5 minutes with #TeamGuidant: Ella, Marketing Intern

By Ella Day, Marketing Intern

​I previously interned at Guidant Global in their marketing team in the summer of 2018, when they were still known as Guidant Group. I was fortunate enough to return for 10 weeks upon graduation in September. Having seen the hard work that went into getting the website ready for launch, it was great to see the journey over the year, and exciting to see how much progress had been made.

As my time at Guidant Global comes to end, it gives me the perfect opportunity to sit down and reflect upon my experience, as well as the lessons that I have learnt. Aware that I didn’t want to simply write a continuous prose, I decided there was #ABetterWay – by summarising my experience up in an acrostic poem, founded on the principles that, from my perspective, I felt Guidant Global embodied throughout all of their partnerships: We Are You.

• Welcoming
  From day one, everyone was very welcoming, and I immediately felt part of the team. Guidant talk about the importance of candidate experience, and true to form most certainly delivered. Everything was well and truly set up for my first day, running smoothly – I didn’t even encounter any IT difficulties!

• Educating
  From creating videos, to uploading blog posts and optimising imagery on the website, the variety of work I’d been given to do meant I was able to learn about different marketing concepts, and picked up key skills across a variety of platforms used in day-to-day work.

• Awareness
  Having previously heard a lot about D&I company agendas, as well as the need to improve them, I had never really known much else tied to it apart from setting targets and achieving quotas. At Guidant, it’s clear that achieving a diverse and inclusive workplace is not simply a must have, but something that they truly believe in.
  Whether it’s reading a post on Diwali from INfluence (Guidant’s internal employee-led D&I group), to hearing about the Superhero Triathlon (a disability sports series) that members of Guidant are taking part in December, my awareness on all the underrepresented communities has greatly improved, and am more knowledgeable towards the challenges certain people face when they enter the workforce.
  Guidant is committed to a continuous improvement process. During my time here, INfluence has established an over 50’s workplace group as well. Experiencing the inclusive and diverse workforce at Guidant, I was able to witness first hand the benefits of having such a workplace, and it most certainly contributes towards an enriching work experience.

• Relationships
  Given the nature of Guidant’s business, many employees are often based at client sites which makes it easy to lose the “under one roof” family feel. However, having Workplace (a Facebook solution for businesses) meant this was not the case. It fosters a great sense of community by keeping everyone up to date with what has been achieved in the company, as well as being a great place for people to reach out and ask for advice on how to best serve clients. It really makes one feel connected to business activities, no matter how near or far we are to each other.
  Having played team sports since the age of seven, I consider myself to be quite good at working in a team. At Guidant, I was able to experience this in a professional sense. For every task that required collaboration, whether it was the immediate marketing team or different areas of the business, whoever I’d reached out to was more than happy to help, always going above and beyond. There was a true sense of collaboration, ensuring that all the work completed was of the highest standards.

• Experience
  The experience I had was interesting and productive. It gave me a real sense of the work done, and the multiplicity of demands of the marketing team. Having worked closely with our content strategist, I was able to understand up close how content gets structured, as well as the work that went towards planning for the following calendar year.
  Whilst researching content, I also familiarised myself with the future challenges for workforce management and how businesses were best equipped to deal with these. As part of the so-called ‘snowflake generation’, I now better understand how I can impact the workforce, and will aim to disprove the myth of Gen Z workers being lazy.

• Yourself
  At Guidant, everyone can truly be themselves. Whether this is by embracing the ‘dress for your day’ policy (our marketing manager, Tom, sometimes comes in his Iron Maiden band t-shirt), being able to work in an agile manner to suit your life circumstances (our Talent Attraction and Acquisition Manager, Emma, works from home most of the time as she’s a military wife), or needing the flexibility to work on personal projects (Stephen, our marketing executive, regularly attends disability events to raise awareness on this matter).
  Mental health in the workplace is slowly being recognised as something that companies need to start paying attention to. Guidant, however, are well ahead on this, having mental health first aiders across the business, as well as using INfluence as a platform to share information and tips. It’s clear how important personal wellbeing is at Guidant, and it ensures that everyone knows that there is a support network in place as and when they need it.

• Opportunity
  I was given real responsibility right from the beginning. My tasks included writing blogs for the website, uploading content onto the website, and build landing pages to help improve SEO rankings. I really felt like a valued and trusted member of the team, and being given responsibilities that weren’t menial was the best way to learn and enable me to get a true insight into the various daily work of the marketing department.
  What I enjoyed the most was working on customer success case studies. This involved a very collaborative process, which meant I was able to see the variety of clients that Guidant had, the unique work they did, and what personalised solutions each had.

• Unique
  Guidant take on a unique approach to recruitment. Their overarching ethos (and actually practicing what they preach) of being an inclusive employer by championing the overlooked and underrepresented is refreshing. I feel that everyone is directly involved in the company mission of #ABetterWay, and this can be seen in their day to day work.

Throughout my time at Guidant I feel I have developed on both a personal and professional level, and would like to thank everyone at Guidant Global for the lessons that I have learnt.

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As you’ve heard from Ella, we believe talented individuals aren’t necessarily the ones that have the most experience, but a great work ethos. Sounds like you? Come join our inclusive and supportive family today >