Sarah Ellis
, Amazing If
In January 2020, together with my co-founder Helen, we transitioned Amazing If from a side-project to our full-time focus. Our mission to make careers better for everyone was born from a shared motivation to democratise development. We pioneered ‘Squiggly Careers’, a new framework that reflects both the potential and possibility, and the change and uncertainty, that comes with navigating the world of work. Our work spans individuals and organisations, and so far we have supported more than 5 million people to succeed in their squiggly careers.
I co-create a good growth guide with everyone in our team to create clarity on role outcomes and learning goals. Each guide includes a £1k personal learning budget and 4 paid days of learning. I have also championed new ways of recruiting for roles including replacing job specifications with ‘a day in the life’ and sharing interview questions before the interview itself. This inclusive approach was reflected in people’s feedback: ‘especially for the 1 in 5 of us who are neurodivergent, this is a great example of what more could be done. Well done!’
Delivering our purpose through partnerships
We now have 109 learning partners across 20 countries, including: the BBC, The LEGO Group, Sky, LVMH, Civil Service, KPMG, easyJet, Unilever, HSBC and Cambridge University. Our impact with learners is consistently world class with a net recommender score of 80+.
Sharing squiggly across the world
Both of our books The Squiggly Career and You Coach You achieved number one Sunday Times bestseller status, a first for two women writing business books. We have also now been featured in five Harvard Business Review books and our TED talk, The best career isn’t always a straight line, has been watched by nearly 2m people. Since starting our Squiggly Careers podcast in 2017 we’ve recorded more than 400 weekly episodes, have over 4 million listeners and an average rating of 4.9/5 stars. We’re particularly proud that we have grown our impact purely through listeners coming back and recommending us.
Learning by experimenting
In 2023 I created a cross-company experiment programme with 15 organisations, and more than 7000 employees, designed to reimagine retention and support people to ‘squiggle and stay.’ Innovative experiments such as squiggly job specifications and career safaris resulted in a 35% increase in internal applications at Specsavers, and 11% increase in internal moves at Welsh Water. We published the results of this pioneering programme in Harvard Business Review and created a Squiggle & Stay open-source playbook so every organisation, however big or small, can benefit from our collective learning."