Alice Scott's placement at Unilever in the Human Resources Function

This is a guest post from Royal Holloway Management student Alice Scott who is currently undertaking a placement at Unilever in the Human Resources Function, based in Kingston. The deadline for 2019/20 applications to Unilever's placement programme is November 18th.

Unilever is a British-Dutch transnational consumer goods company, selling fast moving consumer goods (FMCG’s) in around 190 countries. London is home to one of the two global headquarters, the other being in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Unilever also have 3 global research facilities at Port Sunlight, Colworth and Leeds, as well as manufacturing sites and distribution depots around the UK. 

Unilever own over 400 brands selling in global and local markets, including Dove, Lynx, Hellman’s, Knorr, Lipton, Magnum and Surf to name a few. One of the perks of working for Unilever is definitely the shop stocked with Unilever products and free Ben and Jerry’s at lunch time!

I joined Unilever in June as part of the Learning Innovations and Standards team, and we support Global Learning (around 60 employees at Unilever) who produce and organise all the learning and training materials for the whole company. Our team’s role is to help them do their jobs by giving them all the support and online systems they need. 

My key responsibilities include providing support for our online learning platform Degreed, testing new tools that can be used by the learning team, creating content for the company to promote a learning culture and assisting our Chief Learning Officer with the organisation of weekly Learning Leadership Meetings. 

Alongside my role in the learning team I have had the opportunity to attend London Pride, campus recruitment events, as well as teaching school children about self esteem as part of the Dove Real Beauty Campaign, CV Skills and World Toilet Day teaching 5-7-year olds about sanitation.

Working on a global team means that employees working in Learning are based in locations all around the world, which gives me the flexibility to work from home a few days a week. My team are very supportive and are always happy to help – no question is a silly question! I have already learnt so much in the past 5 months that will benefit me in my final year of study and post-graduation.

My advice to students who are currently applying for placements is DON’T GIVE UP!! I applied for over 25 placements last year and although it can be disheartening when you don’t hear back / aren’t successful, when you finally find the placement that is right for you it makes it all worth it.

Unilever Applications

Unilever currently offer Industrial Placements in HR, Finance, Supply Chain, Marketing, Customer Development (Sales), Technology Management and Research and Development. If you are interested in applying for a placement at Unilever, applications are now open and you can find all the information here: https://www.unilever.co.uk/careers/graduates/unilever-industrial-placement-programme/. The application process includes an application form, gamified assessments, a video interview and then an assessment centre. The applications close on the 18^th November and if you have any questions feel free to get in touch!

We were really pleased to see Alice at the recent Call Back afternoon for YIBs out on placement. Alice is also a buddy to two second year students currently seeking placements and spent time chatting to 2nd year YIBs at our Employer Placement event on October 1st and our Pizza/ Games networking evening at the end of October. Thank you Alice for supporting the Year in Business programme!