Earlier this year, a long-time friend of ISE, Tessa McEwan, sadly passed away. Tessa was someone who worked in early careers for over two decades, both as a graduate recruiter and as a trainer. Tessa was known by many across the early careers sector, some of whom have shared their thoughts and memories for this piece.
Tessa began her career at KPMG in 1993, training as a corporate tax consultant, before a secondment into graduate recruitment introduced her to the world of early careers - she was hooked! She went on to build a career spanning graduate recruitment, assessment and development, and training.
Tessa was instrumental in ISE’s (AGR as was) expansion into development alongside recruitment. She helped build out the development community creating a network of committed professionals. She was also key player in creating and delivering the AGR Standard professional development programme for graduate recruiters and developers.
Many who still work in early careers have reached out to share their fond memories of listening to and learning from Tessa in the old Warwick training room. No matter how many plates Tessa had to keep spinning, she was always an absolute pleasure to work with, a kind, generous and collaborative person who delivered to the highest standards with utmost professionalism.
Tessa met and trained many hundreds, if not thousands of people over the years, either through ISE or through her own business. She was always current and updating her skills, becoming one of the first five people to learn how to run virtual reality assessments. She also collaborated on training to help organisations better recruit, assess and market to early talent in an inclusive way, and during lockdown delivered the first fully online ISE course on the subject.
Always developing herself, Tessa was one of the first in our industry to focus on developing resilience and introducing mindfulness into the workplace. From 2018 this started to be a core part of her proposition and support to business’s impacting not only staff in organisations but imbedded as part of core curriculum in grad recruitment programmes in corporates. Many grads still say it was fundamental to how they have balanced their work and been successful in their businesses.
Staying adaptable and her passion for doing the right thing started to move her into the world of delivering social value, both from a business perspective and a voluntary perspective, where she gave back to communities such as Yeldall Manor.
From those that contributed their memories of Tessa to this piece, what consistently was said was Tessa did make everything look so easy and made so much time to mentor others - she always had great advice and radiated calmness and positivity. Ultimately a picture shines through of a wonderful person who in her own caring way helped a lot of people both professionally and personally.
Our thoughts are with Tessa’s husband Gary, her daughter Isla and the rest of her family.