How I Made It: 'I was told not to aim for a career, now I'm a CEO'

Welcome back to How I Made It, Metro.co.uk’s weekly career journey series.

This week we’re speaking to Denise Myers, CEO of recruitment firm Evenfields, which aims to champion relatable professional role models and tackle employment discrimination.

The 55-year-old lives in Birmingham and she’s founded more than one agency in over her long career, as well as holding CEO positions for eight years.

The journey hasn’t been easy – she’s met discrimination, which is why she’s so passionate about helping others avoid that.

Denise has also set up the Black Talent Awards, telling Metro.co.uk: ‘Beyond recruitment, I wanted to set up other initiatives that dispelled misconceptions that Black talent in professional services are few and far between.

‘Their achievements needed recognition and celebration.’

Here’s how she made her career happen.

Hi Denise. What made you want to get into recruitment?

It wasn’t necessarily a childhood dream of mine to work in recruitment, but the idea was definitely seeded in my adolescence.

My earliest career aspiration, aside from wanting to be a singer and dancer, was to be a social worker but, at age 15, my form tutor recommended I aim for something more ‘within my reach’ – which was a job at the local factory.

That was a seminal moment for me when I realised that expectations of what I could achieve, academically and professionally, would be low, despite being a ‘good’ student.

I suppose what really galvanised me into getting into recruitment was when I experienced employment discrimination.

What happened?

I had had a successful phone interview for an office manager job and my potential employer had practically given me the position – all I had to do was meet everyone and attend a handover session with the person whose position I was taking.

When I visited the office, however, I saw how suddenly shocked and flustered the person who was greeting me had become.

I was immediately ushered into a conference room where I was left alone for 15 minutes.

Upon their return, I was thanked for coming in but they had many more people to see and that they would let me know the outcome of the application via the recruitment agency.

Afterwards, the recruitment consultant who thought they had successfully secured the job, was speechless.

‘You had the job. I don’t know what else to say,’ I was told.

I asked what they had said to the employer. Why was I suddenly unsuitable for the job at hand? The recruitment consultant looked blank. The sudden retraction of the job offer wasn’t questioned, but I think we knew the significance of the great unsaid.

If one needs to make a social change, that change has to come from within the very problematic systems in place.

So I became a recruitment consultant and agency founder, and have since enjoyed a 22-year career in this field.

Specifically, I wanted to help young people and professionals from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds pursue ambitious careers in what can often be an intimidating and inherently hostile process.

Having experienced discrimination myself in the job application process, I could empathise first-hand with the struggles of the candidates I was serving to circumnavigate these challenges.

They were not to tread this treacherous path alone.

Did being a child of Windrush parents have an impact on your career goals and attitude to work?

Absolutely. My Jamaican parents arrived in the UK in the late fifties. You can imagine Tividale having very few Black faces in those days.

They were initially regarded with curiosity, sometimes derision or even fear. But there were a few local Jamaican families with whom my family eventually bonded.

I grew up and went to school with all their children and everyone knew each other. That’s when I really saw the value of community. Later, I would harness this very power of community in my business to improve diversity and inclusion in the jobs market.

The values of respect and hard work were also drilled into us from an early age.

As far as my parents were concerned, we had no limits to our potential. The world was our oyster.

There was no assumption that our blackness would frustrate our efforts to achieve our goals so long as we received a good education, worked hard and took the opportunities presented before us.

It really helped that my parents had such belief in me, so I could take the negative view my tutor had of me and transform it into positive energy to prove my doubters wrong.

But not all children or young people can do that, especially those who have low self-esteem.

I have always considered the other countless students, past and present, who did not or will not pursue a particular career path because they were discouraged or told they didn’t have the ability by teachers with low expectations of their academic and personal outcomes. I believe that this can be a self-fulling prophecy.

What training and studying did you do?

I left school at 16 and went on to college, enlisting in a one-year secretarial course before going straight onto a “YTS” scheme, equivalent to today’s apprenticeships.

Then I entered the world of work. University was not an option for me. No one had ever suggested it to me and it wasn’t even on my radar.

At 26, I had my son and became a single parent.

I had a reasonable job as a marketing assistant for a large retailer.

Here, I realised that a degree would give me greater career opportunities. One day, as I was walking through town, I saw a poster about assertiveness training for Black women.

I wrote down the telephone number and shortly after undertook that training course at the local community centre.

The organisation helped me to find the right course – an HND in Business and Marketing – and I then went to university to obtain my degree in Business and Marketing.

What was the journey like to becoming a CEO – how did you make that happen?

The transition from paid employment to establishing my own recruitment business wasn’t a difficult one.

I was taking with me a long track record in the field, having placed black talent into managerial positions within HR, business development and sales within Blue chip and public sector organisations including the British Transport Police, Trident Group, HSBC and RAC.

What’s the best career advice you’ve had?

Never think that you know it all. Keep growing, learning and developing and stay curious. You are not the finished product.

Also, don’t pay attention to the archetypal timelines of when you should go to college or university.

An average day in the working life of Denise Myers

6.30am: Denise gets up and lets her dog out, before planning the day ahead.

10am: She has a Zoom meeting with headline sponsors for the Black Talent Awards, then a further call with a potential sponsor before tackling more emails and admin.

1pm: Lunchtime and catch ups with the team.

2pm: She meets with her mentor and attends other task that need her attention.

5pm: She attends a networking event.

What do you love most about your job?

Being able to help others and see the positive outcomes.

Employment and education is the only way to achieve social mobility (apart from marriage) and we all know that difficult economic and social circumstances are making that an all the more impossible plight.

But to be able to assist someone to find that job or to give advice that puts another person onto the path of an amazing career – that makes everything else worthwhile.

What do you like the least?

Finance administration. There’s nothing more tedious than managing expenses, VAT, taxes, banking and invoices etc. A necessary evil but I absolutely hate it.

How I Made It

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Black History Month

October marks Black History Month, which reflects on the achievements, cultures and contributions of Black people in the UK and across the globe, as well as educating others about the diverse history of those from African and Caribbean descent.

For more information about the events and celebrations that are taking place this year, visit the official Black History Month website.

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