Marketing Communications Review

This year at Cummins has taught and presented me with the issues that a global organisation faces when economic conditions are not favorable. The variation within my work has been enjoyable but some of the uncertainty surrounding my own role and that of my peers has been a dampener. Working across 2 roles enabled me to make connections on a global scale and allowed me to lead projects that I wouldn't have done in a smaller company.

Throughout the uncertainty (outlined above) the connections that I have created with peers were tested and became stronger due to pressures felt within the company globally. Being able to achieve buy in from these peers and leverage them to complete projects more quickly/effectively demonstrates these relations capably. Further, several team meals/events helped to nurture these relations in a more social environment.

Regular 1:1 sessions (bi-weekly or weekly) assisted my development and granted me an environment where questions could be asked and tutorials could be held for work that was foreign to me. Further, having quarterly reviews and an internal bursary process gave me an opportunity to showcase the work that I had been doing over either 3 months or the year - the bursary process helped me to realize how many skills I had successfully developed.

Joining the organisation during a period of change meant that the type and quantity of work I was doing altered on a weekly basis. From June-November I was kept very busy learning about the new process/programs used in the organisation whereas the period after November-March was fairly quiet due to the quantity of redundancies and role changes (including mine). From March-July I was kept very busy once again as all of the new teams were being finalized.

I had a plentiful amount of time to project manage certain initiatives such as a training course, creating of a product brochure and the usage of augmented reality technologies at global events. Being able to work with an external vendor allowed me to direct these projects and formulate feedback dependent upon their work. I also led opportunities within community involvement activities which allowed me to direct managers and a director from my team.

Time keeping/management development - Having gained experience of fitting all of my daily work into 8 hour segments and being able to coordinate this with every timezone on a global scale reassured me that any degree related work is manageable. Project Management - These experiences allowed me to develop more of a backbone when working with external vendors and I am hoping to transfer this backbone into grouped work at University as I've struggled to make people enthusiastic about tasks before.

In amongst the organizational changes and two phases of redundancies the atmosphere was understandably quite dull and ominous. The loss of colleagues both within the UK office and US office sometimes led to the team being stretched with workloads often being shared amongst fewer people than ideal. However, the team meals/events brought people together and increased motivation within some duller spells.

The year at Cummins was very well setup with handover plans and initial talks setup within my first few weeks. All of these talks enabled me to start meaningful work relatively quickly and independently without asking questions every few minutes. Further, having training courses set up for product training etc. quickly offered me an insight into something unknown - the power generation market.

The organisation invested heavily in my personal development with a course of four training sessions being held by an external trainer. Each of these four one day courses were aimed at developing skills that can be transferred between this role & future jobs I may have. The four sessions were: - Customer Experience - Team Work - Effective communication and presentation - Adapting to a professional business environment

Following the re-allocation of many roles and the redundancies held on a global scale graduate job prospects aren't as promising as previous years. This is not to say that it is 100% ruled out but the numbers of graduate hires for the year 2017 will almost certainly be impacted in some way or another.

Having 30 placement students located in one site ensured that a good social atmosphere was upheld. Being able to socialize with 3 other students within marketing job roles enabled me to get a good understanding of how their roles related to mine. Further, weekly football sessions and nights out meant that we got to know each other outside of the office making each character more personable.

Being able to live at home during my placement meant that living costs were minimal (£160 rent per month with food on top of this). With regard to the social life Thanet (a district in Kent) is a very quiet area with few pubs - no nightclubs. This meant that socializing was restricted to watching football.

Nightlife was fairly non-existent with any opportunities limited to pubs that usually closed around 1am. The nearest good night out would be Canterbury which occurred very infrequently and was quite costly when it did happen. Aside from this nights out are limited to visiting friends or family at University/College.

Opportunities to get involved within sporting/social opportunities were also limited within this area. Local 5 a side football pitches provided a good location for some placements to get together and attend sporting events. Further, Gillingham Football Club gave placements an opportunity to watch professional sport.