What's it like working here?
Here are a few stars from the Virgin Money files. Click below to read their accounts of starting work at Virgin Money and how their careers have developed since.
Careers
Jonathon Breed
Head of Customer Experience
This year will be my tenth as a Virgin Money employee and what a ten years it has been! I joined straight out of University with only two objectives:
Get enough money together to move back out of my parents
Fund my continued student life style of beer and takeaways
What I ended up with was career with a business that rewards hard work and commitment with opportunity and decent rewards.
I joined what was then Virgin Direct as a ‘temp’ in the Administration area where my early days were spent completing data entry tasks and dealing with client enquiries. Eight years later, after various jobs along the way, I completed my final ‘tour of duty’ in Administration as Head of the area.
On joining Virgin Money I quickly decided I quite enjoyed working with others in a team to achieve objectives, but I wanted to do more than just play a team member role. The business supported me in studying for basic financial services qualifications which allowed me to apply for a role as Team Leader. Virgin Money is not a very formal business, there is no graduate training programme and people progress on merit. That means that if you work hard and are willing to learn and adapt you can progress within the organisation more quickly than in a traditional organisation which relies on how many pieces of paper you have and how many years service you’ve built up.
I’ve been able to do lots of varied roles in my ten years including Administration Manager, Project Manager and Business Information Manager. I’ve had team sizes from 4 to 60 people and been lucky enough to enjoy all these roles. I now have a role which involves the management of projects and relationship management with other companies with a continued focus on the provision of world class customer service, a principle which is very important to Virgin Money. As a teenager I had absolutely no intention of ever working in Financial Services, but working for Virgin Money is different and I am so pleased I decided to join.
Salma Yousafzai
Research Assistant
In the summer of 2005 I was in my last year at Uni, studying for my final exams in Accounting and Management. During this period a lecturer of mine forwarded onto me an email advertising a position at Virgin Money as a Marketing Insight team administrator. They were looking for a student on a sandwich degree course which included a year out to gain industry experience.
It came to the last day to submit C.V’s and I missed the deadline by 20 minutes - I really didn’t think I would get the job… not only because of my late submission but because the ad had asked applicants to describe what sort of sandwich they wanted to be. I couldn’t for the life of me decide on a sandwich… think of all the great sandwiches there are in the world! How on earth could I make such a decision?!!
Luckily for me I got an interview and bagged the job!
The culture at Virgin Money made it very easy for me to make the transition from student to employee. Managers are friendly and approachable, colleagues are more like friends and the I.T department never tell you off – no matter how many times you call them up to tell them you’ve forgotten your computer password!
As I mentioned earlier, I started as a team administrator. I worked for the Insight team who sit in the Marketing department. This position gave me an opportunity to learn how the different elements of the team work together to provide information on customers, trends and the market place to the company. I quickly realised that the area that I enjoyed working best in was Research.
I now work closely with the Research manager to facilitate research - looking into the latest hot topic(s). From taking a brief, sourcing the agency, developing the questionnaire and presenting back results – I’ve done a bit of everything! Due to the small size of our research department I have had many opportunities to work across several projects, using a variety of methods ranging from online surveys, tracking studies, to focus groups and many more!
Friends and family have asked if I ever intend to make the next leap for my career. But I can’t imagine another company giving me as many opportunities and challenges, ensuring that the work never becomes dull or monotonous.
Thomas Lincoln-Kemp
Client Relationship Manager
Coming from the Civil Service, I found Virgin Money a breath of fresh air. It was a place where my opinion was heard and I could contribute to business decisions. It was so different to everywhere else I had worked.
I started as a Business Analyst, and was involved in the launch of the Deposit Account and ISA products. We had a superb team, worked hard and were rewarded well for our success. The role then morphed into a support role, and shortly I was offered a role running the System Support Analyst Team. Virgin Money made sure I was trained and supported during this stage in my career, and I always felt I had a support network.
Over time the team grew to include development, testing, release management and system enhancements, and I continued to develop my people management skills.
The next logical step was project management, and this opportunity came along when the Virgin One Account was sold to Royal Bank of Scotland. It was a large and complex project, involving the separation of systems, data, people and infrastructure with considerable legal and financial implications.
Project after project continued; regulatory, strategic, system replacement, new product launches, and soon I was part of the IT management team. It was hard work, with lots of pressure and encouragement to deliver, but with such a great team to work with, coupled with effective training and management support, we always made it happen.
The finale was Virgin’s largest and most complex project to date, when the entire operations, systems and data were moved to a 3rd party administrator. This was a twelve month project involving the entire business, and a real challenge. It was a real achievement when we successfully completed the project.
As part of this final project, Virgin made sure I was thinking about my future and I was soon undertaking a new career in relationship management, with responsibilities for a number of operational partners. My training and support continues, with examinations already booked for the year ahead – let’s hope I pass!
Hunardeep Chopra
Consultant Developer
It was back in the winter of 1998 that I got a call in India asking whether I'd be interested in joining Virgin Direct's (as it was called then) IT team. After some humming and hawing and looking up where Norwich was - and realising it's pronounced "Nor-ich" and not "Nor-wich" - I agreed.
I joined in January 1999, and it was straight from warm Indian weather to the full ferocity of an English winter. I turned up on my first day in a suit, all set to make an impression - and make an impression of sorts I did. Hints were dropped that suits and ties were passé, and casual dressing was the norm.
I started as part of the IT team looking after the Money Managers. When the Online Service project kicked off, I became part of that team. Those were exciting times, when the Internet revolution was picking up, and we were setting up a customer-friendly web site offering sales and real-time account servicing of the S&I products as well as the One account.
Since then I've had the opportunity to work on several projects covering a wide variety of applications, from databases to Web services, giving me the chance to learn new skills and gain knowledge - and the learning still goes on.
The Chinese have a saying, "May you live in interesting times", and with Virgin Money that is certainly true. There is never a dull moment, with new technical challenges to look out for, whether it's the launch of a new product, new campaigns or product revamps.
The work can be tough, but the rewards are also great, with a great working environment, exciting work, plenty of freebies (never to be sneered at), work do's or Richards's parties – there’s always something to keep you busy. What more can a person ask for?
Rachel Norton
Marketing Manager (Savings Products)
I completed my degree in Business Information Systems early in 1998.
I joined Virgin Direct in February 1998 as a Business Analyst in our Business Delivery Team. This role gave me the opportunity to apply some of the theory learnt during my degree in the real world.
During my time as a Business Analyst at Virgin Money I was lucky enough to work on the whole product range which allowed me to get a complete picture of the business. Working on so many different projects and working to tight deadlines keeps life very interesting. It also gave me the chance to work with some great people around the business.
I advanced my career at Virgin Money in a slightly unusual way moving from our IT department into Marketing. Although this seems like quite a shift of direction, Virgin Money has supported me by giving me the chance to swap my career path for which I’ve been extremely grateful.
My role as the Savings and Investment Product Marketing Manager has allowed me to direct our marketing plans, put my own ideas forward and have a direct impact on when, how and why we communicate with our customers. It’s my job to drive value from customer’s business and maintain their ongoing relationship with Virgin Money.
By taking up this new challenge I’ve learnt a lot during the last 12 months. I’ve been supported with extra training courses in addition to help and encouragement from within our marketing team. Everyone has been really helpful and this has made the transition into this new area of the business a great experience.
Ian Coxhead
Head of Customer Insight
For years and years I worked at a very large financial services company in Norwich. That was fine and I did OK, but it never changed my world, and so when I got a chance to leave I took a deep breath and headed out into the world.
A week later I was working at Virgin Money.
My first role was as a Business Analyst; I noticed an immediate difference... the people were the most skilled and talented folk I'd ever come across. Clearly Virgin was a smaller, more nimble business than my previous employer, but the focus was incredible. And the passion for making things right for the customer was so refreshing, not very corporate at all. Suddenly I started thinking about customers in a way I never had before. As I settled in I found that everybody could make a difference. I was designing processes and experiences that customers would actually see (in this case, the credit card website). I could go home at night and say "I made that!"
As time passed I took on the more demanding roles of Project Manager and then Programme Manager; there was a real satisfaction in being able to shape more things, and not getting too bogged down in committees, and sub-committees. Part of my role was to deal closely with other major financial organisations - I would smile to myself as they had to deliberate for ages and convince so many different people every time they needed to do anything. It was a frustration too as I needed them to help me, but it reminded me of how some organisations get it so wrong. This role also allowed me to fulfil my personal ambition to travel - I was given the opportunity to travel to New York, Chicago, Cannes, Aix-en-Provence and finally a 3 month stint in Sydney. I can't say it was all plain sailing - I had tough objectives to meet and being in a new environment brings its own challenges... but I can't think of many roles where I'd have had the same opportunities.
More recently I moved into the Marketing team, as Head of Marketing Insight; it's a great role where I get to work with some very creative people in designing and maintaining the Virgin Money website, and also using the wealth of data we have to drive the marketing strategies. It's a role that I had very little technical experience in, but it goes to show that if you have the right attitude and the right people around you then all sorts of things are possible…