Client Spotlight: Annabel Hall

We love working closely with clients and hearing their story, it helps us capture their professional image, personality and brand. We think it is nice to share the story behind their images with you.

Client Spotlight: Annabel Hall

What do you do?

My name is Annabel Hall. I am the founder of Annabel Hall. Getting You Work Ready.

My business specialises in providing job application support and career guidance to Mums who are ready to return to work. We provide individually tailored and practical tools to assist Mums achieve their career goals and return to the job market with confidence.

We pride ourselves on delivering a personalised service and offer flexible, one-on-one consultations in person or over the phone, in a relaxed environment that suits our clients.

Our services include; resume writing, resume refresh, customized cover letters, key selection criteria documents, interview coaching, workshops and we offer two online toolkits.

Tell me about how you got into your field. 

Before having my little boy two years ago, I worked for Australia’s leading recruitment agency for ten years. I began my career overseas in their London offices before returning home to Australia where I established their Sales & Marketing Public Sector division. I then accepted the opportunity to work client-side recruiting for an international financial services organisation. I spent the last 5 years before I started my maternity leave managing the IT Public Sector (a team of 5) team and specialising in the recruitment of Program Directors, Program Managers, and Project Managers for the Victoria Government. I loved my role and all the opportunities that my employer provided me with over the years. I was extremely passionate about my team, my clients and my candidates which saw me working 60+ hours every week.  I never assumed that I wouldn’t go back to my position in some shape or form after my 12 months’ maternity leave. I kept in touch with my manager throughout my maternity leave and was offered two different roles to return. Just as I was literally calling my manager to accept my new part-time role I suddenly released that returning to the corporate world wasn’t going to work for my family and I. My partner runs a real-estate office and works 6+ days a week and more often than not works late at night. My mum lives in NSW and my partner’s parents still work so we don’t have support to help with childcare or in times when our little man is sick.  I absolutely adore everything about motherhood and I realised that going back to the corporate world with minimal flexibility wasn’t going to allow me to be the mum I wanted to be today or in the future, I wasn’t going to see my partner and for the stress that the logistics were going to put on my family unfortunately the dollars didn’t really make it worth my while.

I decided to take another 12 months’ maternity leave and use that 12 months to start planning and setting up my own business. This was an extremely daunting decisions as I liked the security of working for a big organisation but the more I thought about it the more I released that it was the right decision for my family. This way, I still got to have my own project, my career and I was creating a business that was going to be flexible around the needs of my family. Down the track I wanted to be the person who dropped and picked up my children from kinder and school and be able to around on school holidays. I resigned after the completion of my second year of maternity leave and I am now extremely excited for this next chapter in my life.

Why did you choose to hire Lizzy C Photography?

I was referred to Lizzy C photography from my graphic design agency Kupke Design (Catherine Kupke) that I was working with to complete my branding and my website.

Tell us about your experience working with her. Were you happy with
the results of your shoot?

Lizzy C Photography were fantastic! From the moment we arrived Liz made us feel very welcome. Her bright, bubbly and friendly personality meant the conversation flowed freely and it felt like we had been friends for years. This made for a very relaxed and comfortable photoshoot. I had never had a photoshoot before but Liz instantly understood my business, my brief and directed the morning flawlessly. We spent time in her studio, onsite at a local café and also capturing photos with my two year old (which can certainly be challenging!).

I was extremely happy with the results of my photoshoot. All of the photos Liz captured were exactly what I was after. There was an excellent selection to choose to cover all of the different mediums that my photos were going to be used for (website, marketing material, social media etc..). I found it very hard to select my final ten photographs.

I can’t rate Lizzy C photography for more highly. A professional, efficient and very friendly service that captures that essence of your business in beautiful photographs.