Rachel Chu - Marketing Associate at Janssen
What were your responsibilities?
As a marketing associate at Janssen, I worked on a specific brand within my focus area. This brand happened to be new to market and I worked closely with the team to uncover customer insights and align sales and marketing tools to our strategic plans. As we were launching a new product amidst the pandemic, we had to ensure that our plans were extremely flexible. This called for much time on my part in creating innovative solutions to meet constantly evolving customer needs.
What was a typical day at work?
This year, my internship became the very first virtual internship at Janssen. This unique experience meant that I worked remotely with my team daily to coordinate my projects. A typical day involves a check-in with my manager sometime during the day, either through Zoom or through a call before diving into my work. As a marketing associate, much of your time is spent meeting with external agencies and consultants to drive your projects forward. A really positive outcome to a virtual internship and in part due to the culture of Janssen was the ability to shape your own days based on what was on your plate that week.
What was your favourite part of the internship?
As I came from a technology start-up background, working at Janssen and learning all about a new industry was quite fun. It was also amazing to learn about the science behind our products and to see the real-life health impacts that the products brought to peoples’ lives. It was quite apparent that patient centricity was a key value at Janssen—each campaign and interaction with customers felt meaningful and every business decision was made with a high degree of thoughtfulness focused on the outcome for patients. This made me feel great purpose and pride in my work even as an intern.
What skills are important for this job?
Unsurprisingly, I would say communication skills are most important. Within the Janssen organization, you work with people from very diverse backgrounds—from PHD scientists in the medical divisions to trained sales professionals in the field team. Communicating the same project to different business partners can be very different depending on perspectives and understanding how to communicate the objective effectively to each audience member is essential to your success.
What did you least expect going into the internship?
Despite knowing that they are one of the largest healthcare companies in the world, I did not expect the level of team connectivity that existed at Janssen. The teams within the company are quite tightly knit and you would be surprised how well people know each other across the large campus. This also meant that members of different teams were always open to chat and help, even if it you had never met, which made it was quite easy to make connections despite our digital barriers this summer.
Any advice for first year MBA Students?
Take advantage of your Rotman peers! When I began my first year, I did not have a perfectly clear idea of where I wanted to be, even though I knew my interest was in marketing. I also found that you rarely, if at all, get a perfect image of a company simply by asking “What’s the culture like?” at every info session. I found that chatting with previous interns about their experiences is very important. Asking a previous intern about what they did not like about their experiences especially helped because I would then ask myself whether their answers were something that would bother me as well.
What did you do before your MBA?
I spent my first four years after my B.Comm. working in technology start-ups and going through a multitude of roles, from operations to marketing. I worked four years at a green tech start-up where I began in a core team of around 10 team members and eventually helped the company grow to over 150 employees. Over that period, I rediscovered my passion for marketing and decided to join an architectural lighting design firm that specialized in international hospitality clients. I was mainly helping this company expand business in Middle Eastern and European markets up until the start of my MBA.
What are your post MBA goals?
After years of working in start-ups where it was necessary to take on multiple different roles, I am looking to diversify my business experience by joining an established organization as a marketing associate and learn as much as I can from veterans in the field.