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!

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 share my experience as an Aftersales Marketing Executive for a french vehicle manufacturer and hopefully give you a more insightful view on what a placement year entails.

I’ll be the first to admit that going from 8 hours contact time a week to 8 hour days did seem daunting. My new role was 8:00-4:15 for 4 days with an early 3:00 finish on a Friday. I was used to the long days during deadline periods, but otherwise had an inconsistent sleeping pattern and also seemed to be tired most of the time. 

It was safe to say that I hadn’t been prepared for what a (nearly) 40 hour week would be like. Fortunately, I soon realised that I thrived from having a fixed routine and solid structure to my week, despite the struggle of getting up at 5:30 every morning and having to commute nearly an hour to work and over an hour home. I knew that a new routine would be challenging but soon after the first 3 weeks, where I came home exhausted after trying to accustom myself to my new role, I found that I settled into my new routine quite easily.

Starting Placement

My first day entailed a full day of training and being reunited with some of the students whom I had shared an assessment centre. Fortunately, ahead of our start date, HR had emailed to ask if we were willing to share our emails with others starting placement, which meant that we could make a WhatsApp group and get to know each other ahead of our starting date. This helped to alleviate first day nerves for me and meant conversation flowed much more naturally.

I’ll be the first to admit that before starting my placement that I wasn’t overly familiar with the group I would be working for, nor automotive and especially not automotive aftersales. With offices around the world and head office in Paris, I worked at the UK head office in Coventry.

My Responsibilities & Projects

My role within Aftersales Marketing was varied; starting as car brand Aftersales Marketing Executive before working as the Marketing Executive for the group's independent garage network franchise brand (a network of over 4000 car repair garages in 22 countries and over 120 centres in the UK). 

When working within car brand aftersales I worked on making the accessory brochures suitable for the UK marketing and proofing the ‘juste apres’ assets, a system that involved sending marketing materials to customers who had just ordered a new car, to promote our accessory range. I found the roles involved in car brand aftersales wasn't overly challenging, so was overjoyed when a new role was offered to me.

Whilst working on the car repair franchise, the role was significantly more varied, including working on the brand's website and content management system, managing social media content, creating internal communications and coordinating the central inbox to respond to customers.

As a placement student, I expected relatively low responsibility in comparison to my managers, however, when there was work to be done I was relied upon to assist and was treated as an equal to the permanent staff. I firmly believe management took my opinions on board and listened to what I had to say., something that I perceived to be difficult to accomplish in a large international company with a well-defined hierarchy. 

I enjoyed the routine of placement because it allowed me to be flexible on the times outside of my 8-4 and use my free time as a time to relax. The routine also reminded me of the importance of weekends, something that didn't seem to exist during my second year as the weekends would blur into the weeks. 

The workload was reasonable and much better managed than my student life. Initially, I found the workload wasn't enough for me, that or I was getting through the tasks too quickly, however, once I’d plucked up the courage to make this known to management, my workload increased and my days felt much more productive. Some days were hectic, with my 8 working hours feeling insufficient to get everything done, but mostly my workload was balanced and well managed. Being under pressure allowed me to demonstrate my effective time management, stay organised, and be adaptable with work. I got better over the year at prioritising tasks that required much more immediate attention.

Working ‘Client-Side':

When it comes to selecting a marketing role, you’ll often have to make the choice between working client-side or working agency side. My placement involved working in-house for an automotive company, which meant working client-side. 

As a result, my day to day working routine involved working with a number of different creative and digital agencies, who would create the creative graphic design assets, social media imagery, emails and brand campaigns according to briefs that were provided by my team. The accounts we had with these agencies were complex and required high knowledge of the account to run effectively. This meant that a lot of my day-to-day role was liaising with the agencies and chasing up on creative projects. We’d brief in what creative we wanted producing, and the agencies would create the graphics. We would then communicate back and forth through an online platform called ‘ProofHQ’ to mark up where changes were to be made until we were happy with the outcome. 

Through a combination of Skype WIP (work in progress) calls, face to face status meetings and agency visits, I was able to establish relationships with key account teams at marketing communications and digital agencies, and network as a result. Working with a range of agencies has allowed me to experience how agencies can differ in their working styles, and how some form of working communications can work more successfully than others.

My productivity at work was sometimes influenced by the productivity of other stakeholders within the business and was also dependent on others delivering the materials correctly. To get some things done we'd have to go through a number of people which caused delays and frustration in the team, especially when it came to updating the website as requests would have to be made to the French team, which would only be acted on should it be seen in the global interest.

I gained invaluable experience on my placement year and have left the role having met great people, with broader knowledge and with increased confidence in myself.

Have you completed a year in Industry? How did you find it?

Enjoy reading? Look out for the next post in my placement series featuring the highs & lows and why you should do a placement year.

Hi all, for those who have stumbled across my blog, I’m Beth and I’ve recently finished a year in industry doing a marketing placement for a French automotive company.  Having documented my first and second-year university experiences on my blog in previous years, I thought I’d seize the opportunity to use this space on the internet to share my experience, tips and advice following placement.

In today's post, I want to focus first on how I secured my placement and how, if you have been successful with securing a placement, you can prepare yourself before you start.

Securing your Placement

Securing myself a placement was no easy feat. I had a systemised method to my placement application process which materialised itself in a google sheet with the list of the company names I wanted to apply for, the placement deadline and stage of the application process I was up to. I found myself using any free time I had available during first semester to look for placement opportunities and complete applications. To find placements, I'd suggest looking on sites such as Indeed, LinkedIn and to also see if your university has its own jobs board online as often there are exclusive opportunities.

If you are looking to apply for a placement, it is really important to keep your CV up to date throughout the application process. Make sure to keep a record of any relevant work experience you have throughout first and second year to aid you when completing your CV. I’d also suggest, if you don’t already, that you set up a LinkedIn account and set your social media accounts to private, first impressions count after all.

I worked with my faculties employability office to bring my CV and covering letter up to scratch and found this really helpful, so if you have the facility at your university, I’d highly recommend it. What was also great was that on my faculty’s employability website you could practise psychometric tests to assist you ahead of completing the real thing.

I truly believe securing a placement is a numbers game. Up to the point where I received my placement offer, I had completed 20 applications, had completed 2 video interviews, a 1:1 interview and an assessment centre before completing a phone interview, psychometric tests and assessment centre for the company that I’d secured my placement. Each of the interviews and assessment centres I completed were different, so it’s worth getting experience with answering interview questions prior. 

When it came to applying, I was fortunate enough that I had previous experience in the industry; I had worked for 2 years in my uni’s in-house agency and had done short placements at 2 local marketing and PR agencies. I believe this in itself is extremely valuable to your application if you are applying for a marketing role. I was also informed by one of the HR’s at a major airline (a role that I was shortlisted to the top 8 for) that, as a way to filter through their applicants, they simply discarded any applicants that had no prior experience - so that’s definitely something to consider getting if you want to complete a marketing placement.

Preparing for Placement

I finished my second year of uni at the end of May and I started my placement on the 2nd of July. In the month leading up to placement, I had two holidays arranged, had to hand back the keys for my second-year house and move into my third-year house, so it’s safe to safe there wasn’t much time for me to prepare for placement.

If you have the opportunity to, I would spend the weeks before your placement trying to get yourself in the habit of going to bed earlier and waking up early - you’re going to feel a lot more productive this way.

Something else to consider is the placements dress code. This wasn’t very well stipulated at my placement, however, I went and bought a couple of pairs of fitting work trousers that I could interchange with some smart blouses that I already owned. I didn’t want to invest in the completely wrong work wardrobe, so gave myself a couple of days to weigh up what everyone else wore day-to-day in the office and concluded that formal trousers with smart-casual shirts would be fine.

It’s also worth checking how you’re going to be getting into work. The weekend before I started placement, I did a couple of practice runs from my new third-year house to the office to try and judge how long the commute would be and become more familiar with the roads, or in Coventry’s case, the nightmare ring road. Although trying this outside of rush hour wasn’t an exact replication, it definitely reduced my nerves for my first day so is worth considering.

In the days before you start, take the opportunity to familiarise yourself again with the company and it's values and the industry in general so that you aren't completely overwhelmed on your first day.

Due to start your year in industry? Got any advice to share? Leave your comments below :) Also, look out for a blogpost on my daily routine whilst on placement very soon!