Melissa Hext

From June 2018, I had the opportunity to progress from Sales Consultant to Assistant Manager, I took this opportunity as I wanted to develop my management skills that I had previously learnt whilst at university.

My role here was to provide support to the Branch Manager as well as implementing and monitoring audit and compliance policies. I lead the team in collaboration with the Branch Manager to provide a happy, motivated working environment. From August 2019, I had the role of Acting Branch Manager where I then took over the store responsibilities up to the closure of the company. I am fully up to date with ABTA & ATOL policies alongside compliance topics such as GDPR and PCI-DSS as well as AML.

Key responsibilities
• Creating an encouraging, fun yet competitive environment for the team.
• Ensuring the team are working compliantly as per company standards and expectations.
• Leading by example so the team can deliver exceptional customer service at every opportunity.
• Assisting the BM with the running of the store in an ‘one-team’ approach.
• Responsible for achieving both store and personal sales and revenue targets leading by example and supporting team delivery. Both within travel and foreign exchange sales.

Key achievements/projects
• Achieved two ‘pass’ marks on Audits undertaken by the Thomas Cook Audit & Compliance Team.
• Receiving excellent NPS scores consistently with my personal score being 97%

As a sales consultant, I was responsible for providing excellent customer service, researching and creating the dream holiday for the customer. I worked to sales targets in regards to customer numbers revenue & margin.

Key responsibilities
• Creating the perfect holiday for customers, using formats set by Thomas Cook.
• Working to achieve margin targets within Foreign Exchange as well as the day to day running the bureau, keeping up to date with AML procedures & predicting currency trends for the days & weeks ahead.
• Consistently improving my product knowledge, which in turn, made me Cruise Co-Ordinator for my store as well as Middle East expert.

Key achievements/projects
• I was selected to attend educational trips such as Crete, Costa Brava and on-board Celebrity Cruises & Royal Caribbean.
• Becoming Cruise Co-Ordinator.

I started working in the position of Administrative & Marketing Assistant where I initially assisted with admin duties and helping other colleagues. The company is a national job board, advertising jobs from large companies across the UK. Their sister company, Grads.co.uk worked with the same concept and focuses around graduate recruitment. My responsibilities were centred around uploading job adverts across several aggregators, monitoring and tracking their progress and reporting back to the clients.

After looking for gap year opportunities, I was offered the job of Waitress at Cle Dubai, a new restaurant that has opened within the Financial District in Dubai. Whilst this opportunity was short, it gave me the understanding of how to adapt to working within a different cultural environment. Duties that I undertook here were mostly general day to day duties such as preparing the floor for guests and ensuring everything is in order, serving guests who are coming to the restaurant and prepping for the next day.