A Career in Hospitality

Pupils in Years 10 and 11 at Bolton School Girls’ Division have been learning all about a career working in hospitality in their latest Women of Work talk. They were joined during their Form period by former pupil Sadie Scorah, who is currently Director of Operations at the Hilton Paddington, a 423 bedroom hotel in London. 

Taking her virtual audience back to her school days, Sadie said her favourite subjects had been languages so she chose French and Spanish for her A levels, along with Geography, another subject that she loved. She told how she went on to study French with Russian at the University of Leeds, which allowed her to spend a fascinating year in Moscow and several months in Dijon in France. Post-degree, Sadie found that she liked working with people and, whilst initially working at Hotel Chocolat in Manchester Arndale, she also realised that she liked selling dreams. 

When she came across the Hilton’s Elevator Scheme for graduates, which involved two 9-month placements in Europe, she applied along with 4,000 other applicants. Sadie and nine others were taken on and in 2014 she started at the Hilton in Bucharest in Romania. From there she moved to the Hilton Warsaw and worked a number of roles. Housekeeping stood out to Sadie and so she took her first role as Assistant Head Housekeeper, and she explained how she went on to take a job as Assistant Front Desk Manager in the Hilton Antwerp in Belgium. Having worked there for one and a half years, she then moved to the Tower of London Doubletree by Hilton, a large hotel with 583 rooms. Whilst she enjoyed a spell working as Reservations Manager, Sadie realised that she missed working more closely with guests and so made a move to the Docklands Doubletree as Food and Beverage Manager. She worked there for 3 years and was retained throughout the Covid pandemic. Six months ago she took up her current role as Director of Operations at the Hilton Paddington, where she oversees five departments: Reception, Housekeeping, Kitchen, Food and Beverage and Security.

Answering several searching questions, Sadie then spoke about how competitive the Elevator Scheme was and what qualifications you need to get onto it, where her favourite place has been to work, what her favourite language is to speak, how she learnt about the different jobs, how many languages she could speak, which department she had enjoyed working in the most, what her shift patterns have been like and the perks that she gets. She even, when asked, spoke some Russian!

You can watch Sadie's presentation through this link.