What will I be doing?
Our scheme lasts two years giving you four diverse placements, each one in a different team, ensuring you’ll be exposed to the variety of departments in either the Corporate & Scientific Services or our Fundraising, Marketing & Communications.
Working on live projects and taking on real responsibility you’ll be in contact with all sorts of people, many of whom are experts in their field. With this calibre of people and placement you can’t fail to learn and develop. It’s also essential you’ve got what it takes to keep up. To make sure, we’ll give you plenty of training, development and support including constant access to a dedicated mentor. And as we mentioned earlier your development plan will be unique and tailored.
Corporate & Scientific Services - previous Graduate placements
Finance Analysis
I was working in the Finance Analysis & Projects team where I was leading on two very different projects. My main role was to project manage a review of the stock management and accounting processes in the CR-UK Science and FSM warehouses. I was working very closely with our financial systems experts, accountants and store managers to review and document the warehouse processes as well as addressing and solving a number of issues within those processes. I was also leading on a review of the use of petty cash within CR-UK as part of which I wrote and implemented a new petty cash policy that included guidelines and standard forms relating to the use of petty cash. In addition, I re-vamped and re-launched the Finance policy tracking and updating process as well as getting involved in various internal communications initiatives, such as editing the Finance department newsletter.
Operations Team - Science Operations and Funding Team
'I was working on improving internal and external access to research funding policies as well as establishing standard processes to centralise, review and develop funding policies. The overall aim of my first placement was to review all research funding policies and to establish standard processes to centralise, review and develop funding policies'.
Corporate Resources
'I had two main projects, one was to strengthen 'delegated authority', which is a key component of the Charity's governance framework, designed to formalise decision-making and reduce exposure to risk. This inculded auditing delegated authority compliance throughout Corporate Resources and engaging with senior stakeholders to encourage greater compliance and consistency approach. My second project involved generating a large and comprehensive process map of the 'Purchase to Payment' cycle, which describes how the Charity's money is spent on goods and services from the thousands of suppliers we depend on'.
Finance Team
'The main aspect of my work was process mapping the team within Finance that process most of Cancer Research UK's income. This involved looking in depth at their processes and identifying risks and issues in such processes. I was also involved in different initiatives to improve the communication within the department, reviewing some of our procedure and policies'.
Fundraising, Marketing & Communications previous Graduate Placements
Radical Innovation Team
'Over the last six months I have been working in the Radical Innovation department, where I was responsible for generating and researching brand new radical fundraising ideas. As well as generating new ideas, I also worked on a specific fundraising project that was externally transitioned and worked on by siz MBA business studies students. Other roles included internal and external event organisation, consumer insight generation and the creation of a scouting network'.
Online Marketing
'I worked with a range of internal departments to develop and deliver cost-effective online marketing campaigns for the purpose of driving website traffic, revenue, fundraising, data collection and event registration. This included building and broadcasting HTML emails for three departments, working with a creative designer to develop a Christmas eCard to thank Race for Life participants for their support in 2008, managing a PPC (paid advertising on Google) and supporting the Online Marketing team to develop a deeper understanding of the performance of display advertising across Cancer Research UK.'
Supporter Services
The Supporter Services team are responsible for ensuring that whenever a supporter or member of the public contacts Cancer Research UK, for example to make a donation or ask a question, they receive an accurate, consistent and timely response. I was responsible for managing two projects. The first was to identify and document key procedures within the department that could be considered high risk: for example, procedures involving large amounts of income and/or where only one or two people knew how to do them. The work instructions I created were used to develop contingency, ensure compliance with industry regulations, train new staff and identify process improvements. My second project involved reducing the number of template letters used by the team to communicate with Supporters from 189 to 42, improving the efficiency and quality of our supporter communications. This included identifying and drafting the letters to ensure they were accurate and reflected Cancer Research UK's tone of voice.
Patient Information
'I worked on a range of activities , including designing and implementing an internal communications plan for the team. I also worked with other teams across Cancer Research UK to help raise awareness of our Patient Information services amongst our supporters and also the general public. Additionally, I worked with my manager to create a new set of marketing materials for Patient Information, including working with design agencies and market research with people affected by cancer.I was also involved with the moderation of Cancer Chat, working with the team of moderators to ensure that the forum was a safe environment for all users. I also significantly contributed to the six month review of Cancer Chat'.
Health Information
'During my time in Health Information, my work has supported the design of the innovative Five Year Strategy Plan for our Cancer Awareness Roadshow (CAR) by scoping interest from Primary Care Trusts (PCT's) in funding and resourcing the CAR to run locally. Initially this involed developing an understanding of the infrastructure and role of the NHS and the PCT's by talking with internal teams, Cancer Networks, PCT's and National Cancer Action Team. This knowledge allowed me to produce an effective and relevant questionnaire to discover how the work of the CAR may overlap with priorities of local health services. Questionnaire responses were followed up with in-depth phone interviews, leading to the production of two models describing hpw we could consider a partnership berween Cancer Research UK and PCT's working in reality.'