Kick-starting my career

At Coventry Business School, the opportunity to take a placement between your second and third years is available on all of our courses. Corey Waters-Long, Advertising and Marketing BA (Hons) student, secured a year-long placement with Biocote Ltd. We caught up with Corey to find out how he is getting on.

Why a placement year?

For my university experience to feel complete, I had to do an industry placement so that I could gain practical experience in advertising and marketing as well as theory.

With the experience I have had on placement and the different areas of the business I have been able to see and learn from it has greatly improved my understanding of social media content in business and how essential it is to a business’ strategy. I wouldn’t have got this in-depth understanding of the industry without a placement year.

Why did you take up the social media marketing placement at BioCote®?

I have always had a strong interest in social media marketing, I find the Business-to-Business (B2B) audience in particular the most interesting to explore. BioCote® provided the exact opportunity I was looking for to give me valuable experience within my main field of study and get insights into a completely new industry.

What have you been getting up to at BioCote®?

At BioCote I have been creating social media content to a schedule that I and my line manager discuss each week. In addition to this, I have developed and monitored our social media analytics system that measures basic metrics of posts to gauge post performance and how we can tailor content best suited to our audiences.

I have also assisted different departments on tasks which has given me insights into areas, such as sales, partner marketing, and a little bit of microbiology.

What new skills will you take back with you to Coventry University for your final year of studies?

The overall knowledge and understanding of the workplace is an asset in itself, which will allow me to propose effective and applicable social media marketing solutions.

With this in mind, I believe that the most valuable skills that this experience has allowed me to develop is organisation through the development and structuring of the social media schedule and content.

The organisational capabilities I have developed from working on multiple projects at the same time will help me in preparing for the Advertising and Marketing exams and working on my dissertation, whilst also searching for graduate job roles and preparing other assessments.

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