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‘I began my career in hotels’
She began her early career in hotels. As a box-fresh Birmingham University graduate, she joined Queens Moat House Hotel as an assistant to the front of house manager. “By accident I also took on responsibility for personnel & payroll,” she says with a grin.
It didn’t stop there and before she knew it, she was running weddings, food and beverages too. It was an early dip of her toes into what was going to be her USP - ‘grafting’. She was soon sent on a ‘train the trainer course’ and it was a natural fit which wound up as a new job working for the hospitality training company in London. “I specialised in NVQs and internal verification – I had some wonderful placements including training in Terence Conran’s restaurant,” she says.
She next worked as Personnel Manager for the Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza franchise, before moving north to open Slaley Hall, a golf resort hotel in Northumberland. It was more Fawlty Towers then anything to start with as with six weeks to go before opening there were no contracts or staff handbook, and recruitment hadn’t begun. “The only people in place were the executive team and we had to get on board 200 people really quickly as well as a bank of casuals,” as ever she delivered but her time in hospitality was at an end.
‘I turned down my first interview at Sainsbury’s’
In 1997, the year the blockbuster film Titanic was released and Princess Diana died, Seth joined supermarket giant, Sainsbury’s. “I was lucky to get it - I turned down the first interview because I’d lost my voice, but they asked me back when I felt better,” she says. The faltered start didn’t dent her success. The supermarket was a different beast and a corporate juggernaut – she found herself in charge of 800 retail staff.
“It felt like going backwards a little because everyone clocked in and out – it was pre-Justin King, the CEO of Sainsbury’s from 2004 – 2014 joining,” she says.
She wasn’t deterred and got stuck in – she landed extra jobs because she was keen, “I went to help out in Salford for six weeks and Keighley, in West Yorkshire. I rolled out labour management and a new grading system for colleagues,” she says.
I decided to take a bit of a risk, and I just told them, ‘I think my role is redundant’
Seth was in her 20s and thirsty for success, “My district personnel manager told me she was leaving, and she suggested that I apply for her job, so I did.” She got the role as a job share and was handed the baton of leading remotely for the first time. Her next stop was to London where she met and worked with one of the biggest influencers of her career, her regional business manager. “I learned so much from him – we started off in the region with five pages of flip chart paper sowing the vacancies – there was no talent plan when we began,” she says.
Out of 30 regions it was bottom and being run by many first time store managers – the small shops were taking £600,000 and the bigger ones £1,000,000 – something didn’t add up. “Changes had to be made so we started to talk about talent and grow it – two years later we restructured and disbanded the region six ways. When we handed it back there were no vacancies, and we’d moved to the top three in performance.” Seth says she remembers sitting in an Indian restaurant when that news broke, “It’s one of those joyous moments that sticks with you because the power of that team was probably one of the best that I have experienced,” she says.
