Chetna Sahai

Country of origin: India

Placement: Dolby Europe Ltd.

With management or business related studies, practical experience is as important as academic knowledge. The reason why I wanted to take a placement year was because I wanted to get experience in working in the area that I was studying to gain a more realistic point of view to my studies. I also felt like it would have been beneficial for me to understand what type of career I wanted to have after university.

I was part of the Field Marketing team at Dolby and worked with partners and clients across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Because Dolby is present in multiple industries, I had the opportunity to work within the cinema, mobile, broadcast and voice markets. My focus was on cinema mainly and I liaised with partners and clients in EMEA, conducted primary and secondary market research, created creative assets and managed important events at our office.

I had a fantastic time at Dolby. I was given important tasks from the beginning and felt part of the team and not just like an intern. As I grew more comfortable within my role I was given bigger tasks such as organizing large events and managing delivery of marketing assets to cinemas across EMEA on my own. I felt that my hard work was recognized and appreciated by my colleagues, and thus I got more and more opportunities to work with not just marketing, but also sales and engineering.

The thing I liked most about my placement was that I was given important responsibilities and had the chance to help other departments in the company and not only marketing, I had opportunities to do more tasks than just what is written in my job description. I felt like my work was appreciated as I travelled to Newcastle to represent Dolby marketing at an event and I also travelled to Barcelona to help at CineEurope- Europe’s largest cinema tradeshow. I knew that my hard work was always noticed and that motivated me to work even harder.

The LUMS career department was very helpful while I was applying for placements; they helped me with my CV but also with my interview skills which were not very strong when I had just started to apply. The team took the time to meet with me and properly discuss the problems I was having, and fully answer my questions. Moreover, the team continued sending us opportunities to apply until late in the summer. I was one of the last people in my year to get a placement and the Careers team continued supporting me in any way as possible until I was given an offer.

The placement gave me a strong insight of what I enjoy and do not enjoy, and my strengths and weaknesses in the work environment. I think working after graduation will give me an understanding on what further studies I would like to pursue. The skills that I gained during my placement will definitely help me in my future. I feel like my leadership, organization and communication skills improved greatly during my placement. I learned to be more affirmative in what I do and set clear goals, plan things ahead of time and be ready to deal with any problems, and effectively express myself in an understandable and concise way. These skills are transferrable both to future employment and studies and could have only been gained after working in a professional environment.