My name is Georgia, and I am a 17 year old student currently studying Media, Law and Sociology for my A levels. As part of my sixth form course, I was asked to complete a week of work experience within an industry that I am interested in. The industry I would like to join after finishing my A levels is media. For my work experience placement, I chose to go to CML Microcircuits as it is a company that is known worldwide. I worked alongside Jessica Hickman who is the Marketing and Communications Officer for the company. Jessica helped me and gave me tasks to do which kept me busy and gave me an insight into work she does on a weekly basis.
I have learnt lots of new things about marketing and communications this week whilst at CML. Jessica introduced to me the CML website, Lead Forensics, Google Ads and Google Analytics in which I created a report using Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint using the CML website statistics logged over the month. For example: views, keywords, demographics, and devices. Following on from this, I looked on the SµRF website at the keywords used in CML’s different products. Using the keywords that I found, I used Google to find where those keywords are listed. It was great to see that for the majority of keywords and phrases, CML was positioned on the first page.
Many job vacancies become available within the company. I had a go at writing and linking a job description for three vacancies for different departments and the finished job description got published to the website. I was also shown advertisements, promotions, E-postcards, campaigns and how they are designed and used within the company. After this, I created an E-postcard for an upcoming product launch. This task included content writing and design.
Whilst being at CML, I learnt that exhibitions are very beneficial to the company in order to promote their products to distributors and customers. A recent exhibition was IMS 2022 which took place in June this year, where CML announced the launch of the latest product in the SµRF line – the CMX90A702. There is lots of planning that goes into organising an exhibition and this must be done months in advance. During my time at CML, I had a go at designing the layout of the exhibition booth using Microsoft Visio, which is a program that I was not familiar with. I also created designs for the backdrop display, a brochure and two display banners, which I enjoyed.
I was shown the planning that goes into a product launch and how multiple departments from different offices were involved. Jessica introduced me to the company’s mailing system, Mailchimp, and I created an email for an upcoming product launch.
To finish the week, I was asked to create a poster for the CML Summer BBQ. This included the design, content, and sourcing imagery. Lastly, Jessica showed me how to create my own blog from my week at CML, to publish to the website.
Overall, my week at CML has been great! It has been very beneficial to have work experience in an industry that I am interested in. I have really enjoyed learning and understanding another side of media and marketing that I have not looked at before.
