Yvonne’s path into Engineering was started by a savvy physics teacher in Grammar School who got her involved in “Insight to Industry” and “Women in Science and Engineering – WISE” during the sixth form. She was successful to win a hotly contested engineering sponsorship with Ford Motor Company and graduated with honours from Brunel University, England  in Mechanical Engineering.

Upon graduation, she joined Ford as an engineer where she worked in a number of vehicle, engine and facilities projects in product development, testing, sales, construction, manufacturing planning, production, launch, trim and final, finance, change control, export and project management. During this time she travelled extensively especially to Europe, India and Eastern Europe and saw the inter-relation of all business functions of a global corporation in cross-section. It was to prove a very valuable learning experience.

In 2000, she left for a new product innovation under development by Delphi Corporation. During a period of business restructuring, she stepped in to fill the void that had been left by the absence of having no HR department onsite. What started as an interim measure became more permanent and she handled all personnel issues for the team over a period of four years.

Meanwhile still responsible for engineering, she headed up a multi-million global project team for a major OEM; receiving a Leadership award (2004) from Guy Hachey, (then) President Delphi E&C for turning around a loss-leading business line.

In 2005 Yvonne launched her own project of a more personal nature; taking a career break to start a family. When planning for her own return to the work force she quickly realised all the front line engineering leadership positions were not compatible with the work-life balance of a mum. Her time as a professional job-hunter was also invaluable for the jobseeker perspective of Recruitment.

Seizing initiaitive, she realised a personal ambition to create her own business and Purple Squirrel recruitment consultancy was incorporated in 2008. The firm’s USP is the ability to tailor a recruitment solution specifically for the benefit of the Engineering Manager founded of course from her own substantive experience of leading successful cross-functional engineering teams. Today Purple Squirrel is a fully operational recruitment business, operating with an expanding team and increasing number of diverse Clients and jobseekers.

Yvonne retains her passion for engineering and is especially interested in recruitment issues on the topic of Diversity and Graduate Development having had many of her own first hand experiences.

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