How to transition from a retail job to a corporate career

I started off at Costa Coffee. Then I was a sales assistant at Topman. Then I became a supply chain analyst at Rolls Royce in a manufacturing firm. Then I became a project manager in an investment bank and now I'm a project manager in another investment bank. And I attribute my ability to move from a retail job to a corporate career to these specific steps. If you're a recent graduate or you're just stuck in a cycle of retail and you want more for yourself, these are tried and tested steps that I did to be able to land my first corporate role. The first thing I did is I utilized my customer service experience, my retail experience and any work experience that I had acquired from college and also from my family members just giving me the opportunity to shadow them in different businesses. And I leveraged that to optimise my C.V. for entry level roles. The second thing that I did is making sure that I was connected to any of the early careers professional networks such as the Bright Networks, the Rare Recruitments, the SEO Londons and I made sure that I attended all their networking events. The summer that I graduated, I was going to all the networking events, going to all the career fairs, I was there. If there was a career fair, I was there. And then the third thing that I did is identify a role and an industry that I was interested in, or a group of roles and a group of industries that I was interested in and I honed in and I upskilled myself in that role and in that industry. For my case, it was project management and investment banking. And then the fourth thing that I did is I seek mentorship. I looked on LinkedIn to find mentors that could guide me and coach me on project management as a whole, investment banking as a whole and give me the hints and tips to actually transition into this role and industry. And then the fifth thing and I'll say probably the most important thing was I supplemented my retail and my customer service experience and I was able to land a mock style, bootcamp style work experience where I was able to go in in a mock environment and demonstrate my ability to do this particular role and I put that on my C.V. And finally, I was locked into all the different recruitment platforms that offered entry level, graduate level roles. I was locked into Target Jobs, I was locked into Brian Network again and I made sure that when it came to applications, I was on top of things. I was not leaving anything to chance. I had an application tracker, I set up a touchpoint cadence and I was able to land my first role.