Assistiant Brand Manager Review

Unilever has a really nice atmosphere, especially within the placement scheme as there are so many students joining at once. Before beginning they hold an introduction to learn more about the company and meet all of the students. I really enjoyed the year due to the large variety of projects I worked on and the great people.

I worked with a really friendly team who were all eager to help me learn when I first joined and always ready to help by answering any questions. In meetings my ideas were always valid and I did not feel like 'just an intern' whilst I was there at all, I was given real responsibilities within my work.

I was given a lot of advice throughout my placement, this consisted of weekly catch up's with my line manager where I could get feedback on the work I was doing and support in my projects in an informal manner. I also had mid year and end of year reviews to track my progress.

Work loads varied a lot as with most roles in marketing meaning depending on the time of year there would be different projects going on however this meant it balanced out well! When there was a quite time I would ask my line manager for additional projects to take on.

Throughout my placement I was brand lead point of contact which meant a had a fairly large amount of responsibility and I was working on real projects with agencies and retailers. I would often take on multiple responsibilities at once working towards different deadlines which also gave me the exposure to working in an agile environment.

I am yet to finish my final year of University however I feel the skills I developed will benefit me greatly as working at Unilever has given me such a large and varied insight into working in marketing in a global FMCG company. It has given me the chance to view the business both from a customer and an agency side and I believe I will be able to bring many of the skills with me into my university work.

The office atmosphere was great in the way it was open plan meaning you are easily able to walk up to different teams desks and generate FaceTime exposure rather than just communication over email. It is a casual environment, the office also has a canteen and a gym for employees to use.

The scheme was organised really well, with lots of introduction and training events to introduce us into the company. They also set up a Facebook group with everyone before we started so we could get to know each other and also use this to find housemates for those which were moving away.

The company began by bringing us into lots of training events to learn the basic skills we would need for our year, and learn how to use all the different pieces of software we would be using regularly. They also ran whole company sessions where you could upskill in areas like purpose, innovation and creativity.

The graduate scheme offered by Unilever is really good however highly competitive, as they offer a 3 year course where you move around different job roles to help with internal progression within the company on top of gaining exposure to many areas which you may not through an entry level role.

The social scene for students was really good, there would often be evening events planned between us to meet up throughout the year especially at the start to get to know each other, we also organised an end of year meetup between us to catch up with each other.

The offices are in London and Surrey meaning that housing, food and drinks are all relatively expensive. The further out of London you live the cheaper it is, I was based in the Leatherhead office so lived in Epsom which was cheaper than central. Transport to and from work was expensive for everyone however.

Although nightlife was expensive and it was difficult to find student nights there are loads of great clubs and a huge variety dependent on your interests. The Leatherhead office is not too far from central London or the 100VE office is in an easy journey between all of London's main clubs.

Yes there were team away days- for ours we spent the night at Bullins Bognor. There were also lots of volunteer opportunities like a beach clean up, the great walk and Dove day. Work teams could also create netball teams which would compete against each other in a league.