Preparing for Employment in Travel and Tourism

Plan

This resource is designed specifically for Unit 6 of the Edexcel BTEC National qualification 'Working in the Travel and Tourism Industry', although it will be of relevance to centres following other awarding bodies' programmes.

Aim

To continue work on Unit 6 'Working in Travel and Tourism'. Students should aim to develop skills to enable them to promote themselves positively in a job selection process.

Having selected jobs in the industry that interest them, they should analyse how they might perform effectively in an interview. By creating a script of an effective performance, students should be able to visualise themselves in a successful role.

These scripts could be used as the basis for role-play exercises, which could be recorded. The analysis and evaluation of performance that follows is a very powerful learning experience.

Learning Objectives

By participating in this session, students should be able to:

• Understand that good interview skills are learned, not innate
• Learn the hallmarks of effective interview preparation
• Analyse the performance of an ill-prepared candidate
• Write scripts recording how they would perform as successful interviewees
• Role-play these scripts with other students and teachers
• Analyse and evaluate their own performance

Resources

• PowerPoint presentation - Preparing for Employment [66KB]
• Activity - Preparing for Employment
• Projector/PC/Internet access

Lesson Structure

1. Outline the key learning objectives of the session
2. Go through the presentation
3. Hand out the activity sheet
4. Guide learners through the tasks
5. Select a sample of students' work to display to the whole group
6. This could lead to a role-play of interviews where other group members and staff could participate
7. Schedule a session to review these role-played interviews and identify good practice
8. Review the learning objectives of the session

Note that this activity continues the process of career planning for each learner. You can make this experience as real as possible by making use of colleagues to act as interviewers. Another good idea is to invite someone in from industry to take part or comment on performance.