Event Staff: Job Profile and Role

You love working with people, you love working with food and drinks, you love planning events? In this case, choosing an event staff job might be the right career choice for you. As you can see from our introductory questions, being event staff can cover various fields, which you can approach from different educational backgrounds.

The following blog will tell you which backgrounds these are. We will also take a close look at your potential future employers, the hard and soft skills needed and the salary you can expect. We will also tell you how to thrive as event staff and which typical tasks the day of event staff entails.

Short Summary

• As event staff, you are responsible for organising, setting up and seeing through an event. Here, it does not matter if you approach this event as a caterer, as an event manager or as security personnel.
• As event staff, you have to ensure that the event you are involved in runs smoothly. You are also responsible for dealing with any hiccups immediately and having an appropriate solution at hand.
• As event staff, you are responsible for looking after the attendees. That includes taking all their queries seriously and dealing with these issues. It also includes ensuring their safety.

Job description

As event staff, one of your main responsibilities is to set up an event. This applies to various jobs in event staffing, including event management and catering. As event staff, you are also responsible for taking care and looking after your guests. This can include meeting their dietary requirements, showing them to their seats and dealing with their queries and issues. It also extends to ensuring their safety, either by being security personnel or being tasked with first aid. Depending on your event staff job, your job description can also include the admin side of an event staff job. Long story short: the job description of event staff is one of the most versatile you can find in the job world.

Responsibilities

• Ushering
• Event Setup
• Event Cleanup
• Guest Services
• Merchandise Sales
• Medical Assistance
• Security and Safety
• Catering and Hospitality
• Coordination and Communication
• Audiovisual and Technical Support

Different types of Event Staff

• Event Planners/Coordinators
• Ushers and Greeters
• Registration Staff
• Event Managers
• Catering Staff

Salary

In the UK, the typical annual salary for event staff ranges from £22,500 for entry-level event staff to £29,200 for more experienced event staff. As you can see, your work experience will have an impact on how much you earn each year. Other salary influencing factors are the type of event staff you are, the company you work for and the location. Whereas it is usually the case that big cities pay the highest salaries, this does not seem to be the case for event staff.

Also, note that being self-employed will likely have a big influence on your salary since you can set your hourly rates.

Working hours

Event staff’s working hours hugely depend on the kind of job they are doing. It is nigh on impossible to give you the exact working hours that you can expect. We will give you a few examples of different kinds of event staff.

Say you are an event manager. Pre-event, you usually work a 40-hour week. During an event, these hours can increase and will likely stretch into the evenings, including on the weekends. The same can apply to catering staff.

If your event staff role is that of security personnel, your working hours might be similar to event managers and catering staff. However, you will work a lot of these hours in the evenings, at night and over the weekends.

If you are interested in becoming event staff, you should choose which particular role is the best fit for you. Always keep the working hours in mind – and the fact that being event staff is a physically exhausting job.

Employers

As event staff, you can find employers in various industries. These can include security companies, catering companies and event planning companies. You can also find your future event staff job in the entertainment sector, such as films and music, or sports. Event staff is also always needed in the wedding industry, ranging from catering to wedding management and ushering.

Most companies hire event staff as full-time or part-time. Depending on the size of the event, they may also hire temporary staff.

Things You should include in Your Event Staff Resume

When applying for a job as event staff, you are more than welcome to sing your own praises. Potential employers can see through exaggerations but they nevertheless prefer candidates who see themselves as dynamic, experienced, and adept at creating a unique customer experience. They also value your expertise in the hospitality and customer sector.

Qualifications

You can approach your event staff career from various educational backgrounds, including an academic degree and an apprenticeship. Furthermore, you should have qualifications in health and safety, first aid, communication and time management. Depending on your event staff role, qualifications in technology and security may also be required.

Skills

Your event staff qualifications should be accompanied by a versatile set of soft skills. The list of those skills is long – which is why we are now focussing on three rather important ones.

Attention to Detail

Regardless of your own “event staff” approach to an event, attention to detail is one of the most important soft skills to have. Everything needs to be perfect, from the menu to the table settings to security and so much more. Having an exceptionally good eye for even the tiniest detail will help you thrive in your chosen event staff profession.

Guest Focus

Planning and executing an event or working as security or catering personnel are more or less the groundwork for ensuring a successful event. But who is the focus of such an event? The guest! Therefore, one of your main focuses needs to be on your guests – no matter if you are one of the caterers, the waiters or ushers at an event.

Multitasking

Being event staff means that you will be tasked with multiple chores at the same time. You therefore need to be the master of multitasking. This way, you make sure that every eventuality is covered and that every single and important job is being done. Nevertheless, you should also prioritise. If you do not do that, even the best multitasking skills will face challenges.

Career Path

Regardless of your specific event staff job, you will start your career path at entry level. This first step helps you to gain first work and people experience and will set you up for climbing the career ladder. After you have worked several years in your event staff job, and having done this brilliantly, you have the chance to get promoted. Years of experience can also set you up for taking the bravest career step of all: setting up your own event staff business.

Educational Background

Depending on your future event staff job, you might have to approach your career from different educational backgrounds. Let’s have a look at some qualification examples for some event staff jobs.

Event Manager

If you want to become an event manager, you may benefit from an academic degree. You can receive your Bachelor’s degree in event management. Note that these studies are not offered at every British university. Alternatively, you can become an event manager by doing an appropriate apprenticeship. Similar requirements apply to becoming an event technician.

Catering Staff

If catering is your chosen event staff path, you do not need an academic background. Most catering staff have done an apprenticeship in hospitality, specialising in their chosen passion, such as catering or waitressing.

Gaining Experience

Regardless of your event staff job, gaining experience is an important step in both finding a job and furthering your career. Let’s assume you want to work in catering. Lots of catering staff get their first work experience during summer or university jobs by working in restaurants, bars or cafés. Future event managers can gain experience by doing internships at event marketing companies. If you want to be self-employed, this experience gives you valuable insights into how to set up your own business.

Continuous Learning

Every job is a learning curve, so, naturally, this also applies to event staff jobs. You are faced with new situations every day, giving you the chance to learn from every encounter, mistake and success. Continuous learning also involves staying on top of health and safety regulations, legal requirements and interpersonal management, to name but a few.

A Day in the Life of Event Staff

One thing is for sure: being event staff means that no day is quite like the other. In fact, working in this field will guarantee you variety, excitement and new experiences on a daily basis. Excitement and variety aside, there are still some things that form the base of a day in the life of event staff, while working an actual event. Let’s take a look at three of the most typical tasks that you will have to perform.

Setup Checks and Briefings

The day of the event has arrived. Before this event can kick off properly, you need to do the last checks on the setup – since ideally, the main setup has been done several days in advance. After these checks have been done, it is time to brief every member of your event staff team. They all need to know which tasks they have been given, how to perform them and when.

Guest Assistance

An event would not be an event without guests. Another of your jobs as event staff is to assist the guests with all their queries and requirements. These can range from showing them to their seats to making sure that their dietary requirements are being met. Guest assistance also covers dealing with their worries and concerns as well as with possible issues they have with certain aspects of the event you are hosting.

Debriefing

After the event is over, it is time to debrief. Everyone who has been involved in the event gets together and discusses the day’s events. What went really well? What did not go according to plan? These questions help all of you to come up with solutions to mistakes you have made so you can avoid them at future events. The things that went well also give you good indicators and help you to perform on an equally professional or even more professional level in the future.

Tips for Thriving as Event Staff

Gaining experience and continuous learning already are two surefire ways to thrive as event staff. But there are more tips for thriving in your chosen profession. We will now take a closer look at three more tips for thriving as event staff:

• Excellent time management
• Customer service skills
• Staying organised

Excellent Time Management

There is no event in the world that does not work to a timetable with military precision. Every job, every detail and every task has to be executed at a certain time and within a certain timeframe. Having excellent time management skills is therefore not only vital to excel in event staff jobs. It is also one of the ways that help you thrive in your profession.

Customer Service Skills

Having excellent customer service skills is another important tip for thriving as event staff. This goes especially for event staff specialising in hospitality sectors, such as waitressing, and event staff that deal with organising and coordinating an event. If you already have gained experience through waitressing jobs during your trainee time, you probably will already have mastered a great deal of this tip.

Staying Organised

Staying organised is vital to make it through every single step of an event. In order to keep every detail in mind, you should make to-do lists that cover every task, step and responsibility, including the people who are supposed to take care of those things. Staying organised also means that you need to be on hand every step of the way. Familiarising yourself with commonly used communication channels and software as well as keeping relevant documents and schedules with you at all times is another tip for thriving in your event staff job.

Frequently Asked Questions