So you’ve found candidates, but how can you ensure they’ll be a good addition to your team? Gadd says teaching staff usually know if they have a student who would fit in well and make the recommendation. Sharratt adds: “We usually try to talk with the student. Teachers love to answer for them, but we want to hear from them directly.

“We find that many of them are hoping to become cabin crew, so we’re giving them a little reality check! »

INVESTMENT PLANNING

Once a placement is planned, agents are generally required to provide the school or college with their liability insurance certificate. It is then a matter of planning what the student will do.

At Hays Travel Weymouth, students have a workbook to complete while in the workshop. Gadd explains: “This includes things like geographic information files and the phonetic alphabet. We also invite them to help us with posters and marketing, and most of them love social media.

Martindale says long-term placement students have a “tracker” for what they want to learn and what they have learned, with questions to answer each week to track their progress.

At Murray Travel, students split their time between the sales team and the marketing department, learning different skills.

Sharratt says: “On the sales side, we let them try to find a suitable holiday for a real inquiry. They sit down with the sales advisor to listen to the customer and the advisor will then suggest that they look at, for example, Jet2Holidays and find three options. This may slow down the advisor, but the reward is that he quickly learns how to do an investigation.

Students will also write marketing posts for social media and the marketing manager will review them with them and publish them, which they find very rewarding.

It may take some effort on the part of an agency to get a work experience student up and running. So why should you entertain him? First, it can be a great way to recruit new talent. Gadd said: “Our newest work experience student is interested in applying for next year’s apprenticeship role. It’s great to know that she has a clear idea of ​​her role on a daily basis.

Sharratt agrees. “Our business was growing quickly and we needed to recruit. If we can recruit someone through work experience, they have completed their trial period.

One of those students, Kacie Dick, interned with Murray Travel during her fourth year of school and was desperate to work for the agency full-time. She says she loved watching the other agents work and it really gave her confidence.

So much so that once her exams were completed, she took on the permanent role, happily handling requests herself and becoming an important asset to the team.

Polly Bendall interned at First Choice aged 19 when Gadd was manager. She then became an apprentice and full-time employee. After having her two children, Bendall returned to work for Gadd at Hays Travel as a part-time consultant.

His recommendation for students looking for an internship? “Do your research. Go to the agencies you want to approach and look around. If you get an internship, be brave and ask questions. If you’re really interested, it really shows.

USE NEW TRICKS

Sharratt adds that students can bring useful skills to the business. “They are often very good on social networks. We recently introduced TikTok and students are everywhere.

Welcoming students can even attract new clients to the agency. Gadd says their students often end up booking their own vacations through the agency and McCabe adds that internship students are often the children of long-time clients, which can also help build loyalty.

Ultimately, the key to a successful internship is having a process that the team can follow so that it doesn’t take too long and both agents and students get the full benefit from it.

Sharratt says: “At first our branch managers weren’t too keen on taking on students, but once they realized they could use the same process every time and we could recruit good people, they really understood the benefits for us. and the industry as a whole.