Marketing and Digital placement: Rebekah's experience

Where was your placement and what were your tasks?

The job took place in the Yang Fujia building on the University’s Jubilee campus. Right off the bat this was exciting because I had never explored this campus before and was only familiar with the University Park campus prior to the placement.

My tasks mostly involved creating content for prospective students at the university. This meant mocking up Instagram posts, TikToks, website pages, etc. During my time there, my main project was to encourage students to join the university by promoting our academics and their origin stories. We did this by sending a questionnaire to a bunch of academics that would then respond with their experiences. We then used these responses to put together content, that would hopefully get prospective students to recognise that our academics are regular people too!

What made you want to take part in a placement?

I am quite a naturally reserved person, so I was desperate to gain communication and collaborative skills. The office space was perfect for this, as it was a calm place to socialise and it didn’t cause as much stress as, say, a customer service role would have. I also wanted to put something a bit more creative on my CV – something that would display skills I hadn’t demonstrated in previous jobs.

I soon realised that this placement did that and more! Learning about content creation gave me the experience I was looking for as a working musician. I was able to apply a bunch of this knowledge to my band’s promotional content which turned out to be really beneficial.

What was the most enjoyable part of your placement?

I most enjoyed getting to know the academics and hearing their stories and backgrounds. It was interesting finding out how they fell into their subjects and what made them ‘tick’. Hearing their stories changed my way of thinking about my own progress as a young person.

Often, especially as a student, it can feel like you are making the wrong choices or taking the wrong path, but from the academic’s responses I have learnt that the best thing to do is take opportunities that interest you, even if you think you’re not that good at something.

What transferable skills did you gain?

This role taught me how to effectively communicate in a professional workplace, which was incredibly helpful as I am quite a shy person. Luckily everyone was super lovely, and the office was a comfortable, stress-free environment. I also learnt how to write emails a lot better. It might seem silly to regard this as a ‘skill’, but I learnt a lot in terms of how to greet someone and sign off an email correctly, and how to give the right impression!

I also learnt how to manage my time as half of my placement hours were spent remotely, so it was important that dedicated a set amount of time to my placement work.

What advice would you give to someone considering a placement?

I would say keep an open mind. This placement was not my first choice so I was a bit worried that I wasn’t going to enjoy it, but I couldn’t have been more wrong! I went from not even knowing that this role existed, to now considering it as a future career path. I can guarantee that you’ll learn something from a placement experience, even if the job isn’t what you expected it to be.

Find out more about our Faculty of Arts placements, in the Placement Experiences blog.