When I was looking for a graduate marketing development programme, my approach involved writing up a list of ‘great brands’, as I believe that they’re indicative of ‘great marketing departments’. I hadn’t heard of a scheme at Sky so was really happy to come across it. The programme sounded great, offering lots of responsibility and development opportunities. Of course, working for an entertainment company added to the excitement.

Sky is the leading pay TV distribution platform in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and the fastest growing broadband and telephony provider. With a record like that, it’s easy to understand why a graduate would want to come here. The chance to work for a hugely successful company, and rotate through four different Marketing placements, sounded like a pretty good deal to me.

Each placement lasts six months – I’m coming to the end of my first, with the Online Sales and Marketing team that’s responsible for B2C sales via all online channels. The landing destinations that the team created, alongside sky.com, to support our marketing activity are an important parts of this. They include Sky HD, ‘3 for £35’ and Sky Packages. I’ve mainly supported the development of the Sky Packages microsite, which started as 6 pages yet, over the past year, has grown to over seventy, becoming a key sales driver for the Sky product range.

My role has been varied, ranging from creative projects such as designing banners and helping up-sell our higher contribution products, to designing a new ‘Buy Page’ for one of our sites and working on a Sky Movies online ad campaign. It’s been a great insight into online marketing, covering the full range of Sky products – so a great place to start.

There are lots of training and development opportunities. Graduates are encouraged to book themselves on courses and there’s a wide range available, from MS Excel and PowerPoint to Managing Business programmes, such as Innovation and Project Management. I particularly enjoyed the Presentation Skills course in Scotland. It was great to meet other graduates, and we all took home DVDs of us presenting at the start and the end of the course so we could see how we’d improved.

The chance to work for a hugely successful company, and rotate through four different Marketing placements, sounded like a pretty good deal to me. It’s been a great insight into online marketing, covering the full range of Sky products – so a great place to start.

All marketing graduates are sponsored by Sky to study for the CIM Diploma – a real selling point for me. We get two days’ study leave before each exam, so Sky really supports us with our studies.

Sky products reflect a company that ‘believes in better’. Sky⁺, for example, makes the whole viewing experience better – allowing people who love TV to fit it around a busy lifestyle. I definitely believe the products are great and even find myself selling them in conversations with friends and family outside of work.

I also think its great, and rather unique, that we don’t have bins under our desks. Instead, we all hop over to the recycling points in the Oasis (which is a little area located on every floor, with a kitchen and coffee machine, where we can have a break or hold informal meetings). This is just one of many Green initiatives that the company and its employees undertake. It’s such an easy and simple thing to recycle your waste and something that I do at home as well as work.

In short, the culture is great, everyone enjoys what they do and it’s a really friendly environment that’s easy to settle into.