Marketing Assistant Review

3M gives their placement students a lot of support in the form of encouragement to try and make you learn new things. Whatever direction you want to go in, whether it is get more training on a certain aspect of your job, or moving into a different role, 3M is open to everything. 3M also has a great IP programme, which helps aid your development as an employee thorough various workshops, and also requires you to participate in volunteering projects. It's great for getting in contact with other placement students within the organisation, and makes you feel like part of a community.

Over the course of your placement you are entrusted with the same great responsibilities as any other permanent employee, which makes you become an invaluable part of your team. Being given large responsibilities does not only aid your learning and gives you the full work experience that you expect to get from an industrial placement, but it also makes you feel valued and like your ideas and opinions matter.

During my placement year at 3M, I was not micro-managed by my manager, but instead was given the freedom to prioritise my work myself, and do what I wanted to do whenever I saw fit, as long as I met all my deadlines. My manager, was always ensuring that I was given tasks and participated in training that would aid my development.

At the start of my placement, I felt like my capabilities weren’t being used to their full potential. I got a lot of ‘one-off’ little jobs, that didn’t challenge me enough. However, after approaching my manager about this, I was given portfolios to manage, which was just the right of workload. I never felt like I was drowning, I just had the occasional stress of having to meet a tight deadline.

I was given two large product portfolios to manage over the course of my placement. Additionally, my job responsibilities depended on the product launches, projects and events that were happening at the time. During my placement I was involved in event planning and support, project management, supporting new product launches and liaising with the sales team.

I thought I had quite a good understanding of the marketing discipline; however, I quickly realised that being a marketer is not something you can learn from a book. Everything I had learned at University was around planning and market-research, but the day – to – day execution of the job is not something I learned until I was actually doing the job. Apart from developing core marketing competencies, I also learned what it is to be part of a team and to work together with other departments such as HR, Sales and Finance.

During my placement 3M was going through a re-structure, so sometimes the atmosphere within the team was quite tense due to the uncertainty of what was going to happen. Overall;however, people within the organisation are very helpful and approachable, and encouraged you to ask questions.

I had a bit of a different experience compared to the other placement students, as I came into a role that was just created. Other placement students received a hand-over from the placement student that had done their role the 12 months previous to their arrival, which is something I definitely wish I would've had. However, after the initial struggle of what my responsibilities were going to be, everything fell into place and I had a great internship.

The company is very open to letting you attend any training days or workshops that you want to attend to aid your development. They will also often ask if there is anything you feel like you've not been involved in , that you would like to experience.

At the end of placement, every placement students is asked to give feedback on whether or not they would like to come back to 3M after placement as a Graduate, and if so in what role.

Yes, I don't know if it was luck, but we had a great group of placement students that got along really well. We organised events outside of work and also frequently had lunch together to catch-up on how everyone was getting on with their roles.

The cost of living was rather high, as Bracknell/Reading is very close to London.

In Bracknell itself there is not much to do, but most students lived in Reading during their placement, which is a big student city with many activities and events going on all the time!

3M has a sports community, which many of the placement students go involved with; moreover, many of the placement students joined sports teams or clubs outside of work in Reading.