Summer Residential Assistant Review

I helped to provide friendly and professional assistance to guests, answering enquiries and giving clear directions around the accommodation, so guests felt welcome during their stay. I also supported the smooth running of accommodation sites by moving and organising stock and linen, ensuring areas are prepared, well-maintained and efficiently arranged ready for conferencing guests over summer and students when term time begins again. As part of my role I helped to carry out regular checks to ensure rooms and communal areas meet quality standards as well as reporting any maintenance issues or damage promptly to the line manager so it can be resolved.
Due to working in accommodations over the summer a lot of the rooms are dormant, therefore we had to undertake water flushing and other routine safety tasks in line with procedures to prevent any diseases like legionella. For this role I completed training in guest and staff safety, including risk assessments and COSHH regulations, ensuring compliance with health and safety standards. I further gained experience on the front desk handling calls, customer enquiries and guest check in/out over the busy summer period.

Understanding the business and potential roles available was really interesting because I enjoyed getting to see how things worked behind the scenes, which I don’t think many students get to do. Understating the different roles allowed me gain perspective on potential pathways I might want to take in the future.

Definitely. Over the course of my job, I developed skills in customer service, listening and communication. I believe these to be vital for most opportunities because they help to provide a better service to people. A skill that I learnt over the summer was handling phone calls. Although I had answered the phone before, taking calls in a professional setting is different. At times I was answering calls whilst managing customers at the desk, which provided me with more experience in multi tasking.

Generally, the atmosphere was so supportive and welcoming. Some of my colleagues took time out of their busy day just to show me something because I was curious. When working in previous jobs, I have never been met with such warmth, professionalism and kindness.

I really enjoyed it.

Yes

I would advise people to find out all the information they can about everything because it’s really valuable to know what it is about and what Manchester Metropolitan University can offer people. I would also advise them to take as many opportunities as they can whilst they can because the years go by so fast.