Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Work Experience By Sergio I Triay
11:26 | 
Posted by
madaboutfurniture
For 3 weeks of my summer holiday, I took up a work placement in the retail store Mad about Furniture, with the main objective to gain people skills, and further increase my understanding of the functions of a real world work placement.
Although 3 weeks is not a great amount of time, I thought it sufficient to gain the experience I needed to use in my later life which will hopefully include University in the near future. Having little experience in the “real world of business” Mad about Furniture has thoroughly enhanced my awareness of how a modern business works. Starting at 10am until the hunger ridden hour of 2pm, there is always something to occupy your time.
Mad about Furniture is an international company, and working in the shop, I saw illustrated in real life the importance of languages, with the clientele being extremely diverse in terms of nationality and mother tongue. As a British company with British owners in Spain, my flexibility and knowledge of both the Spanish and English language became very useful. In fact, my first job within the company was to translate many of the phone calls we received from Spanish suppliers and subsequent transport personnel who enquired about some of the orders and deliveries we had made. Further to this, my translation skills became even more useful when it came to translating prices, stock availability and measurements, to Spanish clients who came into the store.
However, translating is only the beginning of this three week job placement adventure. On one of the many work filled days, Steve, Sarah, and I proceeded to check stock availability in the warehouse. Sounding like a simple task, Stock taking can be rather stressful and is an essential part of running the business and if not done properly can cause all kinds of problems.
While not picking up the phone, translating or stock checking; my job centred on updating the quotation packages we send to clients, trying to give them a modern touch, whilst making it as user friendly as possible. This job although simple, was time consuming, and if there is one thing I have learnt about the world of business is that “time is money”.
Having my mind set on Politics from a young age, I never thought skills such as GCSE ICT would become useful in my future job opportunities. However, working in Mad about Furniture proved my theory wrong, as my next job was to complete an online customer satisfaction survey. This was obviously aided by my knowledge gained in ICT which in turn opened my mind up to the importance of having a wide variety of skills available.
The overall experience at Mad about Furniture proved a great success! Not only did I complete the objectives I set out at the beginning of my job placement, but also enhanced some of the skills I had almost left behind. It moreover, gave me a realistic view of what work is like outside the study environment and in the words of Donald Kendall “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary” – a sentence which encapsulates my experience of the world of work. Success is proportionate to the effort and hard work you put into it.
Lastly, I would like to thank all the colleagues at Mad about Furniture, for making me feel welcome at all times and always helping me in anything I needed throughout this whole experience. Moreover, I would like to especially thank Steve and David for the fantastic opportunity they have given me with this job placement which I’m certain will be a great asset to me in my future.
By: Sergio I Triay.
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1 comments:
Fab blog post Sergio - brilliantly written. Sounds like you had a great experience working at Mad About Furniture for three weeks. Well done!
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