Marketing Executive Review

The Placement scheme in Baxter was amazing. I haven't expected to learn sooo much during 12 months of the placement! I would say that the best way to describe my placement experience is to say that I fully dived into the corporate world full of exciting projects, critical and last minute changes that I had to learn to overcome and amazing people that I worked with.

I always felt like the member of the team and was included in all the discussions even on higher level. I was given a regular feedback from all of my colleagues. It showed that all of them and my line manager in particular were interested in my professional development. We also had some social team events which were great!

I had a truly amazing supervisor on my placement year. During my first month he would spend many hours explaining me all the job details, giving useful advices, inviting to all the company management meetings, helping me develop and at the same time being very funny and friendly. My other colleagues were also always helping me with any issues and supporting me with all the projects.

Mainly I was quite busy. I was always given the right amount of projects and on a daily basis I would almost always have different projects to take care of. However, it usually wasn't stressful and I always had time to take a break/get a coffee. Whenever I felt that the workload was going down, I talked to my manager to assign me more tasks.

The fact that I was given real important projects from the first month of my placement and later, the opportunity to lead the projects was impressive. I was trusted to work with important data, analyze it and even present my results to the senior management. I had a lot of responsibility during the year which is amazing. Personally I like the responsibility, however I understand some people don't. A line manager usually takes into account your character and preferences and gives the projects accordingly.

I can confidently say that I see a significant improvement in myself as the result of my placement year in Baxter. I started feeling confident presenting as the result of the experience and attending the training workshops. I always was a systematic person but as the result of completing some of my projects I became even more attentive to details, finishing everything way before the final deadline, less stubborn and taking into consideration opinions and experience of other team members. Moreover, the additional training courses have helped me a lot to improve my skills and raise my confidence.

The atmosphere in the office was always very friendly and pleasant. Considering that the office is not of an enormous size, the employees mainly know each other. That's why you will usually meet many smiling at you faces while getting your coffee for example. Also, everyone is very open to questions and help, making it easy to approach everyone.

My placement was very organized. More importantly, it was flexible. My line manager was always taking into account my interest and skills and would organize field days (a day with account manager e.g.) or ask me what projects I would be interested in doing. Of course, it wasn't always the case as some projects had to be done due to urgency for instance.

I feel like Baxter invested a lot of money. I had more than 10 various workshops concentrated on critical thinking, presenting skills, using outlook, raising confidence, harnessing personal impact and many others. Moreover, I had an opportunity to spend some days with other departments allowing me to understand the company even better.

Baxter has a graduate scheme which is available for students who completed the placement program. I believe it is 2 years and has 4 rotations in different departments. I've met a student doing a graduate scheme and she is very happy with it. Moreover, some of my colleagues have already completed the graduate scheme and are now working in Baxter.

Placement students would normally meet during the lunch or during completion of the student projects. I believe the social scene was much better with team members rather than placement students. Team members would sometimes have social days full of fun activities helping to do team building. On top of that, even in the office it was common to talk to others.

Compton (a village next to Newbury) is very small and hasn't got a lot of social life. However, the majority of the employees lived in Reading/Oxford or Newbury, having a larger social life offering and more possibilities to choose from various prices. Personally I lived in Reading (35 minutes drive from work) and the prices were affordable.

There is no nightlife in Compton. This village has only 1 pub. However, as mentioned previously all the employees live in Reading/Oxford/Newbury, having a much better nightlife. For example, both Reading and Oxford have universities giving the opportunity to meet other students and spend some fun nights out. However, both Reading and Oxford are about 35-45 minutes from work.

Baxter has some charity days and the employees are allowed to have 2 paid volunteering days per year. That is a great opportunity to help the annual charity of company choice. Moreover, during the business review meetings in other cities there is always a great opportunity to have a quality fun social time with the team after the meetings