Marketing Degree Student: From ICMS Yr10 Work Experience to Staff Member

Marketing degree student and Newport local, Olivia Teague, is not obsessed with ICMS. Well, maybe just a little…

• She did her year 10 work experience at ICMS
• She is studying at ICMS
• She chose to do her industry training at ICMS
• She persuaded her sister to start at ICMS
• She is now a part-time staff member at ICMS

Here is her story:

Year 10 Work Experience

As a St Luke’s Grammar School student, I was encouraged to take a week out of Year 10 to experience a real-life work environment. I was interested in marketing and my Careers Advisor Alexandra Boase helped me to organise a weeks’ work experience within the ICMS Marketing Department.

I loved it. I got to work in the beautiful convent building behind the ICMS “Castle on the Hill”. The views of the sea and Manly beach were amazing. But most importantly, the team at ICMS made me feel so welcome and involved during my week there. I sat in on meetings and got a behind-the-scenes look at how team decision-making happens. They showed me their social media processes and I also witnessed the set-up for upcoming events.

Bachelor of Business

My Year 10 work experience made me realise that I wanted to get a business and marketing degree. Marketing appeals to my interests in branding, promotion and technology. I enjoy looking at how businesses connect with their target market on a personal level. Marketing is also a dynamic and broad business category which can translate across many different industries and organisations. With marketing skills, I’ll be able to work in practically any business. One day I’d love to be a Marketing Manager and work on building strong brands, launching new products and optimising organisation.

My favourite subject has been Career Planning and Strategy because I feel that this subject really highlighted ICMS’s career-focused education and taught me skills I will use throughout my whole professional career.

I chose to do my marketing degree at ICMS because of their famous industry training program. Being a Northern Beaches local, I also love the beautiful and convenient location – and the free parking!

Industry Training

Every bachelor degree student at ICMS has to complete a compulsory industry training placement during their degree. It’s actually two subjects, which you get credit for. I love the ICMS marketing – the branding, the social and the publications are all pretty impressive – so I really wanted to do my placement in the marketing team. I applied, did an interview with the team and got offered the internship.

I started my internship at the beginning of 2020 and just a few weeks later we were all asked to work from home. I was worried that I might lose my internship but because I had just started helping to develop a new website I simply carried on from home.

Each day I’d have Zoom meetings with the website developers in India explaining how we wanted the pages to look and how the navigation should work. I’d then choose and resize images so the pages looked visually appealing; I’d proofread and edit all the page content; and I’d check the links and navigation were all working well.

I am so proud of the ICMS website and I love that I got to work on creating something amazing during the COVID isolation period.

Keeping it in the Family

My sister Annabelle also started at ICMS recently. She’s doing a Bachelor of Business which I think will suit her well. She’s a personal trainer and one day she’ll probably go down the route of starting her own business.

ICMS Staff Member

When my two terms of industry training came to an end and the new website was launched, my manager in the ICMS marketing department asked me if I’d like to stay on two days a week as a staff member. Of course, I jumped at the chance.

These days I balance my days of work while still studying my marketing degree. I very much enjoy my job and I am learning invaluable marketing skills on an everyday basis, some of these include how to do Google and Facebook ads, social media retargeting, landing pages, digital forms, and video editing.

When I graduate, I hope I’ll have no problem landing a great senior job in marketing. I’ll have the marketing degree, the work experience and the real-life skills. I feel very fortunate to have been presented with these opportunities through ICMS and look forward to the future.

So yes, perhaps I am just a little obsessed!

Thinking of Studying a Marketing Degree?

You could choose to study a Bachelor or Business and select electives with a marketing focus to tailor your degree syllabus to your interests – or choose a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) with specialised marketing subjects.