As a Travel Consultant and Retail Apprentice, Elisha Blagdon’s role involved serving customers and making sales, as well as assisting with the day-to-day operation of the branch and processing documentation. However, Elisha worked throughout the pandemic on the Save the Sales team, which was the team we kept our very best sales staff on. As an apprentice, this is a real achievement. Elisha provides all her customers with exceptional service and when the shops were working on limited staff during the pandemic her manager chose her above more experienced colleagues to continue working due to her commitment and outstanding work ethic. Elisha also managed to achieve a distinction in her apprenticeship on top of this.

Elisha started with the company in August 2019. Seven months into her apprenticeship we went into the first lockdown and she was thrust into working from home, dealing with hundreds of amendments in a situation none of us had faced before, as well as having to continue with her apprenticeship work. In this first lockdown, Elisha took it upon herself to go off on foot, hand delivering paper work to our older clients who had amended their holidays and didn't have computer access. She did this unprompted and of her own accord, showing dedicated and personal service that our customers were so grateful for.

Elisha is extremely self-driven and motivated for someone so young; she grew her sales skills during every lockdown and since this time last year she has consistently been the top seller in her store. In January she was included among the top 50 sales consultants in the company and worked independently running the new sales side of the branch whilst her manager and assistant manager were working saving sales on existing bookings.

Elisha generates the majority of her fantastic high sales through Facebook. She has a real natural talent engaging with clients on social media and can create great rapport via a message. She manages to convert her incredibly high enquiry numbers generated from Facebook at 50%. In the last 12 months half of the store’s enquiries have been loaded by Elisha, and that’s among a highly experienced team of seven. She is a Facebook whizz and will analyse social media trends to identify which hotels and resorts we need to be advertising and helps develop our weekly planner with this information.

Whilst dealing with all the amendments instore and achieving very impressive sales each month Elisha still managed to complete her apprenticeship ahead of schedule, passing with a distinction. Her can-do positive attitude throughout her entire apprenticeship has made her a delight for her colleagues and the training team to work with. Elisha has been with Hays two years now and has become a vital part of the team.

Nothing phases her and every day she strives to be the best she can be. Her love for travel, desire to give customers the best experience in every interaction she has with them and her natural sales ability has helped her blow away all expectations. She has shown incredible resilience and positivity, excelling throughout the uncertainty of the pandemic.