Aisha Munir
Bid Coordinator at Vital Energi
How I got here
I've always loved English, so in high school that was a huge focus for me. But if you love English, people sometimes tell you not to pursue it because there's supposedly no career path with it.
There were a lot of other options like psychology and law, which I did end up picking for my A-levels. When it came time to apply for uni, it was pretty difficult because there's one side which is law, that has a structured endpoint. Then there was psychology, which was interesting but it might be hard to find a job. And then there was English, which a lot of people saw as a wild card.
Because I really enjoyed it, I ended up picking English as my degree. It was a difficult decision because of life choices and longevity. You don't really think about that when you're in high school, but when you get to the university stage, you're like - I need to actually think about what I'm going to do. I remember writing on my personal statement that I wanted to be an English teacher, which I didn't at all, but it was the only job people were telling me I'd be able to do.
When I went to university, it was like a whole new world opened up to me. When you have that tension of 'what job can I do with this?', it was good to see there was actually lots of stuff out there. But the bid stuff came in my final year. I literally had no idea about this job or this career at all. I thought I would do something related to editing or publishing.
But I noticed that they specifically asked for an English degree or humanities degree. That was like a green flag straight away. It was fun to actually find a job that asked for that, and one I'd never heard of. I was really curious and I applied. I’m really glad I did!
What I actually do day-to-day
I work at Vital Energi, which is a renewable energy company, and I'm a bid coordinator in our work winning team. So I help the company get the jobs, basically.
When any kind of public sector body - colleges, universities, schools, councils - wants to get clean energy as part of their buildings, they'll put out projects. Solar, clean energy, water, air, anything like that. My job is to help Vital Energi to win those projects.
A bid will have different stages. It'll come in and if we decide we want to go for it, the initial questionnaire will have a two or three-week deadline. A lot of the time that's answering loads of questions in documents about our company and what we do. If we pass that first stage, then we move on to writing responses. That's where writing becomes an important skill. One of my jobs is to write about previous case studies - any other jobs we've worked on that are relevant to the one we want to win.
You'd have maybe three or four projects at once, but it wouldn't just be you. Everyone else would be involved too, and each project would have different people working on it.
There's also a lot of admin stuff. It's like keeping track of new projects, creating CVs, creating charts, keeping on track with websites and any new jobs coming in. But every day is different, so you do have to be really organised.
What I enjoy about it
I like it because we make a real impact - sometimes that can be right down the road from where we are! Councils want to work with us to make improvements, and I think that's really important to me. That's why I took the job.
That's just the type of person I am. I like knowing that what I do is actually making a real impact in the world. We get an opportunity to go and see the sites that we work on. So if we win a project like a solar farm, we can go and see that solar farm being built. It's nice to see that as a real thing in the real world.
The renewable energy aspect of it matters to me, and the educational aspect too, because there's opportunities for school children to go and see these sites. Then you're helping the next generation along.
Then as I started working, I'd say a big highlight is the people and the amount of different teams that we have, it's nice to have that.
What you learn on the job
Probably just how varied it is, every single day is different. So you do have to be adaptable and be able to hold loads of things in your head at once.
Another aspect is just how many people you'd be working with. It's not just your manager and the other person on your team, it's everyone basically.
You need to be focused. If your mind wanders around a lot, it might be hard to keep up with everything that comes through. Organised, definitely, because there's always something happening. As you move on through the role, you get more and more projects, and every project is different.
Communication is important because you'll need to ask lots of questions, not just with your manager but with different teams and departments. Having the confidence to just go up to someone you've never seen before, but you know you need them for answering a question. Sometimes people don't reply on emails or Teams, so you have to be able to go up to someone and be like 'hi, have you seen that?'
Not being afraid of asking the follow up question is important. Sometimes people get nervous thinking 'I've asked once, they're going to be annoyed if I ask again.' But if you're unsure, knowing that you should ask the follow up question - that is important.
My advice
Focus on writing. Any kind of experience you have with that, whether that's uni newspaper, uni magazine, even contributing an article. I talked about that at my job interview.
Admin is a big part of the role, so any experience you have with that is useful. Bar work and anything customer facing counts too, any experience you have with working with different types of people is good.
Anything you've done during uni, even volunteer stuff. I did one extracurricular project with one of my instructors and talked about that at my job interview. Any training or courses that you've done that are extra to your uni work, even if they're not relevant to the job, because that shows that you've learned something new. Because when you get this job, you will be learning new things all the time.
I think having that passion for renewable energy could drive you in this role. It's going to take a long time for projects to come to fruition, but knowing that it is one day going to be real - I think that helps in this job.
