Marketing Analyst Review

I had a good year at Morgan, the marketing team were really friendly and made sure that I felt welcomed when I first joined. The initial work I was given was engaging, and it was a good experience working for such a big organisation. The experience has definitely helped my CV and future prospects in terms of securing a job in the marketing field.

In terms of feeling valued, I definitely felt valued by my colleagues, managers and director within the marketing department. Any work I did was always met with positive yet constructive feedback, and it was nice to feel like your work was valued. Outside of the marketing department however there was definitely a feeling that the marketing department were not valued as highly as the engineers/scientists etc. which was a shame considering the hard work put in by the marketing team, but seemed to be the stigma within a manufacturing company.

My direct manager was extremely supportive throughout the year, always providing support throughout the year when I needed it and giving me invaluable pieces of guidance advice. I was also very well supported by both other marketing managers in the office who were responsible for Marketing and Communications and Digital marketing, not to mention my other colleagues in the office. The marketing director, and head of Marcomms were both also very supportive, and you could approach them for any guidance if you ever needed to.

There was definitely something to always be done within the department, and if you asked for more work it was always there. However, it wasn't always as engaging as you'd have hoped, but this was not a major problem.

I worked on some major projects throughout the year that effected key decisions made by the company, so i definitely felt like I was given a lot of responsibility throughout the year.

I personally think what you learn during your placement year is completely different to what you learn at university, there are some aspects of what you learn on placement that help with university like communication skills being developed and developing Office skills, but the content is so vastly different at university that I don't think you can compare the two. In terms of future careers the placement year did help having it on my CV and I received some really useful training during the year especially on Excel to be precise, as well as some other platforms. I do however wish I had more training in programs such as Adobe Photoshop and InDesign.

The atmosphere was generally good in the office. There was a good balance between office chat and everyone getting their head down and getting on with work.

I was fortunate enough to have training days for the company's PR firm and within the company's sales team, which was all set up by my managers. These experiences are now something I can now add to my CV. The marketing team definitely support any training you would like to do.

This is unfortunately where the company fell in my estimations and not because of the marketing team - specifically because of the graduate team and scheme in place. Just looking at the graduate team, it was almost completely made up of graduates from engineering or scientific backgrounds, with maybe one or two business graduates. It was clear throughout the year that the company valued these graduate roles much higher than any business graduate roles. When I returned for my graduate interview, there was not a single interviewer who had come from a marketing or even business role, but several from a scientific/engineering background, and despite having a really great placement year with the marketing team in terms of the work I had produced, neither myself or the other marketing placement were offered graduate roles, leaving no business graduates in the pool of graduates at the time. I couldn't advise enough to not apply for the graduate scheme as a business or marketing graduate, there is really no scope for progression.

There was only one other placement student in the office and I got along with him really well, and I got along well with the rest of the marketing team too. Every now and then we would go for team meals, nights out and we had a great departmental Christmas party too!

The cost of living was quite good in the area. I lived in a 3 bedroom house share with an en-suite room which was perfectly located being a 5 minute drive from work, and rent was in the region of £400-450 including bills, a TV in your room and Sky (inc. Sky Sports). In terms of cost of socialising Stourport isn't too expensive, there's lots of nice pubs nearby, and drinks are reasonably priced. Eating out is also reasonably priced. There was also a gym nearby that was only £12 a month as a student on a 12 month contract.

I wouldn't say there was much of a nightlife specifically in Stourport. It definitely has an abundance of nice pubs and some good restaurants, but definitely not much of a nightlife scene. Worcester is only half an hour away which has some good places to go on a night out and it's also a university city so there's quite a few students.

For me I was able to play football every Wednesday with friends from work which was always good fun. There were several sports clubs in the area and surrounding areas if you were interested in playing sports, as well as gyms and leisure centres. But apart from that there weren't many activities that you could get involved in.