General Marketing Intern Review

I enjoyed my placement towards the start of the year. However, after the year went on, my job became mundane and I started to enjoy it less.

I always felt valued by my colleagues. The business is only a small one so it feels like a large family in the office.

I had weekly update meetings with my line manager. As well as this, I followed TUI Travel PLC's (our mother company) PDP so we reviewed my workload and achievements every 3 months.

On a regular occasion I was pretty bored. I had a list of weekly tasks that needed to be completed but even after finishing them, work I was given only took a few hours (not as long as the managers thought it would take me).

I was given quite a bit of responsibility throughout my placement. I managed the social media accounts, looked after our TEFL Jobs Board with over 20,000 users, and also managed the TEFL email process, from writing content, to designing emails in HTML and then scheduling them to send out to our database of over 300,000 leads.

The skills I have developed whilst on placement have no doubt helped me to become a more confident person in the workplace. This placement will definitely look good on my CV and hopefully help me to land my dream job upon graduation next year.

The office is not corporate whatsoever. It feels like a family and all of the different departments regularly talk to each other. On a Friday, we have "Beer O'Clock" where we all grab a beer and talk about the past week, in terms of what we've done and how it has contributed to the business' success. We also regularly go out in departments, every 3 months we usually go for a meal or do something fun.

My placement has helped me become a more confident person in the workplace. However, there was no clear organisation/route to which I should take over the year. I think this was due to working in quite a small entrepreneurial business.

Once we were trained in our particular position, there wasn't much investment into my personal training and development. Our mother company, TUI Travel, does offer personal training and development courses at their head office in Luton, however, being an intern, we were not allowed to attend these.

As the company is quite a small one, future employment prospects with them is not looking likely. However, I think I'd like to work in more of an established business with a clear vision.

Although all of the interns lived together in an 'intern house', there wasn't a very good social scene amongst us all. As we were only paid a 'stipdend' rather than a salary, we couldn't really afford to do most things that we wanted to do.

Horsforth and Leeds are both okay in terms of the cost of living. The only reason I've rated this low is because we were only paid a small amount and not a normal salary.

Horsforth (a village just outside of Leeds) has a few pubs and clubs (however they aren't the usual clubs students are used to). For a good night out, we'd usually travel into Leeds city centre (only a short 12 min train away).

None of my work colleagues interacted with one another outside of work, which was a shame.