My Placement Year with Tech Giant, Samsung

  

We sat down with final year Business Management student Oksana, to find out about her placement year as a Product Manager with Samsung at their UK Headquarters in Surrey.  You can see Oksana talking about her placement here.

  

How did you first secure your placement?  

I looked at various websites suggested by the Careers team and found the placement year through the university's CareerConnect platform.  

The Careers team then advised me so I could rewrite my CV in order to fit the job description better and they gave feedback on my covering letter. I also got help with interview preparation and preparation for the assessment centre. That was a big part of the application process for the placement.   

I submitted my application online with my CV, my covering letter and some details. I then needed to complete online tests and an interview. Once I passed those I was invited to the assessment centre, which took the full day.  

The university Careers team helped me prepare for both the interview and assessment centre. 

  

 

Did you have an idea of the type of industry you wanted to work in?  

I wouldn’t say I was looking exclusively at tech companies. I just wanted to gain experience in a larger organisation. I looked at various types of roles at various companies that sounded interesting and had some project management elements.

 What did the placement involve?  

I was working as a Product Manager in the monitors department in Samsung UK. In the office, there were two sections, the UK part and the European part. I was working in the UK office, so I was doing a variety of product management work which included working with various teams such as Marketing, Sales and Operations. I got an idea of how different parts of the business worked, as I was helping different teams out on bits and pieces.   

Even though my role was in product management, I got to lead a three to four month long project in a team with other placement students all from different universities. It was up to us to deliver a project for a sponsor within the company.  That was a very fun experience!  

 Were you paid for the year?  

Yes, I got paid during the placement year, and I got bonuses too. Bonuses were performance related, so according to my own performance as well as the performance of the department I was working in. I set goals while being in the company that I needed to meet while working there.  

 What skills did you develop during your time at Samsung?   

I think definitely time management. There were a lot of things that needed to be done at the same time, like project deadlines as well as new monitors coming out, so I had to balance the different things I’d been working on. Also, communication skills, especially in a professional environment, because I'd never really experienced that, prior to my placement. I'd say another one would be teamwork, having an opportunity to listen to other people, take their viewpoints on and have an impact on the work I'm doing as well.  

Were there any technical skills or new software you learned?  

Definitely. I used Excel quite a lot and suddenly by the end of the placement I could do things like pivot tables, VLOOKUP, everything. There's a lot of different software in the company that I got to use but it's more specific to the company. Excel is a big one that can be used wherever I go.    

How have you found coming back to your final year at university?  

I'd say I appreciate the freedom of being at university a lot more after having worked for a year. I miss the salary! It was definitely more structured last year. I knew that I was in the office from 9am to about 5.30pm. I had my own list of things I was doing, whereas at university it's more up to me to decide how to organise my time outside of the lectures. I think that it has really impacted my studies in my third year because I'm a lot better with organisation and planning ahead.   

What advice would you give to a prospective student who's looking to study Business Management and do a placement?  

I would say to go for it. It's a very valuable experience to do a placement because it's impacted what modules I chose to study in my third year, and it's impacted what I'm writing my dissertation on. I decided to take the project management and social media marketing modules in my final year, as I found those topics interesting during my time at Samsung.  With a Business Management degree, I could go into any industry really, but I'm quite interested in real estate and property so I might go into that area after I graduate.

 

If you think a year in industry as part of your Business Management degree could be for you, your Faculty Employability Adviser can help. You can contact them through the University's Careers Hub.

  

 

 

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