10 “Cracking Skulls, Breaking Up Fights” and “If You Asked Me One Thing About That Management NVQ I Probably Couldn’t Tell You”
00:00
15 years as an educator, disciplinarian, cracking skulls in a way, like just breaking out fights and stuff. And I got to a point where I just told my partner, I was like, I am tired of doing this. I love the kids and I love the work. So it's an honorable job. And my partner is a real estate broker of 15 years. And I was like, maybe I can get involved in something you're doing.
00:27
I've had neighbors come out and start questioning me and being like, what are you doing? Why are you filming my house? And first off, I know what the laws are here in the United States, like airspace is, yes, there's privacy laws. People don't actually technically own the airspace above, you know, their houses and whatnot. So trying to explain that in a kind of respectful way. People are coming out already agitated. And so you have to just be like, hey, look, I'm doing a job. You know, what I really want to say to them is like,
00:55
Yeah, when I show the drone video, your house is going to be like tiny. You're going to be like little ants. Like, I mean, you're not even able to see anything. Um, and so you just have to find a way to be nice about it and, and not, uh, you know, get into a, not, not aggravated confrontational situation, but I haven't had any crazy major horror stories. Like I've heard other people have that, you know, people like try to shoot their drones out of the sky or try to run them over and, um,
01:24
Yeah, a lot of it, it's all self-taught. A lot of YouTube and just sitting up late nights, figuring it out and listening to music and kind of just banging it out and figuring it out little by little, going out and shooting drone videos. So I would go and shoot drone video on these houses and these large properties. And I just love flying. And I've always been a creative. I played the trumpet and I sang and a choir. And then I used to DJ and then I'm just love.
01:50
music and when I got into education, I almost like lost that part of myself, I think, because I got so caught up in the day-to-day and doing all the work that I finally was like, I know I'm a creative person and I know this is like, I consider myself creative. And so it's been a big change to go from the regimented hours, stressing of driving to work and dealing with traffic on the road and you know, all that kind of like...
02:18
normal day to day and to now being able to freelance where I can schedule out my day and incorporate a few more things that really bring in like a work-life balance. Go to the gym or decide to go to lunch or that kind of thing. One thing that I've done, especially now that I've been out of that field, is being able to sleep in a little longer. Like I said, I tend to be more of a night owl.
02:43
I like to stay up at night when it's quiet, there's not a lot of movement, I can really kind of get into the zone. But having that freedom to be like, if I'm not somewhere at 7am, that the world's going to crash down on me, you know, that whole feeling. But it's been an interesting three years. Just now feel in this third year that I've really let go of those prior learned behaviors.
03:06
After I quit and like the following school year started, I was like, the world keeps turning like, oh my gosh, there's so many other things going on and I can do so many things and I'm not like stuck in this 7am to like 7pm world where, you know, everything struggles from like family to my health, my relationships, instead of just kind of enjoying the ride and taking a breath. And so it's kind of worked out to not work with my partner is just, you know, keep the work and the personal life separate. Like I'll show them like.
03:35
the video and he'll be like, yeah, you should probably edit it this way or show this certain thing or, you know, so I can kind of get pointers of like what to do or how to do it. I love being able to edit videos, especially like in the middle of the night, I'm kind of a night owl, listening to music, kind of jamming out doing my thing and just feeling my work and then to kind of feel that validation from people when they see my work and they're like, this is awesome. Like
04:00
People send me drone video from all over the world and I get to kind of get a glimpse into their lives. Stuff from like the beach in Australia, just all different places. It's like a window into different people's worlds from the sky. I did some work for a client down in South America who needed some map animations for a documentary. And so they would send me the like the 10 second click of the documentary that they needed it for. And then I would match the words to the animation.
04:25
and then they would be able to use that in their documentary piece. You know, when I get into that map animation stuff, there's so much detail where you can identify little towns, little villages, you can do all the transportation. There's so much you can cover when you look at these map animations that it's like the world is at your fingertips.
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04:49
Hey, folks, it's Naty. We'll be back with more right after this break.
04:59
So at the moment we've got a charity that are looking for a volunteer project manager. So we're doing some job descriptions and then obviously at some point some interviews for that. And then we've also got a karate club that are looking for a karate instructor. So that's kind of this very formal project management and then there's the fun karate instructor. So it's kind of, yes, you do need to understand the role to a certain extent to understand what are the key skills I'm looking for.
05:29
in this person, but you don't really need to know, like I don't need to go and take karate lessons in order to hire a karate instructor, I just need to understand, you know, they're working with children for a start, so there's something that we need to look at a little bit more in depth into than we probably would with other roles. So it's just understanding the key parts of the role. And from a recruitment point of view, there'll be a lot of kind of writing job descriptions, writing interview questions.
05:54
kind of reviewing CVs that people have sent in to make sure they match the kind of key criteria we're looking for. Then there's obviously the writing out to the people that have not been successful that were leaving it at that point and then there's writing out to the people that we are going to take to the next stage, arranging interview slots with those, making sure there's rooms booked, making sure they have directions and an address code. Things that seem simple but people forget and they're excited because they're getting an interview.
06:17
There's then kind of the actual interview itself, so they're preparing for that, again, creating and printing out kind of interview packs, which are having interview questions, the scoring criteria of what we're expecting people to reach. And then following that, there's also feedback on the interviews, which, depending on how the interview went, can be a nice thing to give, and it can be a not so nice thing to give. And then after that, we go into the onboarding side of things, which is kind of ID checks and all those reference checks, that kind of thing.
06:42
So a little bit of that goes on every day really because we're always at some stage in the recruitment process and sometimes we're at multiple stages in the recruitment process for different roles. I have a management NVQ and if you ask me one thing that I learned from that management NVQ, I probably couldn't tell you any of it. I've always kind of been in admin, so there's a business administration qualification, which obviously makes sense. I have an equality and diversity qualification. That was probably the most interesting.
07:09
of my qualifications and that was something I did. I didn't really do that for work purposes, I did that for myself. We need to be a lot more inclusive and a lot more aware of different cultures and different people, quite an interesting course to do. I think those are the main ones I've got. We should work to live and not live to work. So yes we have to work because we have to pay bills and we want a certain standard of lifestyle but it isn't the most important thing and I think sometimes we lose sight of, well we wanted the money so that we could go on holiday with our family or our friends or...
07:39
go out to a nightclub or go to a concert that we wanted to go to. And then we end up focusing so much on earning the money that we forget to enjoy the money. So I think work-life balance is very important. And it's very important not even just for the money or to do those things, it's even just sometimes for your mental health to just sit and relax and read a book or watch a TV show or go for a walk. There's other things you should be doing other than just be working every hour that God sends. But yeah, it's always been kind of money to Friday 9 till 5.
08:08
until I went freelancing, which I actually did to have a better work-life balance, but I don't know that I always do have a better work-life balance. I think I find I work more hours, but with less pressure, so I can do things that I want to do. So it doesn't feel like I'm working longer hours because I'm enjoying the work more. But I think I found it difficult because in a corporate environment, you kind of have a lot of processes and procedures in place and things are done in a very structured way. Whereas when you're freelancing, everybody you work with...
08:38
does things differently or expects things done differently. So you have to make a choice of either I'm going to keep bending to everybody's will or I'm going to stand firm in this is the way I do it and it's always worked for me and I don't see why we need to change it and have a little bit of a backbone in that sense that this works or why not. And also people are hiring you because you're the expert. So if they're not then willing to listen to your opinion on how to do something then I kind of feel like you could have probably just done it yourself then if you're not going to use my expertise.
09:07
You're not getting your money's worth really, in my view.
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