Career Change - Case Study - Irish Examiner 12th January 2009

Declan Staunton who worked with Harmonics on a 'Career Change' Programme talks to Pol Conghaile

'If you knuckle down.... and have a passion it's worthwhile'

I’m an engineer with 14 years experience working with multinationals in Ireland. I’ve done the whole round of the Boston Scientifics, the HPs. I’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirts, the jackets, the pencils, the pens - I have everything at this stage. By 2007 I was feeling a slight frustration with what I was doing. I remember a conversation with an old boss, where he spoke of the grey matter test – pushing yourself to the limit. I missed that kind of challenge.
I decided I needed a career health check to see what I was doing, what I could do, and what I wanted to do going forward. I’d heard about Harmonics [the career coaching company] through my wife – she’s a lecturer at the University of Limerick, and they had done some work there. My wife came back and said they had some interesting ideas, so I decided to go along, have a chat and see what I thought. 

The initial meeting was five hours. I sat down one-to-one with a career coach, put everything on the table and we trashed it all out. The whole idea was that we looked at my career - I have a degree in Electronic Engineering from Coventry and a Masters in Electronic Systems from DCU – and my strengths and weaknesses. Then we started looking at my core values, what actually makes me tick. 

Basically, I started to think about what I liked doing, and what I could do best. My passion is with people and learning. Setting goals and being challenged is important to me. And family is a key element – we have a four-month-old daughter. We identified core values and from that said ok, my strengths lie in the consultancy end of the business, actually bringing my knowledge base and what I have learned over the years to clients. I decided to go out on my own.
At the time, my employer was offering a voluntary redundancy package, so I took that. Multinationals can be full of cosy cartels and glass ceilings. The guys all huddle together in groups, so I had to break out of that. At the beginning of 2008 I took the leap of faith, used the redundancy package to tide me over for a number of months, and started planning. I looked at the marketplace, competitors, my service offering. What could I bring that was different? 

I set up a company called iAutomation. We offer programming and safety systems consultancy, project management and also computer systems validation to the medical device and pharmaceutical businesses. Basically, if you want to start a business in this environment, you have to look at the costs and make sure that you can control them. You have to develop a project pipeline, customer relationships, make sure the cash is coming in. I started with one client; now I’m moving up to five. 

Has my passion been fulfilled? It’s a gradual process. I’m getting to work with different people, and I’m getting to meet CEOs, MDs and VPs, interacting with different levels. Once you bring your passion and skill set and display them, they will open up to you quite quickly. 

It takes a while to move out of the multinational mindset, the whole 9-5 idea, but now I work late at night, weekends, the whole lot... over the last three weeks I had one day off. You can’t just start up a business. My wife and I have been discussing this since I first went to Harmonics, and I’ve been thinking about it all along. I’ve been working hard. The next stage is to bring in employees. 

At this stage I’m very happy. I’m happy I did it and the opportunities are starting to show. I know everyone’s talking about a recession and everything’s going south, but if you actually just knuckle down and start working and have a passion about what you do, it’s worthwhile.

In conversation with Pól O Conghaile.