E-Commerce Commercial Intern Review

This placement was a great insight into working at an FMCG. The amount of responsibility given to interns can greatly shape and impact the projects being worked on. In the same breath there is still room to make mistakes and learn to develop your career without thinking it will stain any future progress.

Management and team members are quite welcoming and are always open to discuss and listen to your ideas. The only limitation which comes with the field of being an intern, is that you are limited at times to admin type of work, which can be repetitive and undervalued. However, speaking up about this and asking for greater responsibility is always the answer to feel more valued.

There were always opportunities to gain support and guidance from management, through informal coffee catch ups on generic guidance of life and work balance to formal meetings to learn the ins and outs of account P&L's or marketing initiatives. L'Oreal has a culture of very fast paced and employees always being busy, however, not so busy that you don't feel supported throughout.

Everyday at L'Oreal is different. Some days there won't be a chance to sit down and have lunch in the canteen whilst there will be some days where you can get a coffee with a friend. Within my role in Commercial, we're constantly on the go with working alongside many stakeholders i.e. Buyers, Marketing, Supply Chain and Finance. Therefore I was always busy!

From my first week of receiving a handover, I felt that I did not know what I signed up for. There was so much to take on whilst so little time to understand. However, within a month I fully understood my account and was given a lot of responsibility and accountability to work alongside my line manager. At the time, it was only myself and my line manager on our account, where the workload is split into two, I was given quite a lot of responsibility.

The skills learnt on placement has benefited me quite a lot towards my degree in many functions of the business. For example, learning an account P&L allowed me to use information in Marketing questions as well as promotional launches. Working in a small team in a wider team environment has taught me how to communicated effectively internally, whilst it also taught me negotiation skills when speaking to external stakeholders.

The general atmosphere of the office fluctuates on an hourly basis. At times everyone will be glued to their screens or very focused in meetings to get things completed. Whilst at other times everyone will be speaking to each other and having casual conversations i.e. the best Burger's in London (Personally 5Guys is amazing!) or are pineapples allowed on Pizzas.

The internship is set out for you to develop work skills throughout the course of the 12 months. The organisation of it had key points where the intern could track their progress and see if the function or role was suitable for them. This organisation allowed me to always be aware of my progression.

L'Oreal has many internal training and development sessions which explore many topics such as e-commerce, team involvement, basic excel training etc. There is a lot of investment into their employees, however for interns, there is no external training courses which we can do whilst on placement, i.e. CIPs qualification. However, despite lack of external training, their are many areas to develop personally outside of work through the Prince's Trust volunteering programme (Simply Amazing!)

I believe that future employment prospects within the organisation is quite high as L'Oreal likes to retain good talent. Once an intern applies them self and shows devotion into the company and bettering themselves, L'Oreal spots this and tries to aid this. The more you give in the more they will recognise and the more better your chances are for future employment.

There was a huge intern comity which who were actively engaging with activities. For example, there would be nights out whilst sport teams to join whilst on placement. The only limitation is the variety of activities, increasing the number of activities to reach the diversity of all interns could have been done better.

I lived at home whilst on placement, which made it cheaper to commute rather than rent/live close by. Commuting from just outside of London allowed me to get some more rest on the train however it is still expensive despite having a railcard. I think, it would have been great if L'Oreal offered to subsidise the costs of transportation.

I'm not one to go out, so I don't really have a comment about this, however, on the nights that I have been out, it mainly feels like fun is fuelled by drinks. Which is not what I personally like, however, it does seem fun for everyone else around. It just depends on your subjective opinion of what a good night is.

There were quite a few opportunities to get involved with outside of work. I volunteered with the Prince's Trust to help disadvantage young people in Wales on teaching career development skills and engaging in fun activities like Geo-catching. I was also allowed the opportunity to go to one of our buyers annual ball (If you're lucky).