Klaudia Zawadzka

Country of origin: Poland

Placement: ESPN Sports Media

I chose to take a placement year because it’s a great opportunity to gain business experience and improve my employability. It’s a chance to learn new skills outside of a classroom, in a much more interesting setting. Moreover, I saw the placement year as a great way to network and meet new people.

My role involved mostly quantitative research regarding the usage of ESPN properties, such as ESPNFC.co.uk or ESPNcricinfo.com. To a smaller extent, I also helped with the analysis of qualitative research regarding the ESPN brand as a whole, and how it’s perceived in the UK.

In my everyday work, I was responsible for the production of traffic reports using several data sources. A lot of my work also included ad-hoc requests for data from other departments within the company, for example Finance, Marketing, or Ad-Sales. I was also making a lot of improvements to the traffic reports within the company, which significantly reduced the time our department had to spend working on a lot of requests.

Overall, my placement year was great. I gained many useful skills and learned a lot about business in general. I also met many interesting people, who shared their work experiences with me, which made me more prepared for my future career. Moreover, I spent a year working in the industry that I’m really interested in, and that made my placement even more enjoyable. I would definitely do it again if I had a chance.

I’m a huge sports fan, so the fact that I was working for a sports company was the biggest advantage. The atmosphere in the office was great; nearly every employee was a sports fan. Because of that, everyone had something to talk about, especially during big events, for example the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and it was very easy to start a conversation and meet new people. I also think that the office culture was very helpful, it was relaxed, but everyone knew when it was time to work in order to finish everything on time.

The LUMS careers team really helped me with my placement preparation, mostly by working with me on ways to write a CV and cover letters, performing mock interviews and assessment centres. The experience I gained through those has definitely made me more prepared for the actual placement year recruitment.

Throughout my placement year I realised that digital research is a very interesting field and that I would definitely like to come back to it after graduation. A year ago, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after finishing my studies, and these past months have definitely helped me steer my career. Thanks to the role I had, I gained and improved many useful skills, from very specific ones that were necessary for my role (eg. proficiency in Excel), to ones that come simply from working for a large organisation with many different departments, for instance communication, teamwork, or problem solving. I think that, even regardless of the direction my career will take after graduation, my placement year will be very helpful due to the experience I gained.