Rachel Parkes

Rachel Parkes

Tell us about your career journey so far

I have always held people centric roles, being naturally inquisitive about people, their motivations, and behaviours. My career started as in Internal Recruiter for Global Beauty brands which opened my eyes to the wider world of HR and Talent Management. It was here, I developed an understanding of the importance of having well designed and executed people strategies and how these are intrinsic to business success. To educate myself further, I funded my own studies and obtained my CIPD qualifications and BPS accreditation. Since then, I have had the opportunity to work for some fantastic, progressive HR Leaders who have given me the opportunity to design and develop Talent and Development functions, looking after the full employee lifecycle from initial attraction, onboarding and learning and development to end of career/alumni initiatives.

What does a typical day look like?

One of the best things about my role is that my days are really varied and interesting, working across many different industries and customers. Ultimately, I lead our consultative solutions to our existing customers, supporting them in embedding our blend of data, insight, and advice into their HR teams to transform their overall performance. Using my prior Talent and Development experience, I also ensure that we continue to add more and more value across hiring and employer brand programmes by evolving our solutions.

What attracted you to Cogito?

I was introduced to Marc back in 2015 and became a Client of Cogito’s! I am fortunate to have worked with the entire Cogito team previously, utilising Hiring Insights and outsourced Recruitment support, People Insights for Academic Research purposes and Employer Branding project support from concept to execution.

I remained in contact with Marc and as a Cogito advocate having seen first-hand the value the team and solutions added to my Talent Strategies, when the opportunity arose to join the team, I was keen to be a part of growth plans of the business.

What does it feel like to work for Cogito?

Collaborative, inclusive and progressive. The energy, enthusiasm, and solutions focussed attitude of the entire team is really motivating. I’m excited to be a part of the business.