Fully charged

Routes into HR are many and varied, but Matthew Brearley’s career path is unusual even by the standards of the profession. With a first-class honours degree in mechanical engineering, he joined ExxonMobil as a graduate trainee but quickly moved from engineering into operational and project management roles. A stint in management consultancy brought him closer to HR, and after nine years in a variety of HR positions, first at B&Q and later Marks and Spencer, he took on a new challenge. Brearley is now HR director at Vodafone UK, having joined five years ago as lead HR business partner. While he has no regrets about abandoning his original career choice, he admits that “it was great to be back in an organisation with an engineering heritage, albeit one that these days operates very much in a high-tech digital world”.