James and Olly’s Work Experience at KW

Meet Olly and James, two Year 10 students from Caistor Grammar School. With the KW team for five days, we took the opportunity to check in with the duo after their first day in the office… 

Coming into this placement, we had absolutely no idea what a marketing firm was or how one might operate. 

“I joined with the hope that I could learn about marketing and various strategies, as it is an interesting area of work to me,” said James. “I joined so I could learn and gain knowledge of other work options for the future.”

As for Olly, well: “I joined as I wanted to learn what a marketing firm is like and how it runs, I wanted to learn what an office environment is like and how a team runs in that environment.”

After only one day of work experience, we have:

• Gained knowledge of how an independent marketing agency works
• Learned why customers use independent marketing agencies
• Gained an understanding of the methods used in marketing

On our first day we were introduced to three members of the team: Emily, Jo and Alex who talked to us about what they had planned for our week and what day-to-day work looks like in their very varied roles in the workplace, whether it be very focused on client wins or if it is more targeted towards task based in the office.

After these conversations, we learnt:

• How to manage your own business
• How to operate the base software used by employees of the company
• How to deal with clients in an understanding and sympathetic way
• Trust is the foundation of a good company community
• A long-lasting friendship with clients is much better than a one-off partnership

As a part of the experience, we are due to use skills we know and are taught over the first few days to complete a scenario of how we would complete a brief from a client. The company believes in a hands-on approach by letting students who come for work experience complete many tasks over the days to help retain the information taught and gained during the varying lengths of time they may stay.

By doing this, we stand to gain a better understanding of:

• Real-time experience in the field
• A feel of how you would work with others on the same task
• An idea of the type of client that KW has

We hope to take away many tricks of the trade and skills that we can hopefully use in the future while working or just to help promote future projects we decide to work on, whether that be fundraising or for work, this placement will help us to promote these endeavours. These skills may range from online website design or video marketing to offline festival/event planning or brochure production.

No matter what, anything we learn in this placement will be useful in the future. Alex said that he will potentially try to help us by having us work with members of the team relating to our interests whether they are design-related or more content creation, and by doing this, he is creating the best opportunity for the students coming to Knapton Wright, like me and Olly.