Our Stories: Jan Kirkpatrick
If you’ve been involved with the New Zealand Business Women’s Network over the past 15 years, you’ve probably met Jan Kirkpatrick. An executive search consultant and cognitive/behavioural career coach, Jan was at the jam-packed NZBWN inaugural meeting in London back in 2009, and has since run professional development workshops, mentored Network members and helped recruit for the NZBWN Board. Jan’s passion for helping others with career management and making values-based career decisions has inspired her latest project, The Career Partner & Co. This new business offers accessible personalised career development support - both online and by phone - providing direct-to-consumer career coaching, CV-proofing and branding advice.
Jan firmly believes coaching can help throughout your career, whether you are a trainee, taking on new responsibilities, facing redundancy or moving through other career transitions. Her new venture offers customised insight and support to help people find career direction, identify their professional values, strengthen their soft skills and develop their own unique career story. Through the Career Partner & Co., “you can just book a call this afternoon to fit your schedule and speak about any career challenges or opportunities you’re facing with a trained professional career coach.” Jan saw a pressing need for accessible career support for people not necessarily in managerial or executive roles, who are nonetheless trying to pursue “meaningful, fulfilling, sustainable careers in this day and age when upskilling and reskilling are such a vital part of career management.”
After 45 years living in the UK, Jan considers herself a Londoner, identifying strongly with the city’s multidimensional cultural life. “Whatever you’re interested in, London will be a centre for it!” she laughs. Although shaped by her London experiences, Jan remains connected through her family to her hometown of Dunedin. Like many people leading transnational lives, Jan believes in staying open to different ways of shaping and integrating career and family roles over time - “and don’t forget that job roles themselves are changing dramatically, and will change again in the next five years.” Jan feels Kiwi women abroad often bring a unique and flexible skill-set: “we’ve come to the other side of the world, worked out how to live, re-established ourselves, and figured out how to move our careers on.” New Zealand women in business in the UK are often experienced at working across markets, or transitioning into a new career space. This adaptability and resilience is a strength which Jan feels expat Kiwis often underestimate. New Zealanders are also valued as hard workers: “you get a Kiwi on your team, you’ve got someone who really takes on their workload”, capable of taking responsibility and leading from the front. “But we also don't shy away from filling the coffee machine, if we see it needs filling, even if our job is, you know, actually in Finance.”
Jan feels that new hybrid ways of working, while enabling flexibility and lifestyle benefits, often reduce everyday opportunities for “non-agenda conversations” and in-person mentoring. It’s perhaps harder to brainstorm career options with others when working alone or from home. The Career Partner & Co. offers solid tools and fresh perspectives to accompany people through their career development process, wherever and whenever it suits them. As professional interactions become more condensed and desynchronised, Jan also advises new arrivals in London to “go into the office, and talk to people! Dig in and build your networks.” She points out that most people actually like to be asked for their help, so Jan encourages taking that leap to simply ask someone out for coffee and their advice. “The businesses in London, the banks, the insurers, the lawyers - it all started, historically, in the coffee houses. People having coffee has always been the basis of business in London!”