Katie O’Sullivan has always had a passion for working with people.
From serving canapés to top film director Jerry Bruckheimer at the ‘Armageddon’ premier, working as a tea lady on the 50th floor of a Melbourne skyscraper to working in a Tex-Mex restaurant in her university town, the 28-year-old has spent much of her adult life meeting the needs of internal and external customers by providing excellent service.
Katie, who is part English, Polish and Irish, is now the Personnel and Compliance Manager at Il Forno and Sapporo Teppanyaki restaurants on Duke Street, Liverpool, and for Sapporo in Manchester. She has been in the role for the past two years.
The 28-year-old is responsible for assisting approximately 130 staff with their needs including arranging training, site visits, health and safety compliance, audits, operational and Home Office issues and also getting involved in event management such as the breakfast morning planned for this year’s Grand National.
Katie said: “I have always worked. It all began at a young age with babysitting, then I went on to retail and as soon as I was old enough, I was pulling pints in the village pub and serving pub grub.”
The mum-of-one, who now lives in Wavertree, was born in West Yorkshire in 1978. Before going to University to study Geography, Katie decided to take up her love of travelling by spending a year living in Australia. In Melbourne, she worked in corporate hospitality.
“I really enjoyed it”, she said, “It gave me a different insight into hospitality and I think it was the moment that I realised that this was an industry I was well suited to.”
At the age of 21, she graduated at Lancaster University with a 2:2 degree and continued to work at a Tex-Mex restaurant as a manager to save up for more travelling.
She then went to Western Australia for six months, where she leant to windsurf and also meet some of the best windsurfers in the world.
Katie added: “After the travelling I came back home and decided I should get a ‘proper job’, so I went to work for Yorkshire Water as a customer liaison adviser where I learnt the art of writing letters to angry customers with sewer flooding!
“It was then that I realised that my calling was definitely in hospitality. I decided to move to Liverpool in 2004 and just two days after joining a recruiting agency, I was serving drinks in Sapporo… and the rest is history.”
Katie continues to excel in her role and is expanding on her knowledge with the use of additional training courses and self-learning.
She said: “I am currently studying for my CIPD, Certificate in Personnel Practice, which I hope will give me the information to better my company’s HR function. I am also having shorthand lessons on a weekly basis.
“Overall, I have been really lucky with my job. It’s a great, fresh and young company which is growing and encourages development from within it’s own workforce. Working within HR and compliance mixes my desire to learn and assist with a love and passion for the hospitality industry.”
