Social media and BMW i marketing communications assistant Review

The opportunties I have had to get involved with such a vast variety of projects has been amazing and makes every day exciting and different. I was also able to travel aound the country and work on many events. The responsibility you are given leaves you feeling a truly valued and important part of the team.

I was given lots of responsibilty from day one and the opportunity to lead my own projects - something I was never expecting from my year. You do not only feel valued by your team, but the whole company with opportunities to meet and present to senior directors on multiple occasions.

I always felt like help or guidance would be given if I needed by any member of the team. The quarterly objectives review given by my managers were great at setting myself new goals to push myself and celebrating my achievements so far. Although I had lots of responsibility, help was always provided if I needed.

My role was very busy as I often had to manage multiple projects and deadlines at once. This is not a 9-5 job in the traditional sense - sometimes you are required to stay later to work on a project. However, if you are open to working hard and getting as much experience as possible during your year, this is the placement for you.

I had the opportunity to manage and lead multiple projects during my year taking on greater responsibility than I was expecting. Help was always available however if needed.

I have been able to develop a whole array of generic skills this year including communication, leadership, presenting, time management and prioritising, as well as role specific skills (in my case, marketing). It has also helped me understand how multi national corporations work in the real world, and understand the politics and structure of a company.

Our office was open plan and hot desking. This meant you never sat next to the same person twice and got to know lots of people from different areas of the company. Although this was nice, there wasn't too much going on socially and only the same few people got involved if there was something planned.

Care before placement started was not the best (our contracts were late and there was a lack of communication about what my role would entail and no help for people wanting to find houses), but during our placement was much better. There were 24 students in total so a well established program and we had a dedicated memeber of HR to look after us.

There are training programs available to anyone in the business, and students are also encouraged to take part if they want to. We were also encouraged to netwrok as much as possible, so I had inductions and shadowing of mutiple different departments giving me greater experience of different areas of the business.

There is a program called SpeedUp that we were able to apply for half way through our placement. This was were the current students were invited to another assesmant centre, and then the top few successful candidates get put on a scheme that sponsors you through your final year at university, before helping you get a permanent job within the company once you have graduated.

Although there were 24 interns across lots of different departments, we all new eachother well with most living in houses together. We had multiple nights out and parties throughout the year, and although not everyone joined in, there were a good number of us to still have a great time.

We worked in Farnborough which is near Guildford and Surrey so not the most affordable place to live and go out. However, the salary was ok for a placement year so we had enough money to still enjoy oursleves and save up. There is cheap accomodation if needed, although it is not very nice at all!

There is nothing going on in Farnborough, but if you travel 20/30mins you get to either Guildford of Reading which have much better nightlife on offer (about £5 taxi fare each). You are also only a 30min train journey to central London which we made the most of during our year

There are a few social groups on campus such as a choir, football team, yoga club and running club. There is also a charity comitee that put on activities such as christmas lunch, summer festival and dog day! I also had the opportunity to volunteer with the rest of my team for the day at a local primary school.