My marketing work experience at Guidant Global: Amber's story

By Amber McLaughlin, Marketing Work Experience

​As a second year BA Geography student, I approached Guidant Global looking to gain practical work experience in a thriving marketing environment, as part of my ‘Workplace Learning’ module.

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I was offered a placement with the Marketing Talent Team due to a keen interest in how digital content is created for recruitment campaigns.
Right from the start, I felt really welcomed by the team and valued in my activities, calming any initial nerves I had being in an unfamiliar environment. The first few days of my placement involved shadowing Marketing Manager Steph, alongside Rachael and Daibhid in the Luton office, where they explained the ins-and-outs of recruitment marketing.

From there, I was invited to the London office for a day, where I met Alexa, Guidant's Global Marketing Director, Stephen and Rachel (who make up the rest of the Talent Marketing Team) as well as the Corporate Marketing Team. I sat in on various presentations to a get a sense of what the London workplace is like (after surviving the busy commute!).

Now, it was my turn to help the team.
Rachel tasked me with completing benchmarking exercises for various roles and market research looking at effective career sites, which allowed me to use my existing research skills to understand new marketing tasks.

I also had to source high quality photos for use in various recruitment campaigns using client databases. In addition, Daibhid and I worked on social media recruitment, using various job board sites and Facebook to advertise roles on behalf of clients – and we had a hire on the day!

Using what I had learnt so far about recruitment marketing, I began writing and editing content for Featured Employer pages on Guidant Global’s own candidate site. Interestingly, I also tested out a new candidate application chatbot before it went live on the site (check out our JCB chat bot), spending time trying to catch any bugs in the system and reporting them back to the team.

I found managing digital content really engaging, through editing and re-configuring the site to make sure it is as visually and practically effective as possible to candidates.

This experience has shown me the dynamics of a strong team environment.
I felt well informed and valued for my contributions every step of the way, learning new skills and actively applying them throughout my time with the Marketing Talent Team. This experience has not only refined my career aspirations, allowing me to consider marketing as a potential route, but has equipped me with key employability skills that I can take away and use in the future.

Guidant Global offers a professional, friendly and welcoming workplace, which was the perfect environment for me to learn and experience aspects of marketing for the first time. The Talent Team made every effort to make me feel supported and appreciated throughout this experience and I’d like to thank them for making my placement so fantastic!

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