In order to share better my adventure in this country, I suggest you to read a transcript of an interview on the job in marketing that I conducted with one of my colleagues of the company I realize why my internship for three months:
• What course of study did you follow?
My core studies are related to e-commerce/electronic marketing. I can follow every project referring to the web presence of a company and activities that need to be implemented to promote and communicate a website.
Each marketing specialism gives you a fantastic opportunity to explore all major areas of the marketing world, such as services marketing or B2B marketing or research marketing. You can then concentrate on areas you would like to explore further.
• What is your professional career and for how many years do you work for Linde?
When I graduated, in 2010, I came in front of a difficult economic enviroment, with limited working positions for young people. Additionally, I had to face my luck of working excperience. However the difficulties, I have been working for marketing department 4 years. My first job was as a Marketing and Communications Trainee at “Peoplecert Group”. As a marketing trainee I contributed to the maintainance of relevant blogs to promote the company, I was participating to conferences and events both off-line and online to increase the brand awareness. Furthermore, I was part of the team for the creation of the official company pages/profiles on social media to facilitate interaction with customers. Finally, it would be valueable to be mentioned that I worked for the developing of newsletters: design, layout, publishing, editing, printing and distribution.
I participated Linde Hellas in September of 2011, I got the position of webmaster due to my core studies. I was responsible for creation, maintenance, review, search engine optimization activities and reporting of the web presence of the company. My background in graphic design helped me to develop more activities related to publishing printing material and implement of marketing activities to grow company’s brand awareness.
• What is your job? (missions, tasks, responsibilities ...)
As you understood from my previous answer, I spend my day through all communication and promoting activities that a company needs to increase brand awareness and build a customer-oriented profile to the market. Additionally, I work on sales surveys to counter customers' satisfaction. Recently, I undertook the customer allocation through sales representatives/responsibles and the maintenance of the platform that sales representatives submit the related activities to the customers. Linde Hellas as a member of THE LINDE GROUP encourages its employees to have a high perfomance organization attitude that’s why I always give my best and stay connected with the rest marketing mix factors than “promote”.
• What is the nature of your contract? (CDD, CDI, official ...)
I have signed an official employment contract with the company due to the latest regulations of the collective lambour agreement based on the current greek law.
• What are your working conditions? (availability, schedules, constraints, benefits ...)
I typically work 8 hours per day, 5 days per week. I have same benefits with the most developed european employees. My vacations can be fixed due to my shedule and I own 25 day-offs per year. Last but not least is the provided health insurance that allows me to benefit medical services.
• Describe a typical week or large business trends (meetings, travel, project management, negotiation ...)
My every day routine includes a lot of work in the office with every day communication with purchase department to finalize projects with graphic designers, events providers, translation companies etc. I work closely to sales department to provide them with material they need to submit an offer. Depends on the projects, sometimes I have to go to visit suppliers to arrange details for an upcoming meeting or event, sometimes I spend my time trying to find the ultimate way to show a product in a brochure, sometimes I strugle to provide data to the management team by filling out huge roadmaps, other times I maintain the web content or announce newsletters, I organise corporate responsibility activities etc. I don’t travel a lot, mostly management team travels but I work with different projects and this keeps me alive and makes me excited every day.
• What are the reasons that made you decide to do this job?
I decide to follow marketing because gives you the opportunity to act in parallel with the business, by promoting and selling products or services. You can use the marketing tools not only for the company you work for, but also for your personal development. Promotion as a constituent part of marketing is the only mean of connection with other people or places. I can see myself getting better by adopting communication practices from marketing mix to effectively “promote myself” every day.
• What are the opportunities for career development?
Big companies know that success will come only when the minds of the management teams and marketing correspond to the customer.
There are a lot of oppurtunities for career development and the only prerequisite is to work to undestarnd the customer. The hard part is to recognize what will be valuable for your future career and what will be harmful to you. If you work with all of your passion and courage you can go further than your expectactions.
• What is the current level of training for this job? (professional requirements)
A bachelor related to the Marketing or Economics is the basis to start working on this field.
• Do you have any advice for students who wish to do this job?
Use all of your senses to complete your every day tasks without lose your initial goal. Give to yourself time to Hear – Watch – Understand the customer and then Act!
Published the 23rd of March 2014
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