UNIVERSITY: My Marketing Placement - Highs & Lows, The Benefits & Why You Should Go on Placement
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| Photo by Laura Olsen on Unsplash |
Having recently finished my marketing placement year and soon to start my final year as a Marketing, Advertising and PR student, I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk about the highs and lows of my marketing placement and why you should consider going on placement.
Highs
Throughout my year on placement, there was a rollercoaster of high’s and lows. I was extremely fortunate that when I started within my role that I was welcomed into a fun and friendly team. I was able to ask questions freely when I was unsure about anything, without feeling like my questions were too large or small.
On placement, I strongly valued the creative freedom and independence I was able to have within my role. I was able to work on creative briefs, create newsletters and make ad-hoc changes to the national website freely.
For larger projects I worked on, I feel pleased that I was able to make a valued contribution to the brand with my ideas and suggestions. For example, making changes to the copy on our book-online form or creating new pages on the website, such as for warranty.
I thoroughly enjoyed being trusted with the responsibility for projects and being able to manage campaigns from conception to delivery. As part of the role, I completed a recruitment analysis project that involved conducting research, coming up with ideas and pitching my ideas to management. This enabled me to demonstrate my research and competitor analysis skills and use my marketing knowledge to produce recommendations and present these to an audience. I then had the opportunity to plan how these ideas would be delivered, and brief in individual recruitment items with our agency to produce these assets.
Lows
It was soon apparent to me that my long commute from Birmingham to Coventry would require an adjustment. Particularly in the winter, the route was laden with rush hour traffic and over an hours drive each way in the darkness. Thankfully, only a matter of weeks into my role was I offered an adjustment to my working hours, which meant that I could start earlier and leave earlier to avoid some of the evening rush-hour.
Where I now feel like I have been able to develop most as a result, when I first shifted roles in my second month of placement, I found myself thrown in at the deep end. My predecessor had gone on long term sick and her day to day role was only familiar to her, with some documentation to support her day to day tasks. From this, I was required to piece together my role and take on the day to day responsibilities for the car repair franchise. From this, I soon came to realise that as part of my role, not all of my day-to-day would be marketing and that some parts of the role would involve admin and data inputting.
I also found low points in the year surrounded my own self-doubt in my ability and my lack of confidence, particularly in terms of taking ownership for the financial aspects of my recruitment analysis project.
What I gained from my placement year
One of the key takeaways from my placement was industry knowledge. Prior to starting my placement, my knowledge of the automotive industry, particularly automotive aftersales, was limited. Doing a placement allowed me to not only learn company Insight within automotive but has allowed me to better understand Electric Vehicles.
Placement has provided many opportunities to work independently, manage my own time, workload and schedule to coordinate my own projects and campaigns and learning new digital skills. My recruitment analysis project, for example, consisted of a competitor and situational analysis, to formulate recommendations.
As part of the placement program, we were given the opportunity to take part in a ‘Present!’ training course, which gave each placement student the opportunity to present to each other about their day-to-day job role, in addition to learning key presenting skills. These skills I was then able to demonstrate when presenting my research projects to key department stakeholders & directors and my placement assessment presentation to my university supervisor.
If I were to summarise the most valuable takeaway from my placement then I would say it was the growth in my confidence levels. When I started my role in July, I only had agency marketing experience and was unfamiliar with what I could expect from the year ahead. Fast forward to the end of my placement and I am much more confident in my automotive knowledge and my abilities as a marketing executive, particular working client-side.
The placement has also enabled me to become much more self-aware of my strengths and development areas, how my working and personality traits are perceived by others, and how I can work to manage this. I also discovered my strengths of adaptability and resilience within the team, as a result of changes to my job role early within my placement.
The Benefits
Completing my placement has brought a range of benefits for me on a personal level and on a professional level. I have grown in confidence, resilience and self-awareness. Through acquiring & developing skills & specialisms, such as managing a content management system for the brand website and writing HTML code for web pages, I believe I was able to leave the role with more digital marketing knowledge than before I started my placement.
Workplace discipline & time management have become second nature over the last 12 months, and I believe that I will have an advantage as a student when I head back to university in September to complete my final year. It also goes without saying, that I deem placement to be an invaluable asset to aid my future employment prospects.
If you’re a student wondering whether or not you should take a year out and work full time, don’t doubt it! It’s the best decision you could ever make not only for your future self but for your present self. Some of you will be putting off completing that long application form but hopefully, this post will encourage you to persevere and get those applications completed!
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