Nikki Paterson started Accomplish Education to help individuals looking to improve their chances of success during the recruitment process.
Having spent more than 20 years in Law Enforcement, both domestically and internationally, Nikki has served in both front line and training roles. It was in her capacity of managing and training other police officers, both here and abroad, about the best ways to conduct interview panels for recruitment that Nikki saw the need for candidate education and coaching.
"So many times I would be sitting on an a recruitment panel, interviewing candidates for various roles, and see people who would have been great for a position fail to get through simply because they hadn't properly prepared", said Nikki. "Worse than seeing someone with potential not meet the interview requirements, it was incredibly frustrating knowing that I had the ability and knowledge to help educate candidates, but wasn't in a position to do so at the time".
Responding to an inner desire to use her experience to help prepared candidates at every key stage of the recruitment process, Nikki launched Accomplish Education with a simple mission:
To use our knowledge and experience to help you achieve your career dreams by taking you from confused and overwhelmed about the idea of a panel interview to prepared, confident and capable.
InnoClub Entrepreneur Program Manager, Tim Lewis, spoke with Nikki to learn more about her business, and understand how her First Responder experience has equipped her as a business owner.
1. Tell us a little about Accomplish Education; what was your motivation for starting the business?
Nikki: Accomplish Education’s aim is to provide education, training, and coaching services to help people achieve their employment goals by helping people write on-point, winning job application documents and wowing the panel at interview to secure their dream job.
My motivation for starting the business came from wanting to give people the skills and information so they can achieve their career goals and dreams and to get the right people in the right jobs. It amazes me the amount of people that think they don't have the skills or experience to do a job and are amazed when we pull that experience and skills from their history and worded in a language that the panel can understand.
2. What was the "moment" that led to starting the business?
Nikki: My "moment" to start Accomplish Education came after sitting on countless panel interviews and seeing people that would have been great for the role, get passed over because they couldn’t properly articulate their skills, experience, and achievement to the panel in a language they could understand.
I kept saying, ‘Someone should write a course explaining how panel interviews work and how to strategically nail an interview’ - turns out that someone was me :)
3. Does your business retain any special connection the ADF / First Responder communities?
Nikki: I am a current service first responder and Accomplish Education is my passion business. I get great personal and professional satisfaction from helping other first responders and veterans recognise their value and highlight their highly employable and transferable skills in a language and format that civilian employers can understand.
4. What's your single biggest business challenge today?
Nikki: Everything that's not about helping people get employed - like marketing, social media, sales - basically all the business stuff :)
5. What's been your single biggest success?
Nikki: As corny as it sounds, seeing the pride and excitement on the faces of clients who thought they had little to offer the labour force realise that they are highly employable and sought after.
6. What's a favourite mantra that keeps you going?
Nikki: 'It's about helping people'. This mantra helps to get it done, instead of trying to get it perfect.
7. What 10 words of advice could you offer other Veterans / First Responders thinking of starting their own business?
Nikki: Don't wait until you're ready, you'll never be ready.
InnoClub is fortunate to have Nikki as a part of our Short Course education presentation team. Nikki will be running a 2 part online session on Writing a Job Application, with the first phase on Wednesday, 16th November. There is no cost to participate, so click here to register.
We also love giving veteran businesses a free plug. Get in touch and tell us who we should be catching up with next month. And feel free to put your own business forward!
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