In this episode host Tyra Crockett Peirce speaks with Richard Oram from the Oracle Hospitality team on the wide and varying career options available hospitality. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;27;26 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders of the future. Let's get started. 00;00;27;28 - 00;00;55;09 Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce. I'm your host, Tara Crockett Pierce. Today I am joined by Richard Oram from the Oracle Hospitality Team. Richard studied tourism management at Birmingham University and worked in hotel operations and management for IAG and Forte before starting with MICROS in 1999, which was acquired by Oracle in 2014. 00;00;55;11 - 00;01;06;18 He worked his way up from a trainer to a product manager to a regional director and now in strategy. Welcome, Richard. So to start off, can you give me a bit about your background in your role at Oracle? 00;01;06;22 - 00;01;26;06 Yeah, So I really started in hospitality by mistake. I was at university and just wanted some extra cash to pay for going out and other bits and pieces. So I took a job at a Holiday Inn in Birmingham City Center, setting up conference rooms in the evenings to easy money. But I ended up then starting work on the bar, and then I started. 00;01;26;06 - 00;01;46;00 Then I thought, this is quite fun. I'm still at university studying for a degree. And then I started working on in the night staff, doing light auditing on research, on reception, finished my degree. So I just found a job then near my parents house until I got a proper job and end up working this hotel for four years. 00;01;46;03 - 00;02;02;10 And during that four years I would be in a new computer system and the guys from Microsoft were really great and I showed some interest and they said, Why don't you come and work for us? And that happened in 1999. What we are trained to for I'm still here. 00;02;02;13 - 00;02;18;15 I get it. I actually started Oracle in 2002, and I'm still here as well. And it's been a really wonderful, a great place to work for. So what different roles exist within hospitality and is there a clear career path? 00;02;18;17 - 00;02;39;14 Yes, definitely. There's so many different roles in hospitality, and some of them people would never even think of. So you've got your traditional roles of a receptionist, reception manager, reservation staff who work in the back office. You've got the groups, teams, sales teams, and so on, the housekeeping, food and beverage at work in the restaurant and bars and all the conference and banqueting staff. 00;02;39;17 - 00;03;03;16 But there's also all these people that work in the background that you never see. Like there's engineers that deal with all the maintenance. There's decorators that deal with all the paint work. There's people that buy all the leisure, at least so spas, spa and leisure centers at the properties. So there's a whole variety of different areas right through to sort of head office functions like financing and h.r. 00;03;03;19 - 00;03;26;15 So it's not all about the person sitting at the reception desk checking people in. There's a whole group of people doing different roles which exist in many different industries. But they all sort of focus on hospitality here. So dealing with the guest is the main criteria for hospitality and for career planning. Well, yeah, you can start as like I did working as a conference and banqueting porter. 00;03;26;17 - 00;03;51;16 You can work your way up to a manager and so on. And most traditional route is people who start, say, working as a receptionist then become a reception supervisor, then then they become the front office team manager, then they become the rooms division manager and eventually they come to general manager. And from a general manager you can then go up to sort of a regional manager and then up to head office as the director or the overall CEO of the hotel group. 00;03;51;18 - 00;03;59;09 There's many different ways to stay in this industry in growing your career, and it's not always when you've got hospitality in your mindset from the start. 00;03;59;11 - 00;04;03;06 Do you have to know hospitality to work in hospitality? 00;04;03;08 - 00;04;25;21 Not at all. And a lot like my own and many of my colleagues, we didn't know hospitality. We stepped into it because it was. There's always jobs in hospitality. That's the one good thing about hospitality. There's always recruitment and the training and on the job, a lot of it is common sense. So what can reception you want to deliver? 00;04;25;21 - 00;04;50;18 Good customer ...
