About - Next Steps

Do you want to unlock your potential and significantly improve your performance?

Let me help you. I’m Claire Bain – the owner of Next Steps – and I’m passionate about helping businesses and individuals to achieve results. I provide coaching, training and mentoring services to clients in Northern Ireland and beyond.

Clients include large organisations (such as Northern Ireland Electricity, Farrans Construction and Newry Mourne & Down District Council), smaller businesses (including the Horatio Group and Trackars Healthcare) and private individuals (such as university lecturers, solicitors, nurses, doctors, senior civil servants, fire & rescue officers, bank officials and students).

A specialist niche is providing competency based interview training to clients in Belfast and Northern Ireland.

Services for businesses include:

Performance Management
Team Facilitation
Staff Development

Services for individuals include:

Competency Based Interview Training
Career Coaching
Business Owner Coaching

Why choose me?

Here are five key reasons to use me:

I’ve extensive practical experience gained in large companies (including 15 years’ operational management in GlaxoSmithKline) and SMEs
I’m a fully qualified/accredited coach, and my approach to coaching and facilitation is backed up with 20 years’ experience
I challenge in a supportive way – underpinned by a focus on outcomes and business results
I’ve high levels of perception and will quickly gain an understanding of your situation
I’ll give you tools and techniques that you can use on an on-going basis

Want to know more?

Get In Touch

Claire helped me bring so much more structure to both my business and how I managed my time. She got to understand the business very quickly and we worked together to identify key performance measure and what I should be focusing on. The outcome is I can working more efficiently and staff are all very clear on what is expected off them.

Business Owner, Estate Agents

Great advice, fantastic support. Got me thinking about a more positive future in my business and the way forward. More structured approach to staffing and management.

Business Owner, Catering Industry

I wanted someone to guide me how I could perform better and develop my career. We had a telephone discussion before when met up Claire was very well prepared for our session. After our meetings my confidence level grew and I was ready to make some changes. I understood what I had to improve on and identify my next career step. She really helped me to prepare for my interviews.

I am so glad to say that I was successful in my next interview and I am expecting a job as the assistant Manager Operations at NHS. Thank you so much Claire and I would recommend to anyone that, Claire is the right person when it comes to interview coaching and personal development.

Manager, NHS

Thank you for providing me with coaching and for your tolerance towards some of the wider issues and questions I added in to our meetings. I found that your friendly professional approach to coaching maintained the right balance for me in terms of structured learning, sensitive listening and asking challenging questions. Thank you – what you provided was very helpful.

Manager, Education Sector

I would thoroughly recommend Claire to anyone in the educational sector who is considering changing jobs and/or going for a promotion. She is a superb communicator who completely demystifies the whole interview process and leaves you feeling enthused and empowered.

Booking a training session with Claire is one of the best career investments you could ever make.

Headteacher, Education Sector

Claire is one of those people who can put you at ease. Someone that you can open up to and explain your concerns. By spending time listening to my experience at previous interviews she identified where I was going wrong and guided me through approaching the process in a logical manner, so that, I could deliver to any interview panel, a response which clearly demonstrated how I met their requirements.

The work I have done under Claire’s guidance has resulted in a remarkable transformation. From being tongue tied and searching for answers during an interview I am now confident and can answer anything which may be asked of me as I have prepared thoroughly for the interview. Taking the time to work with Claire is the reason for this transformation. For anyone who, like me, finds themselves dreading another interview I have no hesitation in recommending you make time to work with Claire.

Senior Policy Adviser, Northern Ireland Civil Service