Mollie’s climb from Graduate to Openreach Programme Manager

Mollie Parsons joined us on the Commercial Management Graduate scheme in BT Business two years ago.?

She recently rolled off the graduate scheme and secured a role as a Fibre First Programme Manager in Openreach.?

From shadowing BT Group’s CEO to leveraging mentoring opportunities to advance her career, learn more about Mollie’s journey on the graduate scheme.?

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Can you tell us about your experience with the graduate scheme and joining BT Group??

I was on the Commercial Management Graduate Scheme that sits in BT Business. I have been based out of Assembly in Bristol for my whole scheme. I applied to both BT Group and the scheme because I didn’t know what type of jobs I would enjoy so I was after the variety that comes with rotations.???

My first rotation was within the Emergency Services Network (ESN). I worked on a multi million pound bid, as well as project managing the roll out of masts and sites that were improving the network for our amazing Ambulance, Police and Fire services. The highlight from this role was getting to prepare a group of Directors and Senior managers for the bid interviews by creating and delivering an “assessment centre” style day. Putting them through their paces was a fantastic opportunity.??

For my second rotation I started off in a CPS (Corporate and Public Sector) Project Management team for the first few months. This role was massively varied as I was managing a number of different projects at any one time – some entirely internal, and others with input from major players such as Microsoft. At one point, I even managed to code and configure a customer to start a proof of concept trial with us while the technical specialist was on leave. Whilst easy for some, it was extremely complex for someone who has never coded a thing in her life! ?

Sadly this role came to an end when my team was moved into a different part of the organisation. I had around a month or so to research and dig around to find a role that I wanted to transfer to within BT Business , in the end I managed to secure a role swap into the Partnerships team. Here I got to spend time on the Samsung Partner team, as well as managing our distributors. This was my first experience of working primarily with external stakeholders, so it opened my eyes to the techniques and dynamics that help foster an effective and successful working relationship between parties with different (and sometimes challengingly so) priorities. I did get to benefit from further breadth across the unit.??

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Can you tell us more about your final rotation and what a typical day or week look likes to you???

I started on my final rotation a few months ago when I joined the Wholesale Propositions team. If you haven’t heard of Wholesale, see it as B2B2B.??

I conveniently took a winter holiday right in the rotation transition period, so I actually started my Wholesale role at the start of February. I was fortunate to join the team at a busy time of year for the market – attending both Partner Plus and Channel Live in Birmingham. ?

In this regard, getting to spend a couple of days a month at events or with colleagues really taps into my natural extroversion, so I have loved it! More day to day, I was initially working on a refresh of the Voice portfolio which included organising a sales training day. I then worked on some Broadband propositions. The focus was to provide sales with a proposition that sales both want to, and can easily, sell.? I spent my time on calls with colleagues across the team, planning both live and online content, pulling together market insights, and pulling together presenters for the Wholesale Sales Downloads.??

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You recently got to shadow our new BT Group CEO, Allison Kirkby. Can you tell us how that came about and what that experience was like??

I did – and there is even photo evidence! While I would say I am a naturally confident person, asking big executives to shadow them for the day isn’t my typical behaviour. It came about because I had been speaking to my colleagues that week about leadership – as I near the end of my graduate scheme, picking up people management skills had been on my mind. ?

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During her Q+A session,? I put up a very shaky hand and asked Allison what her leadership priorities were, and then if I could be cheeky and see her put them to the test in real life. At the point she laughed and agreed, my heart finally stopped racing! ?

I cannot take all the credit though as I did know a story about someone securing charity funding from Anthony Joshua because he was impressed they were bold enough to ask in a packed room, so I used that as my inspiration!??

A few weeks later, we spent the day at Adastral Park for her site visit there. It was an incredibly fun and jam-packed day. My priority was to listen in and pick up as many nuggets of wisdom as possible as Allison and other senior leaders met and learned from the talented bunch at Adastral.? I summarised a couple of the things I took away on a Linkedin post, but now I have had a while longer to reflect, I can add a couple of things to that list:?

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1. Take Allison’s advice – Be Bold, Be Brave, Be Fearless, ?

2. A day shadowing anyone who works in a different area to you is going to be useful ?

3. Being a genuinely friendly and humble leader is an immense achievement – I’m not sure I could be so attentive, patient or decisive if my everyday looked like that one day at Adastral. Without intending to sound like I’m after an Allison sponsored promotion, she really was as charismatic, strategic and inspirational as you’d expect from a FTSE 100 CEO.??

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What learning and development opportunities have you had since joining BT Group? How have you been set up for your longer term career??

I have had a mentor for most of my time in the organisation. We connect every 6 weeks or so and discuss my areas of improvement, CV writing, interview skills, and advice on rotations/rotation selection. ?

The prompt to spend time on self-reflection and even documenting it is massively useful for keeping me accountable with my development. It also encourages me to build up written evidence for when I am engaging in End of Year / performance reviews, or to take into interviews in the future. ?

Beyond this, there are a number of training days that BT Group offers for the early careers community, my favourites having been Story Telling and Presenting with Impact. I always try and utilise at least one tool from one of these any time I have to present to a larger audience. ?

In a more hands-on sense, I recently completed a leadership insights course with the British army, involving spending a few nights in the barracks, and a few days conquering team tasks and activities. Acting as a leader with complete strangers from all different areas of the business was a great opportunity to learn and grow as someone without managerial experience.??

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How do you feel you can have an impact in your role? How does that differ from expectations you had about a graduate scheme??

For the most part, the graduate scheme has been as I expected. I have had a variety of roles and projects, and have massively benefitted from growing my network each time I move role. One unexpected part was the benefits of pulling the “Graduate card”.?This has allowed me to make mistakes and learn from my colleagues, as well as get further help, and to even ask those cheeky questions!??

?Every team I have been in have massively valued myself, and any other early careers colleagues they have had. Managers tend to invest time in understanding what skills you’d like to develop and can often commit to offering you projects and tasks to suit your needs. In addition, my experience of managers in BT Business has been that they’re super keen for you to keep up with “extra curricular” opportunities outside of your day job such as attending Grad Development days and networking events. Ultimately, it speaks volumes that our own CEO, Allison, started off as an apprentice accountant.??

Now nothing is 100% perfect. So, one of the downsides to being on a rotational scheme like a graduate programme or apprenticeship is that you’re prone to lulls in workload. With the nature of changing roles every 8-12 months, you naturally tend to have a warmup and cool down period to each rotation. I personally like to be occupied and working on interesting projects all of the time, however it taught me to be more proactive, as well as introducing me to the uncomfortable feelings of starting something new and knowing absolutely nothing.???

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What kind of activities have you been involved in outside your role???

My main commitment beyond my role has been our internal network for graduates ‘Gradnet’. In my first year, I was on the committee in Bristol, organising a charity walk of the Welsh Three Peaks, raising ￡4.5k+, as well as helping set up a BT Bristol netball team. ?

?In my second year, I have progressed to co-leading the Bristol region which has been a great opportunity to practice some people management skills for any future career steps. More importantly, I have just really loved organising the development days, events and socials that hopefully make everyone’s grad experience so much more memorable.??

Last year, I used all my volunteering leave at BT, and these experiences were some of my favourite moments. I organised a gardening and painting day at a Milestones Trust home in Bristol, and participated in two Gradnet events – hiking the Welsh Three Peaks for Homestart and arranging a mixed netball tournament for UNICEF, which raised ￡600. ?

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