Sarah boosts her career prospects with a summer job in the Sunshine State

​​​An Events Management student from the University of Northampton is spending the summer working in Florida after securing a placement at one of the world’s largest animal theme parks.

Sarah Spencer is working for three months as a Merchandise Hostess at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, one of the theme parks at the Walt Disney World resort near Orlando.

Undergraduates at the University are encouraged to seek work placements to bolster their career prospects – a move which has helped the institution achieve a top-five ranking for student employability*.

Sarah said: “Working at Disney, every day is so different, but my main goal is to attend to the guests’ every need – there is nothing we cannot do to make a guest’s experience with us the best, most memorable time of their lives.

“I love the fact that I get the opportunity to experience so many different cultures – every day I will meet a person from a different country or area and I get the opportunity to learn something new from them. No person is the same and I get to engage with hundreds of different people every day which gives variation to my day.”

Sarah feels her experience with Disney will open other doors for her within the organisation.

“Ultimately, I would like to go into either public relations or marketing, and this placement will help me to achieve my dream,” she said.

“There are so many professional internships with Disney in the field I want to work in, that I am planning to move to America next year to peruse my chosen career.”

To find out more about studying Events Management, visit the course page.

* The University of Northampton is ranked fourth in the UK for student employability. Source: HESA Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) Survey 2013/14. July 2015, compared to full university status HEI’s in England, with a sample size over 1,000 students, for full time study first Undergraduate degree leavers. ​