R&D - 3PM and Scale UP Review

By H2 of my placement I was the technical project lead for a capacity expansion project. This meant I was responsible for managing the R&D network associated with the project. I worked closely with the factory, marketing and supply chain to bring a product to a new market and dabbled in product testing, product claims, quality control and method transfer.

I had plenty of opportunities to sharpen my soft skills such as presentation skills throughout the placement with regular update presentations to stakeholders and through leading calls with interdisciplinary teams. Other soft skills included agility and organisation. My role also utilised multiple hard skills including the classic excel as well as the internal specification and finance systems. During my placement I took the opportunity to do a full course on Industrial applications of data science through Unilever (free via degreed).

To begin with I was kept off live projects and ended up doing fairly unrelated, albeit interesting, work. After a fair amount of pushing from my side and some help from my new network I was given more relevant projects and responsibilities. By the second half of my placement I was leading the R&D network for projects and actively being given meaningful responsibilities.

My line managers were very supportive throughout the placement and the wider team couldn't have been friendlier. I will always be especially grateful to the several colleagues who actively involved me in their live projects and arranged for me to take part in wider activities such as factory trials which were outside the scope of my original role.

Unilever is a great company to work for with an overwhelmingly positive culture and a healthy balance of work to life. Its diversity and social change programmes are serious and do a lot of good inside and outside of the company. During my placement I was part of the outreach team and had the opportunity to support college students as a mentor as well as attend multiple outreach events.

Overall I enjoyed my placement.

Yes

For the assessment centre - be prepared to speak. You can't show your brilliance through silence and sadly HR will simply focus on the most dominant personalities regardless of their merits. From day 1 - voice your concerns. If you're not happy with your placement ask your line manager to change it, whether its moving you to a new project, a new team or a whole new function. It's not worth accepting things as they are and having a miserable year.