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Working abroad was a huge step, working at sea was an even bigger one. I had moments at the start, where I thought I would never pass my STCW course (sea safety, fire fighting etc, a course that is required to work at sea) I ended up having to do the course 3 times throughout my career as it has to be renewed every 5 years. I never thought at the start of my career at sea that I would become an actual uniform wearing officer. What I mean by this is an officer in a white uniform with gold stripes (Epaulettes) on my shoulders - but I did when I became the Front Office manager onboard Thomson Spirit, what a massive learning curve I did it!
Career path
Destination Services Executive
TUI Group
Started 11/2021 to PresentCompany
What do you like about your job and the company?
Ultimately moving from waking up in a different port everyday to being land based has been challenging. But the best part about my current job is I still get to travel. I get to do site visits to new regions/ports we are taking the ships to (if i'm looking after them). I also get to visit the ships to support the teams and to meet the agents I speak to on a regular basis in person. Plus I get to attend industry events such as Seatrade. But I also get to see my family more than once every 6 months which is wonderful, as whilst travelling is fantastic you do miss out on a lot of the simple things like Christmas. I missed 7 Christmas's in a row whilst working at sea, summer BBQ's, birthdays, weddings etc as they didn't match up with my assigned vacation time.
Greatest achievements
I believe I am a lucky person, as I can sit and think of many moments (some funny, some unbelievable, some scary) in my career that I am proud of. Some I'm proud of because I survived and I probably shouldn't tell you about those! But through those experiences I learnt that I am resourceful, I'm strong in a crisis, I'm dependable and that I can find solutions to problems in the hardest of circumstances. I've made some dreams / lifelong ambitions for some people come true a long the way and seeing how people react to seeing places for the first time is always magical.
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Ananth N
Global Head of Technology
Top Insider Advice
If you are in the early part of your career, my advice for you would be to keep your options much wider. You will be in a better place to identify your potential as you progress in your career, much similar to a practical experience as compared to the textbook knowledge. If you are already an experienced professional then my advice would be somewhat different. You should go after the job that doesn't feel like a job but something you love doing (... and then you never have to work again, as the quote goes). One of the important factors of loving what you do is to continuously learn new things because learning expands your limit of thinking and then the ability to organically take up new challenges. My other advice to anyone on the success path is to believe in self-potential. It is possible to achieve anything but only as long as we believe in our efforts and keep trying. If we don't fail then we didn't try, so it is perfectly fine to fail so long as we learn from failures.
Charlotte M
Content Strategy & Planning Lead
Top Insider Advice
I'm the sort of person that says "go for it" and "what's the worst that can happen?" I struggled for years not being able to get my foot in the (creative) door. I wound up managing a kitchen for a large pub chain - which is an absolutely fine career, but it simply wasn't for me. I started to apply to every role and opportunity that could offer me some experience to add to my CV - this included assisting photographers hang their work for upcoming exhibitions and photographing charity events for PR assets - all in my spare time. All of this rather random experience allowed me to start understanding which avenues I'd like to explore for my career. That career ended up beginning at TUI and i've never looked back.