Trained as a civil engineer, Bhavna started her career in India as an IT developer and network engineer. She came to the UK in 2003 with her husband and after the birth of her daughter, took a career break to spend more time with her. But as time passed, Bhavna needed to get back to work for financial reasons, and so, whilst her daughter was young, she looked for a different type of role that would give her more flexibility and retrained as a teacher.

However, as the years passed, Bhavna missed her career in IT and spurred on by her daughter to look for the work that she loved, she searched for opportunities to return. Racked with doubt as to whether she would be able to catch up with all the developments in the sector during her time out, Bhavna enrolled on some free online courses and read widely to try and boost her confidence and update herself.

After 9 years out of IT, the opportunity came in the form of Next’s Back to IT programme, and 15 months later, Bhavna’s been promoted to a QA Analyst and is flourishing in her role.

“The core skills will never go away from you. So keep on, be positive. Don't wait for the perfect job ….get your foot into the door and then you can look around once you’re inside”

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