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Carolyn Walker
Global People Director, Tenth Revolution Group
Carolyn Walker, Global People Director, Tenth Revolution Group is a linguist, runner, mum and HR leader - she has worked across industries from the Eurotunnel to recruitment giant Randstad...
Carolyn Walker
Global People Director, Tenth Revolution Group
Carolyn Walker, Global People Director, Tenth Revolution Group is a linguist, runner, mum and HR leader - she has worked across industries from the Eurotunnel to recruitment giant Randstad...
Carolyn Walker has a diverse HR background. Her career includes roles at Eurotunnel, in banking and recruitment, where she focused on unifying global workforces and implementing mechanisms to ensure employee feedback informed decision-making. She has worked in corporate juggernauts to ones with entrepreneurial cultures and relished them all. Today, as Global People Director, Tenth Revolution Group, a job she was headhunted for, she is leading the charge for embedding an employee value proposition within a business that is dictated by fluctuations in the hiring market.
It began with French
Walker was a languages student, emerging from Oxford Brookes University in 1991 with a BA in Languages for Business, majoring in French and Italian. She did what she refers to as ‘stints abroad’ and loved it, but by then had met her husband to be and made the decision to hang up her thirst for travelling to stay in the UK with him.
“I was determined to work for French companies though – I didn’t mind what I did as long as I spoke French! I found a seasonal job at Air France at Heathrow. I loved it and ended up staying for two and a half years,” she says.
A crunch point arrived when she was asked to move to their Hammersmith office, but that was going to present her with a ‘terrible commute,’ and she knew it wouldn’t work.
Her next stop was Eurotunnel – another bilingual role working in HR administration, her first in HR. “In those days it was a construction company – we were used as guinea pigs; I went through the tunnel many times before it actually opened!” she laughs.
“We had an amazing office on the Strand overlooking the river and I was there for a year before the whole HR function was moved down to Folkestone.” The commute once again wasn’t going to be sustainable, and it was time to take something closer to home.
Walker landed a role as an HR Officer for a French bank in the City - 1998 was a particular turning point because she also enrolled in her CIPD studies – the bank funded night school at Westminster University. “I travelled from the City to Baker Street twice a week to do six hours of study, but I got to the point where I was looking for the next career move,” she says. By this time Walker was ‘Mrs,’ and she was turning her thoughts to starting a family.
In those days it (the Eurotunnel) was a construction company – we were used as guinea pigs; I went through the tunnel many times before it actually opened!
The commute once more proved an obstacle. “I didn’t want the travel to work but I did love my job. I ended up moving to a recruitment firm in Hertfordshire,” she explains. It was a pivotal point because she knew then that she couldn’t do both French and HR – she chose the latter and didn’t look back. She spent the next nine years at Select Appointments developing her HR career, referring to it as a ‘very happy time’.
