Jonathan Palfreyman

I was offered one of 500 places out of 5,000 applicants after a 7 stage application process and completed initial intensive training towards becoming a caseworker, beginning my specialisation into VAT compliance investigations.

I thrived in academic, legal, accounting, written and verbal assessments, scoring "Excellent" in most assessments and receiving regular praise from both my manager and customers for my manner and professionalism, explaining complex points to taxpayers in clearly understandable English.

A specialist service provider that supported people with health issues to be able to remain in their own home offering wide ranges of services to clients. I was hired to refine their back office processes and to source and implement software solutions to streamline their processes and improve their scheduling procedures.

As the company was already at full stretch, this required strong communication skills to bridge between senior management and the software developer to ensure best value was gained, whilst also making sure it was fit for purpose.

Once set up, I then created a company user manuals to best showcase optimal company usage of different functions, along with providing training on end user scheduling for field staff.

Starting in a Customer Retention role, using customer service skills to assist clients. I was very soon approached to provide back up to legal staff in a rapidly growing legal practice which acquired documents from firms that had closed, often taking on up to 20,000 documents at a time.

My role became to develop a new system using external software package for a new storage provider to be able to locate and track every one of up to 250,000 documents in real time. To do this I was tasked with putting together a team to be able to facilitate the improved service across the whole business.

During this time I helped my wife develop her childcare business into the thriving business that it is today, assisting with accounting, sales and various other duties as and when they were required and undertaking both early years child education and infant first aid courses to best be able to assist with the needs of the business.

Rising from sales assistant to store manager, I became the company relief and support manager, covering 23 stores across England and providing follow up training to new managers.

Whilst in the role I was tasked with updating various systems, from standardising back office reporting to updating procedures on stock counting. The latter became a much larger project in which I asked by the division director to write the new full company manual on stocktaking and to travel to each store and provide training on the new procedures within. Lastly I led a team travelling the country do spot stocktakes in stores where questions had arisen.