Student Blog

This is a guest blog written by BA (Hons) English student, Daisy about her placement at Debenhams.

Where are you from and why did you come to BU? I’m from Oxford. I came to Bournemouth as it basically ticked all of the boxes for me: away from home but only two hours away, loved Bournemouth town and I loved the course. It was the media aspect I enjoyed with the English degree, which no other university has!

Daisy at the Christmas party

As an English student, a sandwich placement year is not compulsory. Why did you decide to do one? I’ve always been keen to participate in work experience as it’s vital for the industry I want to go in to. I’ve taken part in numerous amounts of work experience positions ever since I was legally allowed to work at 16! So a year’s placement seemed the next step up to really help me decide what to do, as well as gain so much more experience and knowledge.

How has it been so far? Really great – I’m part of an amazing team who were so welcoming from day one. Debenhams is a great company to work for, they really look after their staff and they have a good placement scheme. I’m able to learn the structure of a huge corporation, have freedom within my blog posts, and I love being able to write daily.

What has been the biggest challenge to date? Probably getting used to working for such a big company with rules and regulations, so many teams and specific jargon!

What have been some of your highlights? So many!! I’ve taken part in some fun articles on our channel, Our Style Debrief. One highlight was when I got to go on shoot. Debenhams’ also threw a huge Christmas party which was fun too… My main highlight though, was probably an event I planned entirely; ‘12 Cocktails of Christmas’ with 12 bloggers creating their own Christmas-inspired cocktail in December. We had all sorts of fun things happening during the evening, and it was great to mingle with some cool bloggers.

As one of your key responsibilities is taking care of the Debenhams blog, how do you find this project? It’s fun as I have freedom in what I write (so long as it’s focusing on Debenhams product/our customers), but sometimes being busy with other stuff can make it tricky with maintaining the blog, which is unfortunate as I always have so many ideas for posts – but on the flipside it helps me prioritise!

You’ve mentioned being offered freelance work as well; how did you find the opportunity or how did they find you? I just applied for a job I saw with a fashion brand I knew, for no other reason than having a spare hour or so on the train during my commute that I could use to make some extra pennies for going travelling in the summer! Plus the extra work experience.

Company websites that you have helped with?

http://www.debenhams.com/content/style-debrief-hub

http://blog.debenhams.com/

Any advice for students wanting to find a placement within the fashion industry? If you’ve got time to get some extra work experience in before applying, then do! I made it my mission to get as much worthy work experience on my CV before A-levels as it was drummed in my head so much, and it definitely helped me more than anything to get a placement. And it’s who you know as well… So keep building those contacts!

These blogs are produced by students, for prospective students, to reflect topics in which we think you will be interested. Our student bloggers work with Bournemouth University when producing any content. However, the university cannot be held liable for its accuracy and the views expressed are their own, and do not necessarily represent those of Bournemouth University. Please contact us at futurestudents@bournemouth.ac.uk to report any content considered offensive.