Industry Sectors

Role Description

1. Entry requirements

There are no set requirements, but you'll need a good level of general education. GCSEs in English, maths and ICT may be useful.

Experience or a qualification in customer service or contact centre operations could also help.

You could get into this job through an apprenticeship.

2. Skills required

You'll need:

excellent customer service skills

the ability to handle and resolve difficult situations

IT and administration skills

accuracy and attention to detail

3. What you'll do

You could work in a variety of organisations like retail, finance, travel or manufacturing, or for a local authority or the government.

Your day-to-day activities may include:

answering customers' questions by phone, email, webchat or face-to-face

giving quotations and checking product availability

selling and taking payment

handling complaints or passing them to a manager

entering customer information onto a computer database

tracking orders and giving refunds

4. Salary

Starter: £12,500

Experienced: up to £18,000

Highly Experienced: £20,000 to £30,000 (team leaders)

You may get a bonus or commission.

These figures are a guide.

5. Working hours, patterns and environment

You'll usually work 37 to 40 hours a week, which may include evening and weekend shifts.

You could work in an office or on a customer service desk. You'll spend a lot of your time on the phone and using a computer.

You may need to wear a uniform.

6. Career path and progression

With experience, you could progress to team leader or customer services manager.

You could also move into sales or account handling.

Role Description

Skills required

You’ll need:

• an outgoing personality 
• excellent customer service skills 
• to work well under pressure 
• attention to detail

What you'll do

You’ll be responsible for serving customers and making up their orders. Your role is to make sure that customers enjoy their food and drink in a pleasant environment.

Your day-to-day duties might include:

• preparing the coffee shop ready for opening 
• taking customer orders and payments 
• grinding fresh coffee beans 
• preparing and serving sandwiches and cakes 
• cleaning and tidying work areas, equipment and coffee machines 
• creating displays of stock 
• doing stock checks and ordering new stock 
• cleaning and tidying the coffee shop before closing

Role Description

1. Entry requirements

Events managers often have a variety of backgrounds. You can do a college or university course in events management but it isn’t essential.

Whatever your qualifications or background, you should have practical experience gained from public relations, travel and tourism, or helping to organise events like live entertainment.

You could gain experience of organising events and activities in your social life. Paid or unpaid work as a crew member at large events or exhibitions can also be a good way of building contacts within the industry.

The Business Visits and Events Partnership has more information about working in events management.

2. Skills required

You’ll need:

• excellent organisation skills 
• the ability to carry out a number of tasks at the same time 
• good communication and people skills 
• a creative approach to problem-solving 
• a high level of attention to detail 
• the ability to work under pressure and meet tight deadlines 
• good negotiation, sales and marketing skills 
• budget awareness 

3. What you'll do

You’ll oversee the whole project, from planning at the start to running the event on the day.

Your day-to-day duties might include:

• discussing what the client wants 
• coming up with original ideas for events 
• agreeing budgets and timescales with the client
• researching venues, contacts and suppliers
• negotiating prices with suppliers and contractors
• booking venues, entertainment, equipment and supplies
• hiring and supervising contractors such as caterers and security 
• publicising the event 
• making sure that everything runs smoothly on the day 
• ensuring that health, safety and insurance regulations are followed 
• managing a team

4. Salary

Starter: £17,000 to £21,000

Experienced: £25,000 to £40,000

Highly Experienced: £50,000 to £80,000 

Your salary may include bonuses and commission, particularly if the job involves sales and marketing.

These figures are a guide.

5. Working hours, patterns and environment

You’ll generally work standard office hours, although you may work long and unsocial hours in the run up to events. 

If you manage outdoor events, you’ll have to work in all weather conditions. You may also go to events in the evenings and at the weekend. 

Depending on where you run the events, you may need to spend time travelling and staying overnight.

6. Career path and progression

With experience and a good track record, you could run events that have larger budgets and eventually progress to management.

You could work freelance or set up your own events management business.

Role Description

Skills required

You’ll need:

• the ability to carry out detailed work accurately and methodically 
• the ability to plan research, analyse and interpret data, and write reports 
• practical and problem-solving skills 
• patience, perseverance and the ability to concentrate for long periods 
• the ability to work as part of a multi-disciplinary team 
• strong communication and IT skills

What you'll do

• You could work in a range of areas like:
• developing and testing new drugs 
• improving agricultural crops and livestock 
• disease and pest control 
• conserving endangered habitats and species 
• animal welfare and education 
• developing policies and enforcing regulations for government agencies

You’ll usually specialise in an area like ecology (animal environments), herpetology (reptiles), entomology (insects), parasitology (parasites) or paleozoology (fossil remains).

Your day-to-day tasks will vary depending on your role, but may include:

• carrying out field and laboratory research 
• studying animals in their natural environment or in captivity 
• identifying, recording and monitoring animal species 
• gathering and interpreting information 
• using complex procedures, like computerised molecular and cellular analysis, and in-vitro fertilisation 
• producing detailed technical reports 
• giving presentations and publishing information in journals and books 
• supervising technicians

Role Description

Skills required

You'll need:

• the ability to understand the development process 
• some programming knowledge
• the ability to work under pressure and to deadlines
• maths skills

What you'll do

You could work in a wide range of businesses and industries, public services, utilities, defence and research. 

You'll work closely with project managers, business analysts and graphic designers, to find out what the client wants and the best way to achieve it. 

Usually, you’ll work in a team.

You could work on a wide variety of projects, from financial databases to robotics to apps for phones and tablets. You may use a number of programming languages or project management tools.

Your day-to-day tasks may include:

• talking through requirements with the client and the development team
• taking part in technical design and progress meetings
• writing or amending computer code
• testing software and fixing problems
• keeping accurate records of the development process, changes and results
• carrying out trials and quality checks before release
• maintaining and supporting systems once they're up and running
• As an experienced developer, you may supervise a programming team and provide feedback on coding work.

Role Description

1. Entry requirements

You'll usually need GCSEs at grades 9 to 4 (A* to C) or A levels, as well as experience or industry qualifications.

You could study for a foundation degree, HND or degree which includes quality control options, for example in production management.

You could get into this job as an apprentice and work your way up to a quality control job.

2. Skills required

You'll need:

• the ability to use your technical knowledge to design policies
• organisational skills

3. What you'll do

You could work in many industries. You'll usually work in a team supervised by a quality manager.

Your day-to-day tasks may include:

• dealing with customer feedback and complaints
• assessing and rating suppliers
• designing, reviewing and updating quality control policies
• training new staff
• producing reports

You'll also have duties specific to your industry. For example, in manufacturing and engineering this could include:

• finding and fixing faults at each stage of the production process
• testing samples in a lab
• making sure labelling is accurate
• checking that production methods meet legislation guidelines
• inspecting materials for defects and using methods like non-destructive testing (NDT)

4. Salary

Starter: £12,500 to £15,000

Experienced: £18,000 to £25,000

These figures are a guide.

5. Working hours, patterns and environment

You'll usually work 35 to 40 hours, Monday to Friday. In manufacturing, you may need to work evening and weekend shifts.

You could work in an office, laboratory or factory production area.

6. Career path and progression

With experience and training you could move into supervisory, management or research jobs.

Role Description

1. Entry requirements

There are no set requirements, but many employers will prefer you to have:

• a degree or equivalent qualification in marketing, management, business or a related subject 
• paid or unpaid work experience in a marketing role 
• some knowledge of digital marketing or online advertising

You could study for digital marketing qualifications offered by the Communications Advertising and Marketing Education Foundation (CAM) and awarded by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), like:

• CAM Level 4 Diploma in Digital Marketing 
• CIM Certificate in Professional Marketing (Digital) 
• CIM Diploma in Professional Marketing (Digital)
• You could also get into this job through a digital apprenticeship.

Getin2marketing has more information on becoming a digital marketing officer.

2. Skills required

You’ll need:

• the ability to analyse data 
• a creative approach 
• strong organisation and planning skills 
• IT skills 
• the ability to work under pressure and to deadlines 
• the ability to 'sell' your ideas 
• good presentation skills 
• excellent attention to detail

3. What you'll do

You’ll work in-house for an organisation's marketing department, or for a marketing agency that works for several clients.

Your day-to-day duties may include:

• creating digital marketing campaigns for online channels like websites, apps and social media like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter 
• developing market research surveys and working with customers in focus groups 
• working with marketing and PR professionals 
• briefing other professionals like web designers on advertising campaigns 
• writing content for websites, email and social media 
• designing and writing e-communications like e-newsletters and text campaigns 
• making information and advertising more interactive by adding case studies, videos and infographics to websites, apps and social media 
• using data from web tracking tools like Google Analytics to check the effectiveness of marketing campaigns 
• tracking the success of your marketing campaigns and presenting your findings to management 
• using techniques like search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)

4. Salary

Starter: £20,000 to £22,000

Experienced: £30,000 to £38,000 

Highly Experienced: £50,000 or more

These figures are a guide.

5. Working hours, patterns and environment

You’ll usually work 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. You may work longer at busy times like the run-up to a campaign launch. 

You may also need to attend trade fairs, exhibitions and events, where you’ll make industry contacts, in the evening or at the weekend.

You’ll usually work in an office. 

6. Career path and progression

With experience, you could specialise in a particular type of digital marketing like mobile or video marketing. 

You could progress to senior digital marketing officer, head of online marketing, become a freelance digital marketing consultant, or move into a related area like advertising, sales or public relations.

Role Description

Magazine Journalist:

Your day-to-day tasks may include:

• going to meetings to plan the content of the magazine 
• suggesting ideas for articles 
• interviewing and researching to collect information for articles 
• writing articles to suit the magazine’s style 
• keeping up-to-date with developments and trends in the magazine's subject area 
• working as a critic, reviewing things like films, food or concerts

Newspaper Journalist

You could be reporting on council meetings and school fêtes for a local paper, or on general elections and world events for the national press.

Your day-to-day tasks may include:

• investigating a story as soon as it breaks
• following up potential leads and developing new contacts
• interviewing people face-to-face and over the phone
• attending press conferences
• recording meetings and interviews using recording equipment or shorthand
• coming up with ideas for stories and features
• writing up articles in a style that will appeal to the reader
• sub-editing other reporters' articles for publication
• writing up articles for online publication

Broadcast Journalist

You could be reporting on council meetings and school fêtes for a local paper, or on general elections and world events for the national press.

Your day-to-day tasks may include:

• investigating a story as soon as it breaks
• following up potential leads and developing new contacts
• interviewing people face-to-face and over the phone
• attending press conferences
• recording meetings and interviews using recording equipment or shorthand
• coming up with ideas for stories and features
• writing up articles in a style that will appeal to the reader
• sub-editing other reporters' articles for publication
• writing up articles for online publication