Marketing Intern Review

I worked at Eaton’s Mitcheldean office and it was a really good experience! Although challenging from the start, everyone at the office is great and welcoming. You get the right amount of help settling into the role. When working with other departments, you’re also given responsibility and help. The reason I haven’t given a 10/10 is due to myself ideally wanting more colleagues closer to my age. But, even still I was able to get on with everyone there and they have a really good office environment.

You really do get thrown in at the deep end. From day one I had many responsibilities and you definitely get told when you’ve done well! Every day you get to talk to basically the whole office and get a great idea on how you’re doing. The responsibility only helps with being valued as you feel like a member of the team that’s been there for ages. Your thoughts in meetings are also valued from the start.

I say with my direct manager and with the product managers. This was perfect for me being the marketing intern as they were the ones who knew most about my responsibilities and could help me. My manager, Sam, was always approachable and gave me insightful answers to not only the business, but to different ways of completing marketing tasks. I also got to work with the sales team and they were very supportive and understanding.

Very busy! But in a good way. You are always doing something and keeping yourself occupied. As the year goes on, you find yourself in more meetings which can be frustrating if you have things to be getting on with, but also only helps with your planning. You have the occasional bit of time to work on things that you set out to do before starting at Eaton, like certain skills to train on Eaton’s online ‘university’ aswell.

A great amount. I was able to help prepare for trading events (whilst also attending them), put together the monthly newsletter and worked on the new website. I was also the ‘Chief Entertainment Officer’ whereby I was given responsibility of planning office activities. You feel the pressure, but it’s definitely good to be able to say you’ve achieved so much. Setting up and attending meetings also becomes natural as part of your daily tasks, where that be internal or external.

In terms of university, it’s given me the drive to finish strongly. I have a much better work ethic and find that I can concentrate on tasks quicker, as well as knowing what to do in many different situations. In terms of beyond university, it gave me a great basis to progress into a job and helps me to stand out when applying for graduate schemes. There’s so much that I can talk about in interviews and in classes.

Very enjoyable. It was easy to sense when serious work needed to be done and when you could have a joke with people. Everyone is approachable and I got on with everyone. The desks are open-plan, so it’s easy to walk over and talk to someone about work. This also means that you get to say good morning to most of the office. As much as this sounds small, it helped me get to know everyone when I first started.

Very well organised. There is an induction and many training days throughout the year. You can tell that Eaton have been taking interns for a while as the programme is very well structured and allows a lot of reflection. As well as this, you can clearly see how the other interns have just as many responsibilities and as much work as you do. There is also an intern project half way through that allows you to put what you’ve learnt into practice without managers being present.

They invested a lot. Of course you have to want it, but you have every chance to develop yourself and, sometimes, you don’t even realise you’re maturing or learning etc. I think this is linked to the responsibility given and you can trace it down to even the managing director having a say in how you progress. You get to talk to teams that specify in certain areas, for example I got to work closely with colleagues who had a lot of experience in marketing.

It’s specific for different sectors. There’s engineering opportunities, ones for marketing, HR. Eaton have offices all over the world so, as long as you put yourself out there, you’ll have a chance of progressing through to a position you desire.

Whenever the placement students met up, that was a great chance to have a good time with people in the exact same position as you. There were things such as the Christmas party which were great and trips such as the trade events proved to be a lot of fun as well as a lot of work. If you get on with people in the office, then you can meet up outside of the office too.

I lived in Cheltenham and commuted to the office in Mitcheldean. The rent for the house I lived in wasn’t too bad, but the fact I had to commute wasn’t great for keeping costs down. You can obviously live closer to the office, but it depends on whether or not you want to live in a busy town or city. Socialising was okay for me as I lived with other interns. We made the most of the weekends.

As I said, I lived in Cheltenham. It’s definitely not the best for nightclubs and going out, but there are many pubs to go out to. You have to search a little harder than usual but there are some good places to explore. Make sure you ask around the office for places, check out Gloucester and see if some pubs offer midweek pub quizzes etc. There’s obviously the Cheltenham races which is a great time for the whole town.

There were a few. Everyone was up for it, but it takes a lot of organising. It’s usually up to the Chief Entertainment Officer to organise, but sometimes it can be hard with the difference in age between colleagues.