Aleena Khan

I am currently working as a Barista at a café, which is a well-known franchise that holds a high reputation. I had started the job as a way to enhance my people skills and also to be productive while in my free time when I was at College.

As part of working in the café, I was able to build my confidence in working as part of a team and working face-to-face with customers. There were challenges when I first started, as it was my first job out of school, but with the support from my manager, I was able to take each challenge in my stride and be a qualified member of the team within the month.

I am now a supervisor within the team. This requires me to deal with the day to day running of the shift, training new members of staff and supporitng them in their new roles and equally delegating tasks to the members in the team.

Previous experience I have gained includes when I was part of my school’s football team, for 3 years. This required me to be physically and mentally engaged while being under pressure and working with my team mates to achieve the same goal. I did this whilst also concentrating on my studies.

Following my passion of playing sports, I joined a football team outside of school. I was required to train and play weekly for them, which included playing competitive tournaments with other local teams. This further supported me to stay committed to my passion of sports.

Other pleasures of mine include being social and spending quality time with my family. I am blessed to be part of a large family. I am the oldest of 14 grandchildren, which at times has required me to take on the role of ‘responsible babysitter’. This role has also extended further to family and friends.

I have been responsible for the care of children between the ages of 1 to 12. Due to the vairety of their learning ages, it has required me to support them from activities such as learning numbers and alphabet to multiplication to revising for their SATs. I feel very proud of this role as it showed that the childrens parents felt I was trustworthy to look after their children.

To further put their minds at ease, I always provided them with an evaluation of how the time was spent, both positive and negative e.g. any tantrums!

Overall, I feel that all of the experiences I have gained, both in and out of education, have allowed me to become a more confident and knowledgeable person, striving to gain more out of future opportunities. I look forward to taking on new challenges giving me a chance to broaden my horizons. I am able to adapt to new environments and learn new skills quickly and efficiently while holding the ability to work on my own initiative and when working as part of a team.

I believe I have developed transferrable skills to benefit me in a variety of roles.