UKI Marketing Assistant Review

I have loved working for SAP and really enjoyed the projects that I have worked on throughout the year. I have thoroughly enjoyed working in a corporate environment and intend to pursue a career in a similar industry after university as I feel it is a good fit for me.

I have always felt like a valued member of my team and as a true employee to the business, not just as someone who is in the company for only a year. I have always been involved in team activities whether these have been inside of work or team building exercises outside of the office. In terms of the larger business environment, the intern community are not segregated in any way and are offered the same amount of training and personal investment as full time employees.

My managers have been absolutely fantastic throughout this year in offering guidance and support in my development. They have been there to give advice and help when work has been particularly challenging.

The size of my workload has increased throughout the year as I have been trusted with more responsibilities. It has also been dependent on how busy my managers are at that time as I directly support them. Being in a sales environment as well, events and campaigns are executed and carried out only at certain times throughout the year when sales are more likely to happen, so there are times when the marketing team as a whole are busier than at other times.

My responsibilities have increased over the year as I have built up more trust with my managers. I have gone from supporting small parts of campaigns to managing my own with little support or guidance. Overall, I have been given a great amount of responsibility over the year and far more than I initially thought I would be given.

My year working in SAP’s Marketing department has allowed me to put what I previously learned at university into practice. I was able to apply the theory that I learned about marketing and business into my every day work. However, I also feel that this has worked the other way around and I will now be able to apply what I have learnt at SAP back into my degree. I now not only have a better understanding of how marketing operates in a business environment, but I can also understand how other areas of business work together in order to achieve goals. Seeing how a business operates first hand has been extremely invaluable and I have no doubt that this will give me a better understanding of my university work in my final year.

Although the nature of the business is quite corporate and professional, the actual environment is extremely relaxed. People will chat during work and regularly have coffee breaks or go to lunch with one another. Friday’s are particularly relaxed in the office when people will sit in small groups and are able to wear casual clothes.

My placement year as a whole was well organised from my manager’s perspective. I always had a project to be working on and good guidance and support. However, I feel that as a whole the placement scheme needs some improvement in terms of how it is managed and structured from a HR perspective. I know that the scheme for SAP is relatively new, but now they have 34 interns hired for 2013-2014 they need to ensure that each intern is given the same support throughout the year. Although this was not an issue from my year as my own managers were there when I needed help, I know that this wasn't the same for everyone and some felt that more support and time from HR would have been beneficial to our development if this had been offered from the start.

SAP offer a vast amount of training and development to all employees and interns are offered the same amount. I have attended many training courses and development days throughout the year that have allowed me to learn about my area of work and improve in certain areas or skill sets.

I would love to return to SAP at some point in the future as I have had a great year working with them. However, currently they do not have a proper graduate scheme or programme in order to bring graduates in to the business. I also feel that the training and development that is most suited to a graduate can be found in other organisations that have an established programme and feel this is more suited to me.

The intern community at SAP has been one of my favourite things about working there. As there are 28 of us in our year, the intern community is quite big and makes social outings extremely accessible which we have all made an effort to plan and attend during the year. I have met some great people through the intern programme and hope to remain friends with them long after this.

The cost of living in the Surrey/Middlesex area is quite expensive compared to where I am usually based (Nottinghamshire).

The nightlife around Surrey etc is alright, but being close to London, we also had the option of travelling into the city at times which was great.

I was extremely lucky in my role and had the opportunity to travel to events in London, Manchester and Birmingham and also travelled to Barcelona on one occasion for the marketing kick off meeting in January 2013. Outside of work, we also regularly went out for team meals and activities.