At our PA recruitment agency, we’ve always known that what matters to employers is finding the right person for the job. It doesn’t always matter how linear your CV is; what matters are your transferrable skills, how you fit into an organisation culturally, and your aptitude to learn and develop. Our London recruitment agency has been chatting to some recent candidates who come from a hospitality background but have changed direction because of the pandemic.
From travel and tourism to customer service
Pete worked as a travel agent before securing one of the increasing number of temporary customer service jobs in London. “I’m used to dealing with customers on call, dealing with CRM systems, and ensuring a high level of customer service,” he says. “It made sense to shift sideways into a purely customer-service role. I’m now temping in customer service, but there are moves to make my role permanent.”
From front-of-house to working from home
Sophie worked front-of-house, receiving guests, booking them in, and ensuring they had a good experience. She’s now working from home as a PA. “I never really thought about my transferrable skills before,” she told us. My Love Success consultant helped me see that I wasn’t actually stuck looking for the same role. She showed me how my interpersonal skills were probably better than most people’s. She also arranged for me to have some training to improve my Microsoft Office knowledge. I’m now working from home as a PA and have discovered I absolutely love it.”
From temping to temping
Alex is a second-year student in London. He spent last year doing bar work to fund his studies. He’s now taken on a temporary job in London doing data entry. “This is so much better,” he enthuses. “I didn’t like bar work, and this will look better on my CV when I graduate. It fits around my studies, especially because it can be done from my student flat, and most of my course is now remote learning.”
From hotel management to human resources
Ian had been working in hotel management for several years but, unfortunately, has been made redundant due to the pandemic. We helped him consider the skills he’s gained during his career and discovered that he’s got a large amount of human resources knowledge.
“I’d never really thought about my skills in that way before,” he admitted. “I knew I managed all of the staff at the hotel, including being responsible for recruitment, appraisals, disciplinaries, and things like that. I’ve been recruited for an HR admin role and I actually really enjoy it. It’s like the best bits of my old job without all of the hotel issues I had every day!”
From graduation to career starting
Oliver was due to start a graduate training scheme in tourism in September, but it fell through due to the pandemic. “I’ll admit I was panicking,” he says. “I needed to find work and was down about the training scheme falling through. I got in touch with the Love Success London recruitment agency, and we chatted about the things I wanted to do. I’ve now got a junior role in a large finance company. They aren’t running their usual graduate scheme because we’re working from home, but they’ve indicated I’ll be able to move into this if I want to in the future. For now, I’m just glad to be getting experience and doing useful work.”
Do you work in hospitality and are you looking for a new job?
Think about the skills you’ve acquired in your jobs to date. Many of them are transferrable. Maybe consider some training too. Then branch out, it could be time for a change.
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