Product Assistant Review

A great placement year that has allowed me to develop fast and build up valuable contacts.

Placement at TUI are given the same responsibilities as a full-time employee within the department, this means that you are treated in the same way as any other employee.

As well as having weekly 1:1's with my direct line manager, I also had bi-monthly catch ups with the placement scheme manager and also had a buddy (who had previously taken a placement year) who I could talk to for extra support or guidance.

Workload can be heavy at times, but this is just proves how the company trusts and values you and your input. As a team we would have 2 schedule meetings a week to check that everyone workload is balanced evenly, and that we are on track to meet all deadlines, if you every felt you had too much to do, another member of the team was always willing to help.

As we are given the same responsibilty as a full time employee, you could make decisions that had a real impact on your business and would help shape your destinations. For my resorts I had a large input to what hotels we would continue to feature to future seasons, which we would drop and what ratings to give hotels. In also had the responsibility of being a brochure guardian for 2 brochures - this meant that I had control of what business priorities we wanted to feature on the intro pages and had final sign off.

Although my job role was very different to my actual degree, I learned a great deal over the year and will be taking plenty of extra skills back to university with me. Through several training courses held throughout the year I was able to improve my IT and Presentation skills.

TUI has a really laid back atmosphere in the office, this make the office a real fun place to work. We love to celebrate any special occasions, for example, to celebrate Summer 16 launch we had a team coming round the office handing out free ice-creams and beers. We also had Alesha Dixon perform at one of our Town Halls in the office to celebrate her partnership with our Holiday Village brand

The fact the placement is run by those working in normal roles in the commercial division really makes the scheme the success it is. Unlike schemes that are run by HR, the team behind the scheme all know us on a really personal level and know the roles that we are working in so they can offer guidance and training courses that are relevant. Most of those on the team undertook a placement year at TUI, so they really put in their extra effort to ensure the scheme is a success.

We were treated like any member of staff and had the same opportunities even though we were only employed for a year. Throughout the year I attended training courses on Excel, Powerpoint, Presentation Skills, Business Objects and also attended several sessions where I gained insights into other departments such as aviation planning, digital marketing and ancillaries.

All of us on the placement scheme had the opportunity to apply a year early to secure a place on the graduate scheme at TUI. There are also opportunities for us to come back into the business via our current roles or even other departments.

There were 7 of us, which is great as we all knew each other really well. We would often go on placement nights-out and go for Lunch together.

Luton is a fairly cheap place to live and socialise although I commuted to work.

Luton isnt the best location in the world, with limited options for a night out, however it has great transport links. For nights out we would usually go to St Albans or London which only takes 15/25 minutes on the train, and because of the airport in Luton, the trains run throughout the night!

There a plenty of activities you can take part in, there is a TUI choir, netball team, football team and there even organised bike rides you could sign up to! We also had a commercial division rounders competition which was great fun.