January 13, 2015, by Charlotte Lambert

My Placement with Sky

By Charlotte Lambert, student blogger

The autumn term is generally a time for settling back into university life, but as a second-year student, this autumn involved dozens upon dozens of applications for work experience, internships and summer placements. For the most part these applications led to nothing which was more than a little disheartening, but eventually one application succeeded.

Towards the end of term, I was accepted onto the Sky marketing work experience placement. As this response came months after sending in my application, I had already made my peace with being unsuccessful so receiving the acceptance came as a great surprise.

The application process was straightforward and there was no interview involved. The only cause for concern was that I had only been given two weeks, from being accepted to the start of the placement, to make arrangements for accommodation and transport.

Heading south to London

As I am embarrassed to admit, this was my first ever trip to London, so spending a week by myself in an entirely unknown city seemed too daunting to face. But rather than admit defeat before even trying to get out of my comfort zone, I jumped in at the deep end and set off for the Sky Broadband headquarters in Osterley.

A whirlwind placement

On the first day we were given a tour around the Sky campus and introduced to our respective teams. There were  14 other work experience students in roles within HR, business, and marketing. Across the week, I shadowed staff in a range of meetings and was given the opportunity to gain an insight into the different stages of the media planning process.

As my time was with the Brand Marketing team, I was able to observe meetings with advertising agencies and the Sky PR department.  I was set a number of projects, from giving a presentation on creative and post campaign analysis to implementing a budget reporting process and recording raised finance requests. I was also given the chance to support an internal communications campaign for targeted TV advertising.

Key takeaways

Before my placement I had had very little experience of  marketing and I could only guess at what the role entailed. I am now at least familiar with the different sectors within marketing!

The two sectors that I found most interesting were brand marketing and trading. Brand marketing involves large-scale campaigns and collaborating with the other departments to present a concise front, whereas trading is on a much smaller scale researching the effect that different commercials and approaches have on sales.

As I found this placement myself, my suggestion to students also searching for work opportunities would be to approach companies and businesses directly. It shows initiative and personal interest in that company, and you may find a placement that was not advertised elsewhere.

If you want to find out more about the work experience and internship opportunities and help with your applications, visit our website, explore the events on offer this term and talk to a member of our team.

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