Student Placement at Prime: My First Week
My First Week On A Placement Year
Five months ago I was a Media student at Sheffield Hallam university: heavy nights out, a booming social life and flexible working hours were the norm. Now I’m on a 10 month placement as a Digital Marketing Executive at This Is Prime. How did this happen? How has my life changed? What is Prime like as a company? Well it’s been one week and here’s what I’ve learnt so far…
The issue is with being a student looking for a placement is it’s one thing finding a company that wants to interview with you, it’s another thing finding a company that you want to interview with. During my placement search I wanted to find a company where I could enjoy my job, show off my creativity, get money and gain a range of key experience in a fun sociable work environment. This is where Prime came in.
I first stumbled across Prime one month into my job hunt and after contacting Neil by email (and learning he was on the Apprentice in 2013 if you hadn’t heard already) we eventually decided I would interview for a role as Primes Digital Marketing Executive. A interview here and a presentation there led to the job eventually being mine. As a company, Prime stuck out to me immediately, mainly because of its unique approach to recruitment and its incredibly friendly work environment.
During my first week, I was told to act like a sponge and learn as much about the company and its recruitment process as I could, to get a good idea on how to run Primes digital marketing in a way that would truly reflect its brand and core values. The main reason Prime stands out to other companies for me is the fact that you can tell the company genuinely cares for its candidates. To me this is a big selling point for students and graduates as every student/grad dreads the idea of getting shoved into a full-time job that they will despise. Rather than selecting random candidates and putting them into an assessment day, Prime takes its time to get to meet their candidates, build a relationship with them and offer them free training at their Prime training day (nowhere near as intense as an assessment day) which benefits both them and the client as well.
On the work environment side of things, the first thing I noticed when entering the office was how different it was to my stereotypical idea of a recruitment company (and they’ve not got a gun to my head as I type this, it genuinely is). When I think of a typical recruitment company I think of people working long hours, stressed trying to hit targets and constantly trying to undercut one another. Within one week at Prime I’d been taken out with the team twice, my manager now refers to me as his ‘son’ and I’ve been welcomed by everyone in the office (they seem especially interested in what type of yogurt I’m going to have for my lunch each day). As well as this, the flexible work hours and creative freedom I have in my role shows Prime trust me just as much as I trust them which I feel is essential in a work environment.
So, in conclusion, five months later and now I’m a Digital Marketing Executive at This Is Prime: heavy nights out, a booming social life and flexible working hours are still the norm. I guess I’ve learnt full time work isn’t too bad after all…
Also, the yoghurt I had last week was Lidl’s own I’ve now upgraded to a Muller Corner.
Jon Rossiter – Digital Marketing Executive.
