This month it’s the turn of Josie Rust, our Sales and Marketing Assistant. Working behind the scenes on our social media and online shop, here’s your opportunity to find out who she is, what she does and what she likes to do outside of her work life. I took some time to sit with her and ask her a few questions.
What do you do for English in Action?
I am English in Action’s Sales and Marketing Assistant.
Can you tell me a bit about your role?
I have a varied role within the company and our sister company TEFL-Toolkit (an online TEFL shop).
For both, I spend a lot of time creating content, posting on social media and looking at the analytics to see what works and what doesn’t.
My main responsibilities for EiA include preparing flyers, newsletters, mailshots and anything else with a design element, or that I can be of help with. Recently, I helped to put together a new online form for our Senior Teachers to submit documents electronically.
For TEFL-Toolkit, I publish blogs, put some of the free resources that we offer together, list new products, respond to any customer queries and dispatch orders.
What did today look like for you?
My day starts at 7.30 when I get myself up and ready for the day. By 8.00 am I am getting my daughter up for school before we leave the house at 8.40 am.
By 9.15 am I am in the office in Canterbury. I usually start the day by checking social media for both EiA and TEFL-Toolkit and making a list of what I need to do for the day.
I then put Trevor’s content for the newsletter onto our mailing platform before sending an initial draft out for everyone to check.
At 11.00 am I dispatched an order for the shop and headed into town to post it. I noticed that there is a new Valentine’s Day display up in the Marlowe Arcade, so I snapped a quick picture of that and put it on social media when I got back to the office. It’s nice to show our followers where we work as Canterbury is quite iconic.
At 12.15 pm I headed home. I’m only in the office part-time at the moment as my youngest is 8 months old. I then had a bit of time with him before getting back to work.
I planned some of the social media posts for TEFL-Toolkit for the next month. I like to have plenty scheduled in advance.
When my son went to sleep at 2.00 pm I took the opportunity of a quiet house and carried on with a course that I am currently doing on social media marketing whilst my partner collected our daughter from school.
After this, I put my Meet the Team blog and social post together and did a bit more on the newsletter before finishing at 5.15 pm.
When did you join the company?
I joined the company in November 2019 as a Sales Administrator working alongside the Sales Team. Over the last couple of years, my role has changed a lot and I am now the Sales and Marketing Assistant.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your work?
The variety and the opportunity to constantly learn new skills. Every week is different, and I like the challenge of having tasks that I might need to do some research on. Alongside the social media course, I am also learning how to use Adobe Illustrator and filming/editing videos for social media.
What do you like to do in your free time?
At the moment, I have very little free time. Evenings are spent playing with the kids before the bedtime routine. My son still wakes up every 3 hours at night (on a good night!) so after we have tidied up when both kids go to sleep around 8.00 pm, we then put on whichever show we are watching, tonight it will be the latest episode of the Last of Us.
At the weekend, we tend to have a day at home and then a day out and about, either visiting family, going for walks in the woods around us or visiting Wingham Wildlife Park with our season pass.
What music are you listening to on Spotify at the moment?
I tend to listen to the same songs on repeat, my most played from last year was Simple Man – Acoustic by Shinedown.
What would your dream job be?
My dream job would be working in Mental Health Law. I studied Law at university and this was my favourite module.
What’s your favourite food/drink?
I don’t have an everyday favourite food, so if I had to choose a takeaway it would be Chinese. We did have one Christmas Day instead of the traditional roast!