Reshaping recruitment with the Hays Academy

Kirsty Sproat, consultant at Hays Travel, Houghton, and one of the 19 newly trained academy graduates, never had the time to pursue her dream of working in travel.

After 16 years coaching sales staff in an electric company’s call centre, and encouraged by travel agent friends, she decided it was time for a career change.

“Working in travel is something I’ve always wanted to do. A few of my friends work for Hays and they love their job, so that really encouraged me to look into applying for the academy.

“Because I have a young family, I’ve never had the time to go to college and get any qualifications. The Hays Travel Academy gave me all of those options.”

Along with her new peers, Sproat began the process with two weeks’ training at the company’s headquarters. Lessons included an introduction to the Hays brand, its practices, company culture, self-motivation and sales training, and
finally learning how to use the company’s in-house systems.

“I spent Monday to Friday learning how to look for packages, speak about travel, where places are, and finding out where clients wanted to travel using customer feedback and sales figures. I found learning how to use the HTOL system to be the biggest challenge; however, I’m more of a learn-as-you-go type and the more practical experience I had, the more confident I got.”

After the initial two-week training period, Sproat was posted to Hays’ Seaham branch, where she spent three months selling. And it wasn’t long before she began making waves within the team.

“I was the company’s top seller on one particular day. That went up on our notice board and I felt great. During my final month at Seaham, I did a cruise, a couple of long-haul bookings and a few domestic ones, and made more than £8,000 profit.”

Now working at the Houghton branch, Sproat professes that Disney is her speciality, saying her experience of travelling to Disneyland annually has helped to inspire clients.

“I'm a really positive person and my enthusiasm really shines through – that helps a lot during the booking process,” she says.

With only three months to go until the end of the probation period when she becomes a fully qualified agent, Sproat reveals what she loves most about the job.

“Interacting with clients and making their dreams a reality is an amazing feeling,” she says. “The team at Hays have been absolutely fantastic too. They couldn’t help me enough.”