After graduating, I didn’t know what kind of role I wanted, so I decided to apply to schemes that would let me explore lots of different opportunities. The M&S scheme gives you the exposure to navigate a wide variety of business areas.
I now have experience in planning and strategy, social media, campaigns, and partnerships and collaborations. And I’ve been incredibly lucky across all these roles to have the opportunity to work on things you would never expect a grad to play such a fundamental role in.
Last year, I worked on our Clothing & Home Christmas campaign, which included shooting the TV ad and associated photography, and launching it across buses, billboards, and digital channels with a huge press release. And that was all in my first year of marketing!
While in the campaigns team, I got the chance to work on an empowering art installation with the artist Lydia Reeves. This involved displaying the chest casts of 16 women on London Southbank to celebrate boob diversity as part of our ‘Love your boobs, it starts with a bra fit’ campaign. M&S had never done anything like that before, and it was amazing to be part of it.
I also organized our International Women’s Day celebrations this year as one of the leads of the Gender Equality Network. We put on a breakfast in collaboration with Hello! magazine and ran an ‘idea-thon’ with 150 colleagues to discuss how to make M&S a better place for women to work.
Having all these opportunities has shown me that M&S is a business that really cares about its people. Overall, M&S has been nothing but supportive, encouraging me to push barriers, fulfil my potential, and figure out exactly what I want to do with my career.
Cerys’ summary
“M&S is a business that really cares about its people. Overall, M&S has been nothing but supportive, encouraging me to push barriers, fulfil my potential, and figures out exactly what I want to do.”