Marketing Assistant, Customer Loyalty (Direct Marketing) Review

I particularly enjoyed my work placement within the Customer Loyalty team in Waitrose's marketing department as I felt I was given far more responsibility than I ever imagined before beginning the year and was fully supported within a fun and fast-moving team. I think it helped that I was passionate about the company so really enjoyed managing and delivering real email marketing campaigns each week to 2.9m of Waitrose's most loyal customers, as it is a organisation I can relate to from a retail perspective.

My colleagues were probably the main reason why I valued my placement so much - they were incredibly fun and went above and beyond to challenge me throughout the year. I never felt like just 'the placement student' and my colleagues treated me like a permanent member of staff, which was also demonstrated through the real responsibility I was given from the start, They always made sure to remind me that I wasn't just a placement student and that I was there to make a real difference.

My supervisors were great at pushing me out of my comfort zone to reach my full potential e.g. meeting my own personal objectives to.improve interview skills and presentation skills .I was often given praise and informal feedback about how I was getting on as well as formal feedback twice throughout the year. The only time that I felt slightly less supported was whilst working through a team restructure where I was without a line manager for approximately 2 months - I found that I didn't have as clear lines of communication at this stage and that other senior managers were quite busy to find a time to meet. However even through this time I had continuous on-the-job support from my mentor all the way through the year and could not praise her enough whenever I did struggle with workload etc.

I was constantly busy from day 1 - as my job role involved email campaigns that occurred on a weekly basis, workload and deadlines were continuous. I preferred this than being bored as it meant that my days went quickly and enjoyed having to be very reactive to the dynamic business needs of Waitrose itself. Most days went quickly because of this (but almost to the point where there did not feel like there were enough hours in the day!) and there were days where I worked a little later into the evening to keep on top of workload deadlines. Although I occasionally worked later into the evenings to keep on track, I just want to be clear that I was actively discouraged from working later by my colleagues, however I occasionally felt this would be the only way that I could take the pressure off myself for the following day.

I was given an incredibly huge amount of responsibility & accountability and although I worked quite closely with another colleague on the weekly email newsletter campaigns, it was emphasised that I was the lead 'campaign manager' to look after the largest and most important email campaigns to go out from the Waitrose business unit as a whole, with the highest revenue and incremental sales off the back of targeting email comms to c2.9 million customers per week.

From my placement year I was given the opportunity to really develop and enhance my employability skills in a real and challenging business environment which I can no doubt take away - it is skills and experience that I would never have been able to take away from my time at university alone and is supporting my final year at university by being able to put theoretical perspectives into a real organisational context. I had lots of specialist insight into CRM and customer loyalty marketing areas which is particularly beneficial with future employment, especially as now I know that this is the area of marketing that I want to pursue in my graduate job. This is by far the most valuable year that I have ever experienced in terms of assisting me for the future, and really feel that I now have skills and knowledge I can take away to benefit me for life.

When I first started at Waitrose I was taken aback how relaxed and friendly everyone was, which was a view shared by all the placement students. I was expecting more of a corporate and stuffy environment, which was not the case at all! I was located in an office with Marcomms/Customer Loyalty/Insight, all of whom together created a fun and relaxed atmosphere, making it easier to get to know internal stakeholders from an early stage. Being in such a creative environment was good fun and I felt very inclusive with the team atmosphere. There were other younger colleagues within the office but most people were middle-aged - they were just as easy to get along with and just as fun (if not more so!)

The Waitrose industrial placement scheme is formally set up and has been established over many years so was very structured in terms of overall set up. There were some minor teething problems at the start within the team re. gaining access to specific documents/programmes/systems but these were minimised by the assistance of my line manager/mentor/previous placement student. I had a week's handover period at the beginning of my placement which really helped to get me used to the new environment and job role at hand. From my knowledge, the placement role I was in has been one of the longest standing ones at Waitrose with placement students spanning years, so in terms of getting to grips with exactly what my role involved, my team were very organised and concise as they had lots of experience from previous years.

All placement students were required to attend 4 training 'development days' over the year, which focused on enhancing skills and activities around developing your personal brand, presentation skills, mock interviews and employability skills etc. These were a valuable tool to enhance our potential, however a couple of these development day were better than others. These were the only formal training that I was involved in but from my understanding I believe there were other training initiatives that could have been taken up if I wanted any further support, but were probably more for established colleagues.

Our placement year intake were the first year of students who were able to be fast-tracked to a later stage of the graduate scheme recruitment process (straight to the video interview), which is great for those interested in applying. However, this isn't something that I am interested in as there is no grad scheme for Marketing in particular. In terms of employment prospects, I would love to go back to Waitrose straight into a job however would have to go through the same recruitment & selection process as other applicants - my only benefit may be the contacts I have who may be able to notify me of any such jobs, plus the experience I have from working there already. Either way I aim to try and go back.

I was living in a shared house with 5 other placement students from Waitrose - we were the only ones from our intake who didn't seem to be commuting from home, which from my understanding was a lot lower than previous years. This meant there was a bit of a social scene amongst those I was living with, as well as a few of the other placement students, however the majority tended not to get involved much. This can be very random from each intake to the next as I am aware some previous years the social scene has been much higher amongst the placement students! There was slightly more of a social scene within my team however this would be more in the form of larger corporate events for example the Christmas party, occasional work do's for colleagues and team meals out.

As we lived in a student house within Reading's university zone we had typical student rental prices and socialising was quite standard prices for the South of England. I would say that cost of living was quite expected as I am used to similar prices from living in the south all my life.

The nightlife in Reading seemed quite decent however we didn't experience is as much as we expected, instead often opting for local pubs. From the nights out that we did experience, there was plenty of choice of clubs, but particularly many bars and pubs to choose from in the centre. However in Bracknell (where the head office is located) we did not experience the nightlife once - Reading seemed to be the place to go.

There were a few opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work within the marketing department in particular, e,g, barbecues, sailing trips and night out's, however I found that I didn't get involved in all of these. There were also societies that Partner's could get involved in if they wanted - I believe there were some sporting ones and even wine tasting, however I did not get involved in any of these.