Work experience during lockdown

Just because there is a pandemic it doesn’t mean that young people should have their opportunities curtailed. Now more than ever they need an extra foot up. So four weeks into lockdown we reconsidered the freezing of this year’s work experience programme.

We had little to lose if the delegation and training were difficult while working from home and there weren’t a lot of distractions their side given that school had slowed down somewhat. After checking that they had access to a computer, login rights set up and dates agreed we were all set.

Here is an A level student’s feedback. It was a success for both parties. She fitted into the team like a natural. Phew!

I was lucky enough to have been offered ‘remote work experience’ for a week, by the lovely team at Sapio Research during my time off school (8th-12th of June). Although I was unable to visit the company at their office in London (due to Coronavirus) I still had an insightful and engaging week, communicating through Microsoft Teams and E-mail. The week gave me a new perspective of the marketing world and as a result is something that I am considering for my own career path.

For the first few days of my placement, I was checking data that had been collected from several countries around the world in PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets. This was very interesting for me as I did not understand before how research was presented to companies in a way which could be easily compared and understood. After this, I had the fantastic opportunity to join a meeting with a client and find out more about Sapios customers needs and wants, from this, I was given the responsibility of writing the first draft of a questionnaire based on what I had found out that morning in the meeting. This gave a further insight into everyday demands of someone working in the market research industry. Finally, I helped by writing some short descriptions for their new Opinipoll website, explaining what Sapio’s new brand can offer, incorporating things that I am interested in outside of marketing, for example ‘fashion consumer behaviour’. 

Even though I was not face to face with the Sapio team, I still felt very welcomed, joining team meetings every morning to stay up to date on what everyone had been doing the day before is just one example. Also, they were all very accommodating, providing me with an email address so I could stay connected with everyone and have any questions I had answered.

Overall, the week was fantastic and will hopefully help me massively in my future career, my new understanding of the market research field will be very valuable as I explore the industry more. It was also helpful to gain a better understanding of the professional world, and this will become increasingly important as I get older. The experience allowed me to engage with some very lovely people who have widened my understanding of the field of market research, and for that I am very grateful. – Zoe B.