Being a Bid Manager and studying English Literature at UEA
By: Alumni Team
Grace Mead Pérez González (LDC18) studied BA English Literature at UEA, graduating in 2021. She now works as a Pitch Coordinator at law firm Bird & Bird. We interviewed her to find out more about her career story.
What have you been up to since you graduated?
Oh, lots of things! I went out to Dublin to study a Masters at Trinity in Identities and Cultures of Europe. About half-way through I realized it wasn’t for me, but I loved Dublin which is just the most amazing city and is also where I met Alvaro, my husband. So that was really cool and I stayed on there for a while, and then did some travelling, and lived in Spain for a few months, which is where Alvaro is from. (We celebrate our two-year anniversary on Friday!) While there, I did an editing and proofreading course with the Chartered Institute of Proofreaders, and a bit of freelance proofreading, editing and translating. When I came back to the UK, I started job hunting. I set up a website with some samples of my writing, and even had professional photos taken for it (which I hated)! I sent off a mail shot to over 150 local companies, and out of it got quite a few interviews – which was great experience. I also put my CV up on Glassdoor, and a recruiter got in touch and I got my first job as a bid administrator, working in the bid team of a company that dealt with managed print (supplying printers to offices) and things like that. You don’t think when you’re five ‘I want to grow up and become a bid manager’ but actually what I’ve discovered is that it’s a job that uses a lot of the skills I learned at uni. I’ve since moved to working as a bid coordinator in the legal industry which is great, and my job includes a wide variety of tasks which keeps things very interesting.
Tell me about that: how has your degree in English Literature influenced your career do you think?
Well bid management is actually one of those jobs that specifically asks for an English Literature degree in the job description! And I definitely use all the writing skills I honed at UEA – it can be a really writing-focussed job. Bidding is basically writing a competitive essay, telling a client why our services are the best and most suited to their needs. Reading comes in too: you have to read and analyse long documents, with an eye for the essentials but also the small things. That’s something that if I hadn't done English and had that experience, I would have found really difficult.
Going into UEA, did you have a career ambition or a career specific career path in mind?
I knew I wanted to do something creative, and I knew that I'd always liked writing.
I probably wanted to go and be a reader and a publisher and just read books for a living, which would still be lovely, to be honest!
Tell me about your experiences studying at UEA.
Despite COVID, my experience at UEA was great. I really enjoyed university life. The course itself was really good for someone like me, particularly because it was all coursework based and I had struggled in school with the rigidity of exam based learning. In terms of modules, I really enjoyed the Shakespeare module, and there was an optional module I took in first year about the witch hunts in early modern Europe, that I loved. And then there was a postcolonial course that I really enjoyed and journalism – that was a really good one too. Basically I enjoyed all of them!
Norwich itself is amazing, it's such a nice city: there's something about it that makes you feel like it's a small town, but it's still got all of those city things. That was fantastic.
And then I really loved meeting lots of like-minded people, people with similar interests. I know you might find that at any university, but I really think that at UEA there wasn’t the kind of competitiveness that you might get elsewhere. Everyone was really supportive: in classes everyone was just there for the love of learning and to support each other. It was really helpful for me to meet people on a similar wave-length. And I went on to live with people on my course in my third year, and we had a really, really good time, just loving English, and basically talking about books all the time!
Did you do any extracurriculars?
I tried a few different things but didn’t stick with anything until my third year, when I did an internship as a shortlister on the UEA publishing project. This was really cool and aligned with my interest in reading and editing. It was also led by one of my close friends so we had a lot of fun. There are so many clubs and societies at UEA so there’s definitely opportunity to find friends with similar interests and get involved!
What were your experiences of Norwich as a city? Do you come back at all?
I do come back! I met a girl at UEA who was also doing English Lit, and she became my absolute best friend – I was her maid of honour, that kind of thing – and until recently she was living in Norwich, so I used to love coming to visit her, to see her, but also to be in Norwich. In our uni days there was a lot of clubbing and bars, but now we go to coffee shops, restaurants – there’s a really nice Belgian restaurant, the Belgian Monk. Oh, and there’s a little café just down from there, Slice + Dice, where you can play board games and have coffee and cake! And then there’s the market, which is lovely, and the whole city is just really pretty.
Would you recommend studying at UEA and why?
Yes, I absolutely would. Particularly for people that are maybe a little bit nervous about leaving home for the first time just for all the reasons I've said. It's just feels like such a welcoming environment and Norwich feels safe. It’s got that kind of small town charm but in a city somehow. And in terms of UEA itself – there’s the variety of things to choose from when choosing modules, and then in LDC there are great support systems there too. I would 100% recommend UEA – you could put that as my tagline!
Is there any advice you'd give to current like students or current students wanting to follow a similar career path to you?
I appreciate how difficult it is post graduation to go out there and find your first job. I suppose partly the advice I'd give is it's a numbers game, so you’ve got to keep applying. But if you've got the kind of skills that you've learned from studying English they will definitely come in handy. Bid management requires lots of the things that I learned at uni, and they have been really useful, so it’s definitely a good choice. Everyone in my team at my current job studied English at university! It’s also a job you can find at a lot of companies, so you’re not limited to using the skills and experience you gain in one industry.
What’s next for you?
At the moment, I just want to continue to find out what it is about work that I enjoy in general and what my priorities are. My company recently arranged for me to do a project management course, for example, which I really loved, and the skills I learnt through that are transferable to a variety of things. I'm only two years into my career, so I've got plenty of time.
Is there anything else you’d like to say about yourself or your time at UEA?
I think the advice I’d given anyone starting at UEA is to really enjoy it, and do lots of extracurricular stuff. Just go and try everything once because you never know what you might find out that you like! On a more serious note, I would also mention again the support systems in place – if you’re struggling at uni reach out to your advisor or a supervisor you trust because help and support are available, and I found the systems in place to be so helpful and understanding.
Study BA English Literature at UEA