking at different options within, you know, whether it's E.ON or within Rolls-Royce. What was that, like, process of finding fulfillment in your own career like?

Yeah, so I think, so the example you refer to is I did my kind of 2 years at Rolls-Royce and worked in kind of planning and control supply chain type roles. Absolutely loved Rolls-Royce as a company, but kind kind of worked out that was a function that was not something that I wanted to be in kind of long term, but by doing that I got to see what HR teams did, I got to network and kind of operate with some of the kind of HR stakeholders within the teams, and that's what kind of sparked the interest. So that experience is absolutely a brilliant experience because it showed me the importance of HR and actually why I wanted a career in that space.

Just quickly as well, could we like 'Cause one thing we like to do on this podcast is demystify different career paths, and I think HR is one of those ones where you hear, hear it and you know it's in every company, but you don't know exactly what it is or even how to best utilize it. Why would you sort of sell HR as a career to anyone?

I would say I always smile because people say, oh, I like to work in HR because I like to work with people, and then I always say, well, don't work in HR if you really like to work with people, because actually there's some really kind of unsexy negative parts of HR and some really challenging parts. Essentially, it's the people function, and people are the most important asset to an organisation. You can't run a company without having great talent and great people and either rewarding them, developing them, helping them learn, supporting them for when life's best and worst moments might kind of come along. Helping them move through their kind of careers and jobs, etc. So I think that's why when people say, oh, I like working with people, and so I kind of want to do something in HR, for me it's, it's a massive function. So there is so much kind of breadth within an HR or people team that it's really hard to kind of necessarily find someone that wants to do all of it. I'm in more of a talent inclusion kind of space, but you'll get people that might be in kind of like an employment law type area, you might get kind of L&D professionals, and we have what we call kind of HR generalists, so people that work with managers on kind of like people issues on a day-to-day basis. So there's, I mean, there's lots of great kind of YouTube videos and content out there, but it's kind of understanding the breadth and the scale of what HR organisation looks like, and the bigger company you go to, the bigger those teams and kind of spans of work will be.

Yeah, I bet, I bet, I know for you, you went up through Rolls-Royce basically to the top of what you can be in HR, and you know, congratulations on that for one, but also I think you have to know the business inside and out, you know, you have to know what everybody in all different parts of it are doing, and I think there's probably a lot of different exit options as well into different, you know, different parts of the company or different industries entirely. So when you, you know, you look at your career now and where you're at, I'm always curious with all my guests, I ask the same question: how would you define a successful career now versus when you were at Nottingham, you know, studying business? Like, what does a successful career look like to you now?

I think it's a really good question. I think when I was younger, it was probably a lot more fixatedness, probably around someone's salary, someone's job title, um, the level someone was probably at an organization. Um, now I would say, and absolutely for some people, some of those things will still be really important, um, and I appreciate I speak now from being quite senior within a big global company so there's a level of kind of speaking from a position of privilege, but for me, I feel like I've had a successful and a really good day at work when I feel like I've made a difference, and that's normally when I've made a difference in a really small way. So when I feel like I've really, I don't know, helped someone in my team who— having a really positive coaching conversation, or when we've done an event with I don't know, ethnically diverse young people who might have been in care, and we've inspired them, and we see how excited they are to want to come work at Rolls-Royce. That's when I go, I've had a really good day at work. And so for me, success is about being able to make that difference and be a role model for someone, or be able to raise the aspirations of someone, or to have a young person think, that's someone senior that believed in me. And that's when I go home and think, yeah, today's been a really good day, and that's why I really enjoy what I do.

Love it. And my final question: what would you say to your younger self at the beginning of your career in terms of, you know, what they can expect, or a learning that you've made along the way that has stuck with you?

So there's two things. The first one is getting really comfortable with failure and setback. So I'm probably my own worst enemy sometimes. I probably put a lot of pressure on myself And I probably get quite frustrated with myself if I— fail's not the right word, but if I kind of fail or I don't do something as well as I wanted, or you kind of get constructive feedback on something. I had an example last year where something didn't go to plan in kind of my career journey, and I didn't get to kind of a place and do something that I wanted to kind of do, and I'm quite hard on myself. And actually I reflect back and I kind of have to think, actually, Ellie, look at where you've come and look at what you've done and be proud of actually what you're achieving. And if you've— it's not gone right the first time, I know we all look at your Richard Branson type examples of when they failed, but it is true, like, learn from that and work out what you can do differently and use those opportunities and use the support that you've got around you. And the other thing I would say, and I have to keep doing this to myself now, is really trying to use the feeling of imposter syndrome that you get, particularly as a, I guess, I say young, I'm 30 now, but younger kind of female in quite a male-dominated environment, use that imposter syndrome in a really positive way. And recently I actually pinned, this is a little bit cringy, but I actually pinned a picture of me with my grandma when I was kind of like 4 or 5, on my pinboard in front of my desk where I sit at home, which has got loads of like kind of work achievements and stuff on it, but I've kind of pinned that there, and when I feel like I'm being really harsh on myself, or I feel like I've not got the confidence to do something, or I feel like I'm really nervous when I'm going into a meeting, which some people think is absolutely kind of ridiculous in my kind of role, I look at that and think, look at how far you've come, and remember, actually, would you be that harsh on your younger self, and what would you want a younger kind of female to think and feel, and I kind of try and channel that as a positive motivation now rather than kind of letting the doubt creep in and think, oh, I can't do this, or I'm not good enough.

Ellie, you've been great. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me.