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A week in the life of ..a Work Experience Student in Ticketmaster
By Theo Murphy – Transition Year Student at Colaiste Pobail Setenta, Dublin.
On Monday morning (23 February) I took the 39A bus to town. I was starting my 2nd work experience for part of my Transition Year programme at Ticketmaster headquarters on Grafton Street. Even though an hour on a bus twice a day for five days wasn’t fun (at all), it was actually worth it.
I was given a fob to open some of the doors throughout the Ticketmaster building. (Don’t ask me what a fob is, I don’t know!)
The First day I was with the marketing team. Then I was introduced to different departments and started with the Marketing department. They showed me how they update the website with news and events. The most astonishing thing was how fast these people could type. Then I was shown how they update their social network pages by linking in different artists into their posts. I learnt how Ticketmaster sends emails to one part of their demographic that all have a common interest. Something I didn’t know was that they have a blog! And I will continue this blog now.
All was well and grand on my first day. On the second day I was supposed to be with the sports team. Unfortunately there was a fault on something in their system (their data storage is located somewhere in America) so I went to the Finance department.
I learnt a lot about how they sell tickets and the manager actually took me to where they sell tickets in St Stephen’s Green shopping mall and then to the Gaiety Theatre ( which only sells theatre tickets).
For the last hour or so I went to the Customer Service department, I was ripping tickets and putting them in envelopes for distribution. I had licked about two dozen envelopes when someone told me they had a machine for that!! I can’t say I felt jealous, looking at all those people’s tickets that get to see Fall Out Boy this year.
The next day I was with the Sports department. I started by matching tickets to peoples account codes. Then I got to use the Ticketmaster system on a spare computer. My job was to attach tickets to peoples most current account. It all went barr one person who didn’t even have an account.( I spent twenty minutes searching for that guy!)
Then for the rest of the day I was packing more tickets, fun! By the end I had paper cuts on paper cuts.
On the fourth day I was sorting out files in Alphabetical order for the Finance department. Which as mind numbing as it sounds was actually not that bad. I then got to go out and help count the cash flow of some distributors, this was fun.
On last day, I wrote this blog, which I hope will give more of an insight for people considering to do work experience at Ticketmaster.
The week gave me a better insight into what happens in each department throughout Ticketmaster.
