Assistant Website Administrator Review

Factory-Direct-Flooring is a very enjoyable placement, there is a lot of responsibility, great people and plenty of work to do!

Working alongside the Website Administrator I was often one of the go-to members of staff for problems and new products going live on the website. My opinions were valued and my work was an asset to the company.

All members of staff are eager to help each other and me, answering all questions I had. My supervisor and his supervisor were very keen to help me. Taking a hands on approach with my learning and tasks at first, and slowly increasing the room and letting me work by myself. While always being there if I needed anything.

There were times when the workload was a lot, grinding through many things after the other, particularly around Christmas. But as is the industry there were slow times, however when I took the time to find a task, there was always something I could be doing to help improve the website and it's operation.

Immediately from the start I was given two major projects to complete. Working within the back end of the website I was given a lot of control over all aspects of the website and it's database. Completing my work alongside my supervisor I quickly learnt a lot of the possibilities of the Magento software and made use of this responsibility.

For my degree of Business and ICT this placement has been great, expanding on my previous modules of database management and digital marketing in particular. But also on the business side, hearing the sales team deal with customers and deliveries I gained a real insight and appreciation of the E-commerce industry.

The atmosphere is quite busy a lot of the time with breaks in between for employees to chat about movies, TV as main topics. There was the perfect level of office banter, everyone is very friendly and gets along very well. Especially when the director buys everyone a breakfast sandwich on some Fridays.

I have been the first placement student they have taken, and I feel that it was organised fairly well. There were a few major tasks mentioned to me when I applied and first started. And these things all came into my placement and I was a key player in completing them. It is bound to only get better.

I was invited quite a few times to sit in on meetings, particularly with digital marketing or software parties which I mentioned an interest for. I did not attend any extra training days, however other members of staff have even been as far as Germany to visit flooring expos. Which is clearly not as beneficial as an ICT student. I was given a lot of direct contact with third parties which I needed to interact with, which gave me some extra development as I asked them questions and they helped me understand my task at hand better.

There are definitely future employment prospects at Factory-Direct-Flooring. They have opened another website called Carpet World. So even more website work is needed. The current staff are also constantly busy on the telephones and dealing with customer orders. I'm sure that future employment would be possible, even if I was working as an assistant to the sales team as well as the website admins.

I did not really have any interaction with other placement student, however the other employees are about the same age as me (21), so there was no lack of social engagement.

The area of Hinckley is not expensive, I was earning enough to live in a flat, although I lived at home in the next town over (Nuneaton). Other employees were eager to help me get too and from work, always offering me lifts.

Hinckley has pretty good night life, as well as the next town over Nuneaton. Both have student nights on Thursdays and are busy on Saturday nights with a few clubs/bars in both towns.

The company is not very large so there are no company sports teams and such, but I'm sure there is a lot to do in the area.