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My name is Holly Roper-Newman, I studied BA Honours French and Italian and my job title
is European Sales Support Manager and I work at French Connection.
My role changes daily but usually I'm managing all our international sales agents who sell
across Europe to individual clients, so that's wholesale clients, so shops and department
stores and I manage the sales process of all the international sales in Europe. So that's
from taking orders from customers, putting them on the system, making sure that those
orders get out in time for the beginning of the season and just kind of managing all the
relationships with them as well.
Having graduated I actually first moved out to Italy and then following that I moved back
to London where I worked in the languages department of Harper Collins Publishers, so
it was a totally different realm but still using my languages because I knew that's what
I wanted to do and one of my contacts actually told me about the job vacancy at French Connection,
so I applied and I've been there for two and a half years now.
The advice that I would give to someone who wanted to work in international sales would
be to keep their languages going as much as possible out of uni. If they've got those
languages they're really key skills and it gives you a lot of experiences that not everyone
in your team who maybe doesn't speak languages will be able to do, so that's quite useful.
I think the top interview tips I would give would be to just be yourself, be as relaxed
as possible because that helps so much in an interview. Ask questions as well. I think
there's nothing worse than someone going into an interview, giving their answers but then
not finding anything out, you know, about the role and I think employers really appreciate
that and see that as a really positive thing, someone who's inquisitive.