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Futures Fund Case Study: Dean Smith

After graduating with a BA in Business Management in 2012, Dean Smith secured £750 from the Futures Fund to help him with the travel costs to Colorado, USA, where he took an internship at the Marriott hotel for 13 months.

Dean is now a Graduate People Advisor at the Tesco Head Office in Hertfordshire, being the key HR contact for over 300 colleagues within Tesco Technology. He helps to advise senior line managers on complex employer relation issues they are unable to resolve, manage the talent cycle end-to-end and work with colleagues to ensure they are treated fairly, consistently and in line with their values.

“On top of this, I manage our industry leading apprentice programme and have been given the opportunity to develop it for colleagues and the business. I was able to identify a way of developing our talent pipeline and create a saving of over £350,000 per year to the business.”

Dean credits the Professional Development Scholarship from Futures Fund for making the trip possible, which gave him a good insight of the wide range of functions within a hotel and the management and human resource skills.

Having committed more than £2000 of his own money, Dean realised the expenditures were hard to cover and that he couldn’t afford to purchase the return flight home. Thanks to the Fund he was able to take this internship that changed his live professionally and personally.

“Within 3 months of working at the Marriott in Colorado I was promoted to a front desk supervisor and given the opportunity to train and develop a team of 10. I created a new innovative training scheme and implemented a reward system that rewarded my team for good performance.

“The American leadership style is very hierarchal and I was able to change this culture and promote that all colleagues have their voice in the business to create a ‘one team’ feeling. Having this experience made me realise that I want to help large organisations put their colleagues at the heart of all decisions they make.”

Dean recalls how challenging his job at the Marriott was from day one. His development plan for the course of the year was to ensure that he had understood hospitality from a management level.

“I trained rather quickly and was soon implementing my University theory into real life practice. I identified that the organisation didn't have a thorough training plan and so I created a training 'book of knowledge' for all new starters at the property and delivered this. I also identified from my own experience that more could be done to welcome new international employees to their surroundings. I created an intern welcome pack that assisted with areas such as housing, transportation, visa requirements, banking, and so on.”

But Dean also embraced the Colorado lifestyle and made lots of friends.

“Colorado is an incredibly active town and this inspired me to get fitter. I ran Tough Mudder, an obstacle race up a mountainside, as well as completing 5K and 10K races for charity, climbing the mountains on a weekly basis to increase my fitness levels. As a previous kebab and sofa aficionado this was a great personal achievement.”

He added: “I returned to the UK with more work skills than I could have ever imagined and memories that will last beyond a lifetime. Within two months of returning to the UK from my experience I secured a graduate job working my dream job in human resources for one of Europe's largest manufacturing firms.

“I can't thank the University of Sunderland’s Futures Fund enough for making my 2012 US dream possible.”

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