Hospitality: a hotspot for graduate management jobs

Many employers have structured management or graduate training schemes to help you further your career. These will involve learning the basics of the business, working in a range of locations and job roles before being given responsibility for people or projects. It can be an exciting time as you learn more about your chosen area of work and get a better idea of what you’d like to do within it.

To get onto a training scheme, you may have to go to an assessment centre where your range of skills will be tested. It’s important to know what recruiters look for in their potential employees so do some research on the organisation and use the ‘what employers want’ section of this publication to get a better idea of what’s required for successful applications.

Above all, the key to success is making the most of your skills and experience. Each job or task you have undertaken, no matter how small you think it may be, has helped you to learn some important lessons and it’s vital to use these to your advantage. A solid grounding is essential to make you an effective and respected manager, so hard work and determination can aid you in your journey to the top.

Meet the managers

There are plenty of people just like you who have gained experience, taken advantage of every opportunity and achieved success. They have worked their way up, both through training or experience and are now managing their own teams and departments. And their career doesn’t end there – they are continually learning and climbing higher.

Whether you’ve studied a hospitality, leisure or tourism related degree or not, you will have picked up vital skills that will help you in the industry. The top skills that Richard Barnes, undergraduate management programme leader at Robert Gordon University, seeks to equip his students with for a successful management career are:

• interpersonal skills
• communication and presentation skills
• problem-solving skills
• an appreciation of cultural and intellectual diversity
• the ability to function in a multicultural or global environment
• a readiness to lead and take responsibility for personal and professional decisions.

Work experience is also important and you can gain this either in the holidays or as part of your university course. For example, at Robert Gordon University, students get experience through visits to Las Vegas and the University of Nevada to study the management of mega-hotels, casinos and resorts. As Richard Barnes says: ‘Experience is a commodity employers demand along with a commitment to the industry so placements and foreign study opportunities play an integral part in student development.’