Marketing Associate PGU Review

A great team to work with and loads of opportunities for development.

I swiftly became part of my department, plenty of banter. I also found the whole organisation great fun to work with, this opened opportunities for me to work on several cross departmental projects and teams.

Throughout my placement, on every project I worked on, I felt fully supported by my personal manager and other members of the management or projects teams.

They gave me every opportunity to develop through several projects. I may have personally taken on a little too much work at times, however this added to my experience of working in a highly productive department. I felt valued on every project, and never pressured to do more work.

Departmental streamlining left me responsible for much of the internet marketing campaigns for one product, everything was subject to management approval, but my decisions were trusted and valued. The whole team was aware of everyone elses strengths and weaknesses and responsibility was given accordingly.

Can anything really prepare you for a dissertation??? Beyond my final year studies I am 100% certain I will be drawing on my experiences at Janssen-Cilag for a long time to come.

The office banter was great, senior management, director, PA's product teams, everyone had a laugh.

The placement scheme was brilliant, 35 students, 4 in my department, almost all doing a worthwhile professional job and contributing nearly seamlessly with the company's objectives. Only one negative. Janssen-Cilag's personnel development system lacks flexibility when considering individual student roles, this left my own development in the hands of my manager and I, without any specific framework. As student development is a key to any placement year I felt this was a slight weakness. If you take your own development in your own hands its fine, a little difficult to keep track of it over time with so many other things going on.

Loads of opportunity for training. At the start of the palcement there's plenty of IT training to help you get the most out of all the programmes you use on a daily basis. Throughout the year there were plenty of opportunities for further training, and its not forced on you, if you and your manager agree you don't need it you don't have to have it.

I would happily go back and work for Janssen Cilag, it would take a few years in sales territories before getting into managment but there are plenty of managers there now that were students in the past. There isn't a specific graduate scheme, but starting salaries are good, benefits are good and opportunities are good too. The role sets you up easily for any other role or grad scheme in the industry, or any other b2b marketing industry.

Still in contact with and visit several of the students I met. 35 students, it would be hard for you not to meet like minded people and have a good time!

I managed to go on several holidays, get plenty of socialising in, share a pretty big house and run a car. High Wycombe is cheap to live in. The pay covers the cost of living happily even though the Thames Valley isnt the cheapest place to live.

High Wycombe has its own University!! So there's a union night (cheap and cheesy) It was good enough and getting into London was easy, Oxford and Reading aren't far and are both pretty good nights out.

Loads of opportunites out of work, plenty of activities to raise money for Janssen-Cilag's charity for the year (3 peaks challenge, BBQ's Football tournaments etc)