I work for an industrial services recruitment company in Plymouth, where I help recruit staff to work at Devonport Dockyard . During one of my weekly welfare calls to a recruitment candidate, I found out that he was struggling after his young son-in-law received a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Our weekly calls became something this member of staff looked forward to as he was trying to be strong for his family and talking to me was an outlet for his feelings. Some weeks he cried and other weeks he just talked.

His son-in-­law, who was in his 30s so a similar age to me, passed away very early on and while my candidate was off on bereavement leave, we still regularly caught up once a week. I suggested sign-posting him to services which could help but my check-in calls were enough for him.

Recently, life has been better for him and our weekly conversations have been shorter but I still continue to check in on him.

I completed a two-day mental health workplace first aider course with St John Ambulance a few weeks before this happened. My company regularly carries out welfare calls - as a temporary agency recruiter it’s important to the company to make sure that our candidates feel valued. We include a mental health leaflet in all our new starter packs.

I have an interest in mental health and am always up for taking new courses. The two-day mental health course was brilliant – really insightful. I learned a lot from it. It was very engaging and was taught in a variety of ways to help every different type of learner take the information in.

I didn’t know much about mental health first aid before but now I think it’s something every company should implement. I absolutely recommend it.

The biggest thing I learned is sitting back and just listening to what people have to say without talking about my own experience. I lost my mum to cancer 14 years ago and I support a lot of cancer charities. But it doesn’t necessarily help to say ‘I know how you’re feeling’ because everyone’s different.

Having the mental health training helped me have a better understanding on how to deal with these conversations and support my candidate through this time. Without it, I wouldn’t have been so well equipped to support him and I may have said the wrong thing or talked about my own experiences of grief and cancer which I was trained not to do.

A few of my friends suffer with their mental health so the skills I learnt - especially listening and not comparing their situations with my own - have been helpful in having conversations with them. It’s also helped me to understand their mental health a little better.