Work Experience Blog – Gemma Blank
I am a pupil from HymersCollege, I have just finished my GCSE's and will be going into year12 next year. I chose to come to Rollits to do a week of workexperience in marketing.
I began my week of workexperience on Monday 1st July with Pat Coyle who is the director ofclient relations. Her main role involves leading and managing themarketing function.
On Monday Ibegan with some of the less challenging jobs such as taking thepaper names out of the plastic badge holders from a previous eventin order for them to be easily used and accessible for future use.I was also given marketing reports to put into date order. Althoughthis seems tedious it was very interesting to read about thedifferent members of staff being invited to various places by theirclients and the types of relationships that have developed throughthe social side of many people's job which seems to be one of thehigh lights but is also vital to help achieve a sustainablecompany. Places ranged from Hull City games to lunch at the Hoteldu Vin in York.
That afternoon I was allowedto sit-in in two meetings which surprisingly were completelydifferent. The first was an internal meeting with only members ofstaff. The discussion was about the progressions of being able tostore data such as client's contacts in one place and being able tocollaborate two different data systems. I have to admit I didn'treally know what was going on and because of this it seemed to lasta long time however it showed that even small companies have toensure that they're keeping up with technology to obtain the bestsystems and easiest functions for their staff.
In the second meeting I waslucky enough to be involved with a man from a branding company-Eskimo Soup. This meeting was more like what I had expectedmarketing to be about. The meeting was to discuss designs for newbanners and decoration for upcomingevents.
From this day I learnt thatmarketing isn't what I expected and that in fact it isn't justabout the branding and advertising of a company.
On Tuesday2nd I spent the majority of my day preparing for a presentation atthe end of the week on how I think Rollits should presentthemselves and their information about law at a school careersevening in order to encourage students to speak to Rollitsrepresentatives rather than other law firm's representatives whoare also there.
Pat also showed me how toupdate and add articles to the Rollits website which seems tome a complicated process, however, she assured me once you get usedto it, it's not, it's rather simple.
That day I attended a meetingwith a lady involved in recruitment and also began thisblog.
My last task of the day was togo through the surveys of past events and collect the feedback in atable by using a tally method. This showed how well rated andattended the events were and how to improve them infuture.
Wednesday 3rdwas a little more exciting. With the Rollits Golf Day on Thursday4th, there were some preparations to do. In the morning I learnthow to laminate, this was for the signs and posters withcompetition rules and sponsors on. With these laminated sheets, Ithen had to hammer pins into wooden sticks, attaching these sheetsto make stick in the ground signs.
Further preparations for golfwere typing up the handicaps and their translation to ¾ handicaps,not that I know what a ¾ handicap is.
Thursday wasa nice day helped by the weather being kind and the sun shining.The Golf Day was a relaxing day for me as my job was to help pinthe signs up and help sign in the golfing teams. Teams had a settime to sign in and tee off so with teams slowly coming to sign in,there was nothing too stressful to do. Signing in involvedchecking the player's handicaps and explaining some basicrules.
Over all this was a veryenjoyable day due to the atmosphere from Rollits clients andstaff.
Friday, mylast day, I prepared for my presentation which started at eleveno'clock. The topic of my presentation was how Rollits could improveon the way they present themselves and their information at aschools careers evening. Hymers annually have careers eveningswhich Rollits attend to which meant I was able to speak from mypersonal experience of attending the careers evening andRollits.
After doing my presentation, Ihad the task of writing a press release about the Golf Day I wentto on Thursday. I enjoyed writing this as I myself experienced theday's atmosphere and was a witness to the amount of organisationand effort that Rollits as a firm had put in to make the day sosuccessful and raise the money they did for such worthy andappreciative causes.
The week was definitely aworthwhile experience. Not only have I experienced general officelife and office jobs but I have also learnt a lot about themarketing career and just how diverse the jobs within marketingare.
I have enjoyed many aspects ofthe work experience such as helping on the Golf Day, sitting in inmeetings, preparing for my presentation and even having my ownoffice for the week. Althoughat the moment I have confidently ticked marketing off the list as acareer I do not want to do, I believe that is what the workexperience process is about.
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