Marketing Intern Review

A very enjoyable and supportive environment to work in! You are trusted with some very real and high-profile responsibilities and are given so much support to help you through every step of growth and development. The placement as a whole is very enjoyable; you are with many other young people and there is ample opportunity to celebrate and have fun together too! Very much a work hard, play hard kind of place.

Rackspace as a whole prides itself on treating each other like friends and family, and that's exactly what you feel when you walk in there. For a placement student, you can't find a more welcoming and friendly workplace to help you transition into the world of work, particularly within the marketing department, you instantly feel like a part of the team!

The support from the supervisors is absolutely fantastic, from the one-to-one meetings on your goals within the year, to the chats that help you understand the world of work. You genuinely feel cared for and are given every opportunity to ask questions or to express any concerns. My placement year helped me to grow so much, and most of that was as a result of the support and guidance from the people there!

You are definitely kept busy with real responsibilities, which really makes the year fly by! It can be a challenge to manage workload, but this is usually a mixture of your own personal development and communication with your mentor, who will always help you to prioritize and manage your work.

At the beginning of the placement you are given small responsibilities that are manageable, and are mainly to understand the comany and their product offerings. Later on this develops to some very real and high-profile responsibilities to the point where you can make a real impact on the company! The placement programme gives you a lot of trust and responsibility if you can handle it, which is amazing for growth.

Some of the skills I learnt on the placement I will take with me through my career and even in my personal life. From confidence in myself to communication skills and workload management, you are given every opportunity to develop skills. In going back to university for my final year I definitely felt like I could manage my work better, and had a better understanding of the business world and how my degree fits into it.

A very fun-loving environment! You are always with young people playing spontaneous nerf-gun fights, celebrating holidays with festivals or themed days, wearing t-shirts and jeans, playing table tennis or FIFA in the games room, there is a fun working environment and you will often go out for after-work drinks or have 'fun budget' days.

Every year the placement programme gets better with more understanding of the students' needs and how they work within the company. As of yet, the programme hasn't had much of a 'structure', but that gave me a lot of freedom to change teams or roles as I wanted to, or as I thought would fit my career goals.

The company has a training centre where you are free to choose any courses you would like to go on; from personal development courses to career or company based training. In addition to this, the company gives you access to online training portals where you are free to choose any training you would like to explore.

There is no graduate scheme at the moment (though there are talks of one in development), but there are entry-level job routes back into the company which are very easy to get if you make a good impression and keep contact with the company. Several previous interns have found themselves working at the company after graduating from their final year.

You are given many opportunities to go out for drinks after work, you make good friends with fellow placement students and will often find yourself working on several projects together as a group! Sometimes the students will get in contact with each other before the placement to arrange accommodation and possibly living together.

There can be quite a high cost of living and socialising, as it is still part of London, but that can only be expected for placements in London. You will find that it is cheaper than central London placements. Because the company is not based in central London, you will find that it isn't as necessary to spend hours on the tube to get to work (unless of course, you are commuting from further afield).

The area the company is in itself isn't as nice as some areas, more like pub drinks kind of area, but you just are a short train ride into central London where there is a buzzing nightlife! You will often find yourself going out as a team or with the other placement students.

The company is always trying to organise things outside of work, like their football clubs, meditation and more. I even decided to set up a salsa class for people who were interested. You get many opportunities to join in clubs or even develop your own club if you want to like I did!