Christmas Temping at Boots – Adam’s Story
When I finished University, I’ll be honest I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had studied History as it’s a subject that I enjoyed, with a mindset of becoming a teacher, but after a short stint in a school it didn’t take long for me to realise that teaching wasn’t the career direction for me.
I had a think about my strongest skills; I’m a people person, confident, caring, quick learner, willing to go the extra mile, honest and I have the drive to succeed. The next step was to decide which career path this skill-set would suit the most, which was when I started thinking about retail, particularly retail management.
It’s all well and good saying ‘I want to work in retail management’ but as I only had one part-time hospitality role on my CV, I knew that was going to be a difficult task and I needed to be realistic. I wanted to join a company that had a great reputation for opportunities and career development, which then lead me to the Boots careers website.
I applied for a role of Christmas Temp at the Victoria Centre store, Nottingham and, well, you may be able to guess by the fact that I’m writing this blog post, I was successful and was offered the role
Did I enjoy working as a Christmas Temp? Yes! I loved how fast paced it was and all the different people you get to meet. I was of course nervous as I had only ever had a part-time role whilst at uni, I knew that I needed to be open-minded about what I would be doing over such a busy period, and it's definitely not all spraying perfumes and re-stocking shelves.
It was so busy and you could potentially be serving multiple people at a time and they all expect the same level of care, but it gets easier as you become more familiar with the store and before I knew it I was being asked to support the Assistant Manager with leading the Christmas team!
This was probably one of my favourite parts about the role, I see myself as a bit of a problem solver and I really enjoyed helping people find the perfect gift and working under pressure to make sure the shop maintained its high standards at all times. I took pride in my work and I really enjoyed supporting my team members and offering advice for better ways of working – It was then that it really clicked that Retail Management was for me.
I’ve been with Boots UK for nearly a year now and after working as a Christmas Temp for the first four months, I was offered a full time position within the Pharmacy department where I am currently studying the Dispensing course. I’d say one of the things that has got me to where I am is my honesty and determination, I had honest and open conversations with my manager in my catch-ups that I was here for a career. The support has been fantastic and management is really supportive of my progression.
If you’re thinking about going for a Christmas Temp role with the mind-set of career progression then I recommend to show determination and ability, it worked for me and I’m really happy with decision I made a year ago.
