Spotlight on Talent: Jade Ashworth

Studying a Travel and Tourism course at Walsall College has helped Jade Ashworth’s career to take off. From travel consultant to air hostess to personal sales advisor, the course has opened doors for Jade, who – to her surprise – discovered a wide range of job roles within the industry.

The 22-year-old began her career at Thomas Cook as a travel consultant, three month after completing her course at Walsall College. It was a move Jade did not expect to take when she joined the college.

“When I first started college, I only wanted to work as a cabin crew. By the time I finished my two-year course, I wanted to try everything from Travel Agent to Repping. I and probably everyone else in our group would say they didn’t realise how broad the industry is until they took the course.”

Jade knew someone who worked for Thomas Cook, who told her the company were recruiting. She had to undergo a series of assessments, including maths and English.

“As part of my assessment, I had to sit two tests, which were basic maths and English. Then I had to go for a short interview, which then led to the real interview two weeks later, which I was successful in.”

In 2015, Jade realised her childhood dream of becoming an air hostess when she took the opportunity to jet around the world with Monarch.

“I always wanted to become Cabin Crew since I was 7 years old. While I was working at Thomas Cook, I applied for a job with FlyBe and attended their assessment day where I got through to the last four for the interview stage. Unfortunately, I did not get the job, as FlyBe decided to cut over 500 jobs a few days after my interview.

This did knock me back a bit, so I did continue with Thomas Cook and didn’t apply for any more crew positions for a while. Then I applied for both Jet2 (EMA) and Monarch (BHX) and was offered a place on both assessment days. I decided to work for Monarch, as the work environment suited me better.”

After two years as a Monarch air hostess, Jade joined Cooperative Travel as a Personal Travel Advisor, where she deals with customer inquiries over the telephone and through live chat on the company website.

“I love being able to please people. When a customer comes back and thanks you for the work you put in, this is really rewarding. I also enjoy being given inspiration by customers on where I would like to travel to in my lifetime as our customers are varied and can book anything from Butlins to round the world trips and cruises. In the long term, I would like to move into management within a store.”