This was a frenetic auctioning time and I learnt a lot of skills useful for my future career. I was especially staggered by the extraordinary requests people made. Once someone rang us to ask about a bottle of wine they ordered 10 years earlier -but had forgotten to pick up. As you can imagine, my people skills developed quickly.
I have always felt it was very helpful to have spent time outside HR, to understand what it is like to be on the receiving end and how much a good HR team can bring to a business overall. I was lucky enough to work with people who gave me an excellent grounding in how things should be done and at Sotheby's I worked with an amazing team who were both very knowledgeable and entertaining.
So good was my first job that it was very hard to make the decision to move on. But it was at Sotheby's I realised helping people to flourish and shine in their work was something dear to my heart. I had never thought of HR as a career option but it found me and I'm glad it did.