From just a few brief seconds on the phone with Barbara you can tell she has considerable experience in customer service – she’s a talented and open communicator who’s straight to the point. Unsurprisingly, for the last few years, she’s been working in a customer service role for an energy provider which, as you can imagine, takes someone with considerable patience. Before taking part in the mentoring circle course put on by Release Potential, Barbara had only been out of employment for a couple of weeks. Having had to deal with some family issues, she’d handed in her notice for her last job in customer service. Nevertheless, with the situation resolved, Barbara endeavoured to get back into the workplace as soon as possible. Enquiring about Barbara’s work ethic, she tells me honestly that her ‘…son has special needs, and even though he’s an adult now, I’ve been on unemployment benefits for a long, long time before I did start work. So, I knew that if I didn’t go out there and do everything I could it could have been easy for me to slip back into old habits…just sitting at home and not giving my best. But since I also have some health conditions…I wanted to keep the momentum going and not sit back on my laurels. I’m quite a go-getting person’. Barbara tells me that she’d heard about the mentoring circle course that was being put on by Release Potential through her Job Shop coach in Coventry. When asked what attracted her to the course Barbara states that ‘I thought, because I was going to be on Universal Credit, I wanted to take advantage of as much training as possible. I’ve got to admit I was a bit dubious to start off with because it was only a three-day course. But I was quite surprised by how much we were able to pack into those three days. I found it really…valuable, it gave me some extra pointers because it’s been quite a long time since I did my initial training. Particularly in the modern climate…there’s a lot more technology involved now’. Technology seemed to be a significant concern for Barbara before starting the course, but she tells me her family are even cracking jokes at her expense now as her technical knowledge has improved so much. She remarks that ‘the fact that I’m using Zoom now is a point of humour in my family because my son actually did a media studies course, and now says “Mum, you’re not a dinosaur anymore!”’ When asked how she felt at the beginning of the course, Barbara admits that she ‘…was a little bit anxious because I hadn’t done anything like this before. But Natasha, my tutor, was very good…she was very understanding’. In fact, Barbara attributes some of the support she received from Natasha in helping her successfully apply for her new job, stating that ‘I really found helpful the work Natasha did with me on my CV, she completely changed it around…and I found it gave me the extra impetus to be able to particularly answer the questions in the interview…’ In her new role, Barbara will be working as a customer service advisor for Severn Trent Water. Although the role is initially a temporary position, Barbara is very positive about starting her new job and tells me there’s a chance it could be permanent, so she’s ‘…hoping to be able to stay on there’. On discussing the impact the mentoring circle course has had on her, Barbara believes that ‘…the course gave me a good grounding in some of the extra skills I would need to bring to the workforce. It made me think about myself a little differently, which is always a valuable learning experience. So, I hope I can use those new skills to move forward in my new role’.