Meet Kat: Our Senior Account Manager
Kat has been with us here at TCC for over two and a half years now, incredible how time flies! Many of you, I’m sure, will have worked with Kat or been booked by her, but we wanted to take the opportunity to spotlight our colleague.
Kat's Time With TCC:
In the past couple of years, many things have changed for TCC. Including staff, freelancers and the effect of the pandemic on the industry took a heavy toll. We asked Kat what noticeable changes have taken hold since she joined. “It’s changed quite a bit since I first started, from having a new team and new freelancers join us, working with new clients and most of all the new regulations brought in with the introduction of IR35”. The changes brought in with IR35 posed significant challenges at first with disruptions as businesses began to determine the status of their contractors and the increased administrative burden this brings. Once this initial period passed the positives, have outweighed the negatives by far. Kat highlights that it has been a challenging but rewarding couple of years watching how the company has progressed and evolved.
The most change that TCC has seen since the pandemic began has been how the clients have adapted to new ways of working. Kat found that in the past two years, ‘clients have been able to adapt and let our freelancers work remotely, whereas before it was a case of the freelancer having to work in their offices.’ This change has meant that TCC has connected clients and freelancers, where we weren’t able to before.
A Day In The Life of Kat:
As the Senior Account Manager, Kat never has an easy day. Managing multiple clients is a juggling act, one she does amazingly well. Kats’ day involves dealing with multiple client enquiries, finding the most suitable freelancers for each job, and chatting with them and creating contracts for bookings. Kat also spends her time on business development with current and prospective clients, researching, finding out what programmes/ projects they work on, what they might have coming up in the next few months and arranging client meetings. An integral part of bringing in freelancers, Kat often conducts freelance interviews with MD Laura.
How does she do all of this work? – “Lots of coffee!”. But in all seriousness, she puts her success as the Senior Account Manager down to taking each job as it comes, never letting herself get overwhelmed. Over the past couple of years, Kat has built strong relationships with both her clients and freelancers. This has enabled Kat to identify which clients and freelancers would be best for each enquiry made, then it is a case of hoping that the freelancer is free! Kat credits the ‘amazing and supportive team at TCC, where we are always helping each other out wherever we can’.
The most rewarding part of Kats’ job undoubtedly, she says, has to be getting to work with our freelancers and clients – “I love hearing about how projects are going, the amazing work undertaken by our freelancers, both inside and outside of our bookings. It makes my day getting to hear about the wonderful experiences our freelancers are having.”
Life Since The Pandemic:
When the country began to open up we weren’t sure what to expect, no one could have ever predicted how busy we would become. We asked Kat what has been the most in-demand role for this year – “Every role is in high demand, as it is incredibly busy at the moment. There’s always a demand for editors, motion graphics designers and edit assistants, but we’ve also seen an increase in requests for production managers and production coordinators in recent months.”
We asked Kat what it has been like returning to the office after working from home for over a year – ” I enjoy the balance we have at the moment, before the pandemic I was in the office full time and then went straight into working full time remotely. During the last year, I missed being in the office and being around the team, bouncing ideas off each other. But I do enjoy the option to work from home too”. All of us at TCC have enjoyed more flexibility – getting to choose where we work. The pandemic has taught us that as a close team (as long as we communicate), we are equally efficient working from home or the office.”
Personal Touch:
We’ve spoken about Kat, the Senior Account Manager, but what about the girl behind the role? It might interest you to know, that in her spare time, Kat spends most weekends, working for a sporting events company, as a member of the event crew and occasionally as a race director. Including setting up running events from 10ks to half marathons, all the way to triathlons in and around London.
During the pandemic, Kat also found a love for gardening, growing lots of fruit and veg over the last year, some more successfully than others, she points out.
We hope you enjoyed reading this interview with our Senior Account Manager Kat Gibson, about her daily responsibilities, growing with the company, why she loves her job and working within the industry. On behalf of the entire team at TCC, thank you, Kat, for doing a brilliant job every day.