From Apprentice to Team Leader

From Apprentice to Team Leader: Courtney Nichol’s Inspiring Journey and Employee Progression at OnlineDIRECT

Reflecting on Courtney’s journey to date

After completing her GCSEs, Courtney started at OnlineDIRECT as an apprentice in the bespoke team. Her role saw her pricing, tendering and creating cost analyses for energy brokers. She then progressed into contract processing, where she was responsible for contract batching, ensuring contracts were sent to suppliers in the correct format.

Her next move was into Sales Fulfilment and then, after a structure change at OnlineDIRECT, onto a mixed department role, where she could combine her ticket knowledge and contract knowledge before moving into Pre-Sales (modern Sales Fulfilment).

With all this experience behind her, Courtney was selected for a Team Leader Secondment, which led her to most recently being promoted to a permanent Team Leader position.

Courtney’s current role as a Pre-Sales team leader requires her to maintain the SLAs within the department, ensuring her team gets one-on-one weekly check-ins, not only on their work but also their personal situation. She ensures suppliers stick to SLAs and provides timely information and updates to our brokers.

She also brainstorms new ideas and improvements, recently implementing a new starter process. This creates a clear journey for newcomers with a defined layout of their first six weeks while continuing personal career growth through training sessions.

Challenges and growth

Courtney’s advice for others starting their career choices is to “always go in open-minded; there is always room for more knowledge. Always strive to be the best version of yourself.“

When asked what particular skill she has developed that has helped her career growth at OnlineDIRECT, Courtney was clear that she has gained a better understanding of how to deal with conflict; “Not every conflict has to have a negative resolution. For example, when dealing with stressed brokers, you have to develop empathy skills; your tone and phone skills all come into play in order to give the brokers the best level of customer service.”

Courtney believes the key to building and keeping a solid professional network boils down to communication.

“Always be open-minded and work on your listening skills. Take on constructive criticism; you are not always right, try new approaches, and if they do not work, you can always go back to the original.”

Her approach to leadership and the qualities she values most in other leaders is having respect for others, “as much as we have to be professional, we spend a lot of time together, so let’s enjoy that time.” She appreciates leaders who acknowledge and participate in team activities.

Career milestones

Courtney felt like she was progressing in her career when she went up for the presales team leader role for the second time. After being unsuccessful the first time, she took her interview and 1-to-1 feedback and worked on the highlighted areas to be prepared to take on the new role and fulfil it.

With the pandemic forcing many businesses to work from home, as Courtney has ADHD, she was worried about the lack of routine affecting her work. Highlighted as her biggest achievement, she overcame the challenges by setting daily goals and expectations for herself when working from home.

Future thinking

With the New Year recently starting, Courtney has set her targets of wanting to progress her skills as a team leader, and taking on more responsibilities from her manager through looking into monthly figures and productivity. She said she’s ready to take on more challenges and is excited about the year ahead and beyond.