BA (Hons) Business and Marketing student, Ruth Walton is currently on placement with Global brand Triumph Motorcycles. Ruth explains how her course prepared her for the workplace and how her placement is developing her employability skills.

“I found my placement through a careers fair at university. My academic adviser really helped me through the application process inducing interview tips and supporting me with my nerves!

“What I most enjoy about my role as an industrial digital marketing placement student at Triumph is the community within my workplace. Being able to collaborate with the wider marketing department has been such an amazing and fun experience. I’ve been able to gain a better understanding on a multitude of marketing processes and how they all work alongside each other.

“I’m the first line of support for our 40 global markets, in which I work using several different languages, helping amend any issues with their sites. I also work on the development of our key web areas like dealerships and bike maintenance.

“Day to day I’m involved in the creation of webpages and optimisation of web functions, including any bug fixes. I also create regular reports related to the website.

“Working on the website, I need to have a strong understanding on a customer’s journey and attitude, during my course I was taught different ways in how to understand the mindset of a customer and how to create an online space that works best for them. 

“In my role I need to not only understand how changes to the website will affect a customer’s journey but also how it will affect our website analytics. This is something that I monitor via monthly reporting. I was able to gain knowledge about how to effectively report on the module ‘Data Analysis for Business Decisions’ on my course. It’s a necessity for me to have a clear understanding of how to read and present the data clearly so I can suggest in meetings and one-to-ones on how we can optimise our processes and pages, so this really helped.

“I’m involved in new bike launches which is really interesting. This involves receiving initial wireframes for webpages and creating content accordingly. Alongside this I also assist in the approval process of webpages ensuring they meet and exceed the expectations set.

“Having done many group projects as part of my course presenting to my lecturers and fellow students, it’s really helped me grow my confidence in presenting my own ideas. It also meant now on placement I feel comfortable when presenting my ideas to a board of people.

“My course has really helped me with the competing demands of my role as it taught me how to efficiently prioritise tasks and manage my workload.

“I would 100% recommend a placement to anyone at university studying a degree in business. 
By having a hands-on role and applying my knowledge it’s grown my confidence and furthered my understanding of the world of work. Within my placement year I have had the opportunity to join many courses to help fine tune my skills, such as courses in advanced excel and PowerPoint. I’ve been able to improve on multiple skills, such as time management, prioritisation, teamwork, and many others which will be perfectly transferrable into my final year of university and any role when I graduate.”