My Work Experience At Cast UK - Lauren Abbott

Last week Lauren Abbott came to work at Cast UK to gain some valuable work experience within the Marketing team and wider departments. Here's how it went in her own words.

First Impressions

I was extremely excited when I found out that I was able to do a week of work experience at Cast UK, and especially because I was going to be working in their Marketing team. As soon as I walked through the doors, I was warmly welcomed into the office by everyone, and given a tour of the office and the surrounding area. The first thing you notice when you walk in is their favourite colour, orange. I quickly understood why they called it ‘Orange Towers’.

Day 1

I started my work experience on a Wednesday and was asked to arrive at 10am. I quickly got settled in and my first task was to research their competitors as well as giving my opinion on what I think they could change about their website, and what I really liked about it. After lunch, I helped with their inbound marketing leads, this involved cross-referencing the internal list of inbound leads with leads on Bullhorn (the Customer Relationship Management software) from 2021. I finished my day at 5:30pm, and I couldn’t wait for the next day to do it all again.

Day 2 

On Thursday, I got to the office at their normal time of 8:30am. As soon as I got in, I started researching articles to post out across Cast UK’s social media accounts. After finding some potential articles, I sat with Barney, Cast UK’s Marketing Executive, and he discussed if they were the type of articles they would post across their social channels. After we had gone through them, I was able to schedule them to go out on their social media on certain days and times.

Day 3

On Friday Cast UK starts and finishes a little bit earlier, so I was in the office at 8:00am. Friday involved some more creative work as I learnt how to use Canva, a graphic design app. I started creating ‘Jobs Of The Day’ which are hand-picked vacancies from Cast UK’s website, made into graphics and sent out on social. I also made graphics to advertise roles Cast UK currently have available internally.

Day 4

As soon as I arrived, I started comparing the marketing lead list with the Bullhorn leads from 2020. After lunch, I continued with my database admin tasks. Both Kerry and Barney were working from home today so I had quite an uninterrupted day completing admin whilst listening to podcasts.

Day 5

Wednesday was another busy day, the first thing I did was pick up where I left off from the previous day. Then Kerry ran through the basics of using LinkedIn & how to get the most out of it from a job seekers point of view and then took some headshots to use on my profile. After lunch, I researched some more articles to share across the Cast UK social channels, and I also created some more ‘Job Of The Day’ graphics. Once I had found some relevant articles and created the graphics, I scheduled them to go out on a certain date and time using social scheduling software.

Day 6

This was the day I started this blog, and realised I have a memory of a goldfish! I also completely finished all of the database admin tasks I had been set. I spent the majority of my time writing the first draft of this blog, and once I had finished, I emailed it to Barney so that he could make suggestions on how to improve it. Whilst he was doing that, I started to make myself a LinkedIn profile, I wrote a section summary about my life, achievements and skills. I also included some volunteer work I did at my high school and my work experience here at Cast UK.

Day 7

Today I brought some chocolates in for everyone as it is my last day, which everyone seemed pleased about (all the good flavours disappeared extremely quickly). I created another ‘Job Of The Day’ graphic and researched potential articles to post on social. I then began to schedule them for the following week. After I scheduled the graphics and articles, I began writing the captions to accompany the Cast UK Solutions videos on social, and whilst writing these I learnt more about what the Cast UK solutions are and how they help their clients. After lunch, I continued writing this blog and sent it over to Kerry for final proofing. Towards the end of the day, I scheduled more posts for social for the following week.

Summary

In conclusion, I really enjoyed my work experience at Cast UK. Everyone was extremely welcoming and made me feel like I had been working there for ages. I have to say that I am quite sad about leaving, this experience has been my first real look into the world of work and now I am looking forward to getting an actual job, which is something I never thought I would say. Thank you to everyone at Cast for having me ????