International Students Day – Michaela McDowell
About Me
My name is Michaela McDowell, a third year BSc (Hons) Marketing student at Ulster University, Jordanstown. I am currently undertaking my placement year with Randox within their Randox Biosciences team.
Why Randox?
I first heard about the Randox industrial placement through my lecturer at Ulster University. I applied to their Marketing Industrial Placement because I was intrigued by their global leader status in healthcare diagnostic and their reputation for their brilliant work ethos as both a business and an employer.
When looking for placements my main aim was to find a company that would take advantage of my creativity and drive so that I could learn in a discipline I am extremely passionate about. With Randox, their innovative and creative opportunities are endless, therefore I thought that they would be a great company to start my career with.
Working within Randox
During my first two weeks in Randox, I took part in training, where I learnt about the products and services that Randox have to offer. This training gave me a great insight into what I would be marketing for the rest of my placement, allowing me to produce product-focused marketing materials with ease.
When I first started at Randox my colleagues in the Randox Biosciences team were so helpful and made me feel welcome, which made settling into Randox easy. My confidence has continued to grow by getting comfortable in how the team works, by attending daily meetings and communicating effectively face-to-face and professionally over emails.
Though I have only been working within the Randox Biosciences team for a number months, I have learnt a lot about marketing that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to learn within my studies. These include, competitor analysis, customer profiling, site mapping and stakeholder management for our distributors making sure that they are kept up-to-date with new marketing and promotional materials to promote to potential customers.
My favourite part of my placement journey so far with Randox was the Distributor Conference in October. It allowed me to observe how Randox dedicated their time to building relationships with their distributors. I learnt how to effectively communicate to distributors to ensure they have the best product knowledge for their customers.
In the weeks before starting I was having mixed feelings due to having known people who were in placements within other companies where they weren’t getting to work to their full potential. However, within Randox that wasn’t the case, my team have been so supportive and allow me to be hands on in all the tasks that we get set.
Randox offers placements in a wide range of fields from Business and Marketing to Biological and Life Sciences, Graphic Design to Mathematics and Physics, and Engineering to Computer Technology. They are recognised internationally for providing world-class opportunities for students and graduates with their friendly and ambitious attitude making them the perfect company to start and further your career.
I have made some great friends while at Randox and I am excited to see what the rest of my placement journey with Randox has to offer. I would highly recommend any student that has the opportunity of a placement year to make use of it, although University is crucial to starting your career, you only truly get to understand it once you gain experience within it. Randox has given me the chance to understand my future career and has given me a great insight into the real life day to day workings of marketing and the hard work it takes.