Placement Year Worker Review

I was given four rotations throughout the year - each lasting for three months' and giving me exposure to all parts of the business. There was a heavy emphasis on customer service in each of these roles, and not just the housekeeping side of things. This prepared my excellently for a career in hospitality and I was able to explore the links between various parts of the business. It was a difficult and stressful job at times but I enjoyed it.

I developed a lot of skills in hospitality management which will stand me in good stead for the future. This included providing good customer service and other soft skills, to more technical things such as Microsoft Office training. I would say that the placement allowed me to put into practice the skills I learnt at university, where much of the learning is classroom based rather than practical. This helped me to catch up with those with more experience.

I was given a lot of responsibility and that increased through time. For instance, in housekeeping, I went from being heavily monitored to carrying out entire rooms cleans by the end of my placement year. Similarly, in desk based jobs, I was given a lot more responsibility when I became comfortable with Microsoft Office. At all times, I was encouraged to adapt to the situation how I saw best, and this allowed me to gain exposure to a variety of circumstances.

My supervisors and managers gave me a lot of help. Some teams naturally lend themselves to greater oversight. For instance housekeeping was very much supervised at the beginning and throughout. Human resources required more ad hoc work and finance was a bit more of an individually based job. Nevertheless, I received full support in all roles. There was also a lot of mutual support from my colleagues. Hospitality is a gruelling industry and it was important to support each other.

There was a good atmosphere in the office headquarters - no office politics, since all employees are focused on providing a good service in an industry they are interested in. The company is always quite busy in responding to the seasonal demand for hospitality, but generally everyone copes well with the positive atmosphere. There was also a lot of emphasis on improving our processes - both individually and at a company wide level, which helped a lot.

I really enjoyed my year working at Hilton. I performed all sorts of duties - mainly housekeeping, but also finance, marketing and Human Resource Management. I got to work in several hotels across the UK as well as the company's headquarters. There was sufficient variety during my placement year to keep me interested throughout. I would have liked the opportunity for international travel, but this was not possible and it was sensible to work only in the UK.

Yes

Get stuck into customer service experience at university and ideally before. Because hospitality is such as customer centric industry, you should be able to draw upon a variety of past experiences to explain your motivation for entering the industry. Try and bring up relevant work at college/university and specific modules that have helped you for the more office based side of things during the application process. This will provide for a good balance between practical and classroom based skills.