Marketing Assistant Review

Overall a great year with a lot of development opportunities. Brilliant work life balance and good company culture. Work was varied with peaks and troughs in terms of work load. Overall I will look back upon my year having learnt a lot about myself and working in a professional environment.

The placement scheme differs on which business group you are placed in. For me I was in a very small team which decreased in size over the course of the placement. This being said the small size of my team allowed me to take on a large variety of work and form very strong relationships with all members.

Originally I was appointed to a manager who was fairly young, he had a fairly laid back approach to management and this was not best for me in my early months. However a few months in I changed manager and with this I began to learn a lot more and got greater guidance in how best to manage my workload.

Workload varied with differing times of the year, team members holiday and how much I was willing to take on. On a weekly basis I was never swamped. However, on occasions I had to push work back as I was too busy, this was not an issue as my manger was fully aware of my workload and didn't want to stretch me too thin.

The breadth and depth of responsibility is endless, the year is really what you make of it. I was able to prove myself to be competent within the first six months, this allowed me to take on tasks that really shaped and influenced the marketing division which I worked in. At 3M you can always ask for more work.

I have no doubt the skills I have learnt will stand me in good stead not only for life but also for my career. I began putting together development plan with my manager and this was reviewed on a monthly basis- exposing me to work I was both weak at but also interested in.

The work life balance at 3M is sensational, Within your teams you are made to feel welcome and everyone at the office wants to get to know you and learn about you. There are times where the office feels quiet, this is mainly due to teams being out at exhibitions or school holidays.

From the first week all the way through to week 52 the placement has felt very well organised. With lots of training throughout the year as well as good management I have been able to enhance my skill set and learn what it's like to be 3Mer. I could always reach out to our HR contact if I had an issue.

There were numerous training opportunities arranged for the group of placement students. These were by both external and internal groups. They ranged from learning the techniques of lean six sigma to presentation skills. The presentation skills training was very valuable to me and I now feel I can present with confidence conveying what I want to get across.

After a positive year across all facets, this is where 3M fall down. With no graduate scheme in place and the company still having a large number of contract workers it seems like future employment prosepects will be limited. 3M have a fairly ageing workforce and In my opinion are in need of a consistent influx of young talent to counter this. I have no doubt if returning in a full time roll the depth and breadth of your career has the potential to be incredible.

With 13 placement students in bracknell we had a brilliant social scene. Split across three different houses (organised by yourself). This meant we had nights out, BBQs and met up over weekends to spend time together. I believe we could have been a lucky year group but all placement students made effort with each other