Eloise Skinner guest lecture.  

Eloise was one of our guests during the Mapping VR Practice unit. She talked about her professional background, career change and technology. It was great to meet Eloise and listen to her story as an encouragement for us, future graduates and professionals entering the market.  

Eloise is a lawyer with experience in a big corporation, who was not afraid to change her profession during the Covid-19 pandemic and started her own business. She, along with other professionals created a sustainable recruitment app that is currently being developed.  

Eloise, talking about her own experience, shared helpful tips and thoughts. Here are some of them I found especially useful:  

1. Having a user journey map through our product is necessary when we want to set up our own business and creating it should be one of the very first steps we take. It should present in a straightforward way the journey for the user but also for investors.   

2. Technical and non-technical partners in business – we need to realize that we will need investors that come and do not come from the field our product represents and build the relationship with them so we can succeed.  

3. Do not be afraid of changing your career many times in your life. If you always wanted to be that certain professional but after trying it you realized it is not for you, do not feel like you must stay there and do it for the rest of your life. Expectations and our idea of something may be vastly different from the reality. We only have one life, and it is better to change it many times than be stuck in something just because we have worked hard to achieve that goal.  

This is a remarkably close to my heart thought as I have decided to change my profession. I completed a degree in Sociology with Social Work and worked as a social worker for a couple of years before relocating to the UK. I then worked with people with learning disabilities, on the autism spectrum. After some time, I decided to pursue my creative career dream and completed the Art and Design Course; After graduating from which I discovered the VR world and fell in love with it, its endless shape and immense potential. I am now a second year VR student at LCC, UAL studying, discovering, and fulfilling my passion for VR. 

4. Business knowledge. Eloise, after leaving the law, went to business school as she decided that she needed a solid background to run her own company. A business degree is not necessary, but it is vital to have a knowledge of how to run a business, and there are loads of courses and resources available online.  

5. Separate finance. When deciding to move forward with your own start-up, it should be essential not to use all the private money you have for rent, bills, food, and other life expenses. Business finance should be separated from private ones (in case your business does not go well).  

6. Business incubators. There are programs and incubators for startups on the market, they support the idea and educate people about running their own companies. Barclays bank is an example of one of them.  

7. You do not have to stay forever in your own business. You can do it for some time only (3 years for example) and part-time only (alongside a different job). The fact that you have created a business does not mean you need to stick to that one idea and cannot do anything else.  

8. You need to have public/social media profiles to promote your business.  

Eloise also talked about her own company and mentioned further developments including XR technology in her sustainable recruitment platform which was interesting and has enormous potential of becoming a standard in the future recruitment and networking processes.