Service Manager
Heathrow Airport

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My name’s Miguel.

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I am the service manager

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and I work at Heathrow Airport.

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So what a service manager

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does is it involves a lot of problem solving,

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a lot of trying to understand how the operations at an airport works

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and provide the best service that we can.

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A typical day involves office work, admin work.

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But my favourite part of my job

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is when I get to be in the terminal.

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I get to look at security.

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I get to look at all of how Heathrow, the airport operates, and I try to problem solve

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and I try to see where we’re falling short, where we can improve.

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I would say that skills that are very important

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for working in my job and in aviation is is definitely communication.

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There’s loads of different teams and people

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and all sorts of departments that have to work together.

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And the way you do that is by communicating and communicating well.

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Heathrow is a huge airport.

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Lots and lots of work going on behind the scenes, lots of people to work with.

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Sometimes it can be overwhelming.

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But, it’s important to know that when you do feel overwhelmed,

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there are people there to help you and people there to support you.

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I really enjoyed my time in school.

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For A-levels I did physics,

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I did Spanish, and I did economics.

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And I went to the University of West London and studied

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airline and airport management.

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Just before I was going to go to university,

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I thought I wanted to do accounting, but, one of my teachers actually

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really, really told me to try new things and do work experience.

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And one of the work experiences that I signed up to was with British Airways,

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and that essentially transformed my life and my career.

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If it wasn’t for me trying that work experience, I quite frankly

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wouldn’t be in the position I am today.

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I remember in my final year, in my third

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and final year, the reality hit me that I need a job.

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And to my amazement, I managed to get a job at Heathrow Airport.

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So my first ever job at Heathrow was a customer host.

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So what I started off doing was working at the train stations across

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the terminals, making public service announcements and checking tickets.

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I spent a lot of time

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just learning, most importantly, learning and understanding how the airport works

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and who did this and who did that, and applying and applying and applying.

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I managed to do three other jobs after that.

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Amongst those jobs, many, many rejections,

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I didn’t let that deter me,

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and just keep applying until I managed to land the job that

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I’m doing now, and I’ve been doing this for for two years.

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The advice that I would give to anyone out there really is

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really just try to find what you enjoy.

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Because once you find what you enjoy, things just become a lot more fun.