Hannah Bateman: Business Manager

When you’re looking for a new role in recruitment, it’s important to find out how the people who work there currently feel about the company. After all, happy employees are the best marketers! So, we asked a few of our team to tell the world about their experience working at Sewell Wallis.

Hannah Bateman is our Business Manager, managing the Transactional Finance team in Sheffield and recruiting into the Part-Qualified and Newly-Qualified market. She joined Sewell Wallis in 2017, has been promoted twice, and has worked with some of the biggest names in the Sheffield market. She talks about her journey from Consultant to Manager, and how the business have supported her through some of her toughest times. 

I was introduced to Sewell Wallis through my Dad, initially. He’d worked as an accountant his entire life, and he’d worked with Kayley numerous times before as both a candidate and a client. My sister was registered with Sewell Wallis because she wanted to become an accountant, and my Mum was a client of the agency. I was the final puzzle piece!

Fast forward two years from that point, I was working in another agency role, and I received an email about an opportunity from Kayley. It went something along the lines of ‘I think you and your family know a little bit about us already’, and the rest was history. My Dad was a huge driving force in me joining Sewell Wallis; his first hand experience with Kayley and her brilliance, and the organization as a whole meant he had no doubt in his mind that this would be a good career step for me to take.

I joined in 2017 as a Consultant, specializing in Transactional Finance recruitment. In my first two weeks, I can remember Kayley training me on all things finance. She’s the most humble person I know, but she’s a fountain of knowledge and an expert in her field – there’s nothing finance she doesn’t have some understanding of.

Two years in, I hit my first set of objectives and achieved my first promotion and my title changed to ‘Senior Consultant’. This wasn’t an immediate, drastic change in responsibility, but was more about shifting my mindset towards development, coaching new employees and continually improving my market knowledge. There were so many new challenges, but I grew a lot and I learned so much about the business, my role and the way I work the best. I started believing that I had the knowledge and ability to trust my instincts, something Kayley and Sue had encouraged me to do from day dot.

In 2022, post pandemic and in a recovering economy, I was promoted to ‘Transactional Finance Lead’. This role was a pivotal change for me. I wasn’t mentally ready to have a real, proper management title. I’d always felt a slight bit of imposter syndrome (I still do at times) when it comes to management, but after a little while, and a ton of encouragement, it started to feel right. It was an opportunity for me to adapt and transition to a managerial position, without the immediate pressure of traditional management and it was really important to me. I also completed an external management course to bolster my confidence, give me tools to succeed and mechanisms to handle potential situations that I hadn’t addressed before. Kayley and Sue built this role around me, in my opinion, to give me time to prove to myself that I could do it. They consistently encouraged me, gave me confidence, handled any reservations I had surrounding ‘managing’ a team and set me achievable objectives the entirety of the time which I was consistently hitting which allowed me to see that I could do it. Every single member of my team has been a blessing ever since; they are knowledgeable, dedicated, driven and determined and I love working alongside them.

In October 2022, I was promoted to ‘Business Manager’; I had an official management title. I now manage 3 amazing consultants who cover Transactional Finance in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire. They are the best in the business in my opinion, evidenced by their continuous success, repeat relationships and their independence.

My attitude to management is that it should be about encouragement, positivity and instilling confidence in my team’s own abilities; a management technique that I’ve learnt by example through working alongside Kayley and Sue. They’ve always believed in me, always told me that I could do it – whatever it was that they had set me to work towards. That’s exactly the attitude I have with my team.

Within this role, I also transitioned to recruit for a new desk. I now specialise in Part Qualified and Newly Qualified positions across South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire, and I absolutely love it. I really enjoy being a manager, but finance recruitment will always have my heart. Due to the amount of time I’ve been working within transactional recruitment, a lot of the candidates that I’m now working with have been with me since the beginning. I’ve watched them grow their experience, develop themselves, study hard and now I get to work with them all over again in their next move; a move that I consider to be the most important in their career. Kayley has yet again, dedicated her time to provide me with additional knowledge about the more in depth, technical side of accounting, again proving her immense expertise in the South Yorkshire finance market.

I also encountered a huge personal challenge in 2022; in the December, just after the Christmas break, I had to sit down with Kayley and let her know that they had found a tumor in my dad’s head and he was very unwell. The person I spoke to in that moment in was my friend first, then my boss. She showed absolute compassion, genuine emotion and care for me and I will always be forever grateful for what happened next. I was given complete flexibility by everyone in the business, and supported by all three directors whilst my dad’s care was ongoing, enabling me to help at home when needed and not have to put on a brave face when really, I didn’t feel that brave.

Every conversation I had, with Kayley, Lucy and Sue, first and foremost was about my wellbeing at the time, how I was doing and how they could help. Following my dad’s passing in May 2023, both directors, Sue and Kayley took time out of their business day to attend the funeral alongside me, and they all supported me, no questions asked, in choosing Brain Tumour Research as our charity of choice for the year of 2024 – Kayley and Sue have even volunteered to do a skydive in memory of my Dad!

The company is run by three incredible directors. They have successfully created a culture that businesses strive for and I feel really lucky to be a part of it. I hope to impact my team in the same way that they have impacted me over my 7 years.