Mackenzie Miers: Hospitality Graduate Finds Her Career in Recruitment
Mackenzie Miers attended Boston University School of Hospitality Administration (SHA) for both her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree. In 2022, she graduated from the Master of Management in Hospitality (MMH) program and successfully launched her career in recruitment. She is now a Principal Recruitment Consultant at LVI Associates. Even though a degree in hospitality doesn’t seem to directly relate to Mackenzie’s career, her experience at SHA provided extensive preparation for the workforce.
How Her SHA Journey Started
As a high school basketball player back home in Pennsylvania, Mackenzie Miers was recruited to play at Boston University. After visiting the school in her junior year, she instantly fell in love with it.
Initially starting at BU as a communication major, Mackenzie transferred to the School of Hospitality Administration in her freshman year after hearing a lot about the school from a teammate who was a student at SHA. “I had a teammate on my team. Her name was Erin Behrum. She went to SHA, and she would always talk about her classes and how much she loved it, and it just really spoke to me because I always knew that I loved working with people.”
With her interest in hospitality piqued, Mackenzie took an introductory class with Robert Molar, a professor at SHA at the time. After taking the course, Mackenzie decided to switch to a major in hospitality for her time at BU. After finishing her bachelor’s degree, she continued at SHA to pursue her master’s degree in hospitality management.
Memorable Student Experiences at SHA
At SHA, Mackenzie made sure to participate in as many student activities as she could, including field trips to other cities and site visits to hotels and restaurants. One of her most memorable experiences was the spring break field trip in which she gained event planning experience. “I helped plan the spring break trip to New York when they got to meet Danny Meyer, [the founder of Union Square Hospitality Group]. So that was really awesome to be a part of that event planning group.”
Mackenzie was also a teacher assistant for Professor Lanz and joined the student advisory board at Boston University. As part of the board, she represented SHA along with other graduate students and discussed important topics such as budget planning and student events. In addition to the exciting student life at SHA, Mackenzie found the school’s emphasis on practical application played an important role in her career development. One example is how the Master of Management in Hospitality program allows students to work with real clients. In Mackenzie’s MMH marketing class, she had a group project in which she and her team developed marketing plans for an actual company. At the end of the semester, they pitched their recommendations to the client.
Searching for Her Passion through Internships
Outside of the classroom, Mackenzie took advantage of internship opportunities during her time at SHA. With internships, she was able to apply the knowledge she learned to the real world and, most importantly, obtain first-hand experience in different sectors of hospitality, including hotel, entertainment, and event planning. “My game plan when I wanted to do the internships [was] I wanted to get a feeler out for different industries within hospitality to see what I liked.“
In her sophomore year, Mackenzie worked at the VIP Lounge of the InterContinental in downtown Boston, where she met many celebrities who stayed at the hotel, including Mark Wahlberg. Her favorite internship experience happened in the summer of her junior year when she interned at Live Nation. Her role was Venue Sales Intern at one of the music venues in Boston called the Pavilion, pitching different sales packages when people wanted to purchase VIP access tickets.
In between her undergraduate and graduate studies, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Mackenzie worked at a company that organized virtual events. Through this job, she gained more experience in event planning. When she enrolled in the MMH program, Mackenzie interned at the Harvard Business School’s catering program, where she continued to hone her event planning skills and networked with many food and beverage professionals.
All the internship opportunities that SHA presented equipped Mackenzie to find her true passion. “When I would look back on everything, I felt myself being the happiest with the venue sales internship from Live Nation. So that immediately told me I like a little bit of a faster pace. I still like the business aspect of things, but I love being able to work with people when they’re doing something they enjoy and being able to elevate that experience even more.”
Mackenzie also built a strong professional network that she could rely on through the internships. “When I was looking for jobs, I had so many contacts that I could call. I called and talked to people from InterContinental [who] set me up with different interviews with hotels.”
“I think the internships play a huge component in setting you up for success when you do graduate, not only for the purpose of you being able to kind of test out what works for you and what doesn’t but also being able to open up your network, not only for you but for others in your network or in your friend group as well.”
Crossing the Boundary of Hospitality – Establishing Her Career in Recruitment
When Mackenzie graduated from SHA with her master’s degree in hospitality management, she applied to sales roles in Boston. She didn’t want to limit herself to hospitality operations because the downside of working in hospitality and hotels is the unusual hours. “Although I loved events, a lot of times your work days are when everyone else around you is off. So it’s a lot of Saturdays, you’re working late nights. Fridays, you’re working late nights. And I didn’t really feel like I was ready to give up that social side yet.“
Finally, a recruitment company that has a hospitality sector aroused Mackenzie’s interest. She applied for a few different positions at the company and ended up joining the electrical engineering recruitment team.
“I would love to do something strictly hospitality in the future, but I have found that recruitment has a lot of similarities. I can talk to people a lot. I can go out and meet with people. At the end of the day, I’m helping people with something that is usually pretty exciting for them, similar to people going on vacation or to a concert. So, I get to work with people [who] want to talk to me and want my help. And I’ve been able to still utilize a lot of the things that I learned in hospitality in this role.”
Thanks to the flexibility of the MMH program, Mackenzie was able to build the skill sets relevant to her current career. “I would say one of the biggest things from the MMH program is being able to speak and present. There’s a lot of projects that we do where we’re getting up in front of everybody, and we are presenting something that we’ve worked on. I think that’s a huge skill set that you don’t really get the chance to do as much at other schools. Whereas when I now go into the workforce, and I have to make a presentation about my stats for the month or a project I worked on, I know exactly how I’m gonna be presenting it because I’ve had the practice of doing so.”
In conclusion, Mackenzie believes that hospitality offers limitless opportunities in various job sectors. Wherever they launch their dream career, graduating from SHA, students acquire valuable skills to create meaningful connections in every human interaction.
