With the London Welsh Careers HUB entering its 5th season since inception we take a look at some of our lead HUB mentors.
The Careers HUB project grew out of the project reset plan, to support a sustainable club that returned very much to its heritage and history; a true community where players succeeded on the field and excelled off it (as is the now HUB motto).
Over the past 5 years almost 90 players have been through the careers HUB and have been mentored into new or rejuvenated, refocused careers. Many of our performance squad this season have been employed directly through the careers HUB.
A wide variety of careers are represented from medicine, construction, property, education, insurance, finance, marketing and the law,to name but a few.
The success of the HUB is of course underpinned by the incredible selection of careers HUB leads and mentors that the club is blessed with. All of which is headed by Haydn Parry our club director, but now ably assisted by Head Mentoring Lead (the recently appointed) Marcus Wuest.
This arricle is the first in a series of ‘ meet the mentors’. It is with great pleasure that we introduce our lead mentor : Marcus (In his own words).
MARCUS WUEST
Mentor Profile
Background
- More than 20 years experience in Banking – Investment Banking, Corporate Finance and Back Office
- Involved with London Welsh as dad, coach, referee, vets player and Minis Chairman since 2001
- I hold a maths degree from TU Darmstadt, Germany and a masters degree in Social Sciences from ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
What does mentoring mean to me?
I have been mentoring people – mainly people who have been working for me at some stage – for many years. Even though I retired from banking a while ago I am still in contact with some of them today.
For me mentoring is not just about helping someone in very detail about how to fill in an online application. It is much more than that. Especially when you have a common out of work interest it is about personal growth. Understanding one’s motivations and drivers.
I believe mentoring is especially important when things don’t go well. Or when personal circumstances affect professional development in one way or another.
As someone who has hired – and fired – people at various seniority levels in my professional life I can talk through many scenarios.
This is just about what my current mentoring relationship with one of the players is about. We discussed openly about what motivates him and what sort of roles to shoot for. Ultimately it worked out well with him finding a proper job. We have been checking up on each other occasionally since.
I am happy to see that through mentoring at the LW Hub some of my skills acquired in the City don’t entirely go to waste. All part of being a member of the large London Welsh family.
#lwfamily
