Product Marketing Assistant Review

I have definitely enjoyed my placement, being lucky enough to travel to various places around Europe as part of my role to take part in customer visits, dealer showcasing and events. There has also been the less glamorous side of the role with excel spreadsheets and graphs, however, overall I have enjoyed working for Sony.

I feel that my input has been valued in various situations, and that I have had the freedom of being able to take on some projects myself as the lead role, which has certainly been a valuable experience and am glad that my colleagues have felt able to give me this responsibility.

For the first two weeks of my placement, I was given a comprehensive handover by the previous intern which helped to settle in. Since then, any questions or guidance that I needed was answered by those around me in my team, and this has even stretched overseas with management being separated by regions.

Throughout the year there have been varying periods of how busy I am. This has depended upon the type of events happening and last minute product launches or information given to the team, but then there have also been less busy periods which allowed me to get to know my colleagues more personally.

As I mentioned before, I have been given tasks to manage on my own (with support from colleagues and management if needed) which has given me a great sense of achievement when these projects have been carried out and in the end been successful. It has definitely been a good learning environment and allowed me to test organisation skills.

I have been able to see the 'ins and outs' of many different teams in the organisation, especially being surrounded by other interns in different teams and getting to know them personally and what they are up to on a daily basis. From this - I know that I want to try out different roles in the future to see if I may fit in other environments before settling in the current role that I have.

My office is much friendlier than I first expected, the attire being smart casual which allows a little more freedom in the workplace. There are also social gatherings such as the Christmas party to look forward to annually, along with the office decoration competitions which are always fun to take part in (I built a gingerbread house, it was great)... Generally everybody is happy to help each other if they are stuck or give advice to anybody who is new.

As much as I have enjoyed the internship, it was a little difficult at the beginning as my manager is very busy most of the time, and it was tricky getting to know the cameras properly with technical specifications (needed for dealer visits and roadshows etc.) It was also a little difficult getting to know what my role consisted of and which jobs I should be consistently doing, and which jobs I should expect to be working on every now and then.

There are many options available for training, whether it be CIM modules dedicated to Sony, or in-house training sessions on team leadership and building activities.

There are graduate job opportunities, however, this is mainly for the Consumer segment, the professional side is much more competitive and does not have these graduate opportunities.

The social scene was very good between the interns, especially since most of us were in the similar situation of moving away from home.

The cost of living is definitely more than I was used to as a student, however, there are some much nicer areas and newer houses to choose from. Although if you are on a budget, then there is also many accommodation areas that can cater to this.

The nightlife was... not great. There was one club in town but there are many bars and restaurants nearby instead.

There is a social club within the office that arrange trips and events for people to take part in. There is also a cinema in the office that can be rented out occasionally.