Updating Results

Reckitt Australia & New Zealand

4.1
  • 1,000 - 50,000 employees

Sachit Barooah

No matter how late you work on a Friday, Monday morning will always be busy so don’t work late on Fridays!

What's your job about?

I work for Reckitt, a global FMCG company that manufactures, markets and sells a variety of health and hygiene brands and products such as Nurofen, Finish, Durex, etc. I look after our entire Auto Dish portfolio as a Category Marketing manager. This means that I am responsible for everything to do with our Finish brand. This includes; our advertising communications, our pack artworks, measuring our in-market performance, conducting market research to determine what consumers are looking for, designing and launching new innovation to cater to evolving consumer needs and lots more! The variety of work means that every day or week can vary greatly, some weeks we may be visiting consumer houses to understand their usage habits, be on location shooting a new campaign or at the lab testing the efficacy of our new products; you never know what the next week will bring.

What's your background?

I was born in Calcutta, India, then moved to New Delhi at the age of one. I spent the next eight years growing up there and then moved with my family to Sydney in 2001. I went to high school in Sydney, and then began a Bachelor of Commerce at UNSW whilst undertaking an accounting cadetship at KPMG part time. However, I quickly realised that accounting wasn’t for me and transferred to the Australian National University in Canberra and did a double degree Bachelor of Law (Honours)/ Commerce with a major in marketing. I got to live on residential college and absolutely loved my time at University! Throughout my time at University I always thought I was going to end up becoming a lawyer and undertook a bunch of internships and odd jobs at various law & advertising firms. However, in my penultimate year, I got a summer marketing internship at Reckitt and ended up really enjoying myself. The vibrancy of the people, the fast-paced nature of the work and the fun that everyone was having was intoxicating. After that, I was hooked and ended up accepting a grad job and have now been with Reckitt for nearly 5 years!

Could someone with a different background do your job?

Absolutely! My job involves working in teams and problem solving. As long as you’re able to do both of those things; your background, formal education, etc. can all be unique to you. In fact, the more diverse backgrounds we can involve, the greater diversity of thought in our conversation which will only lead to better commercial outcomes.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

What I love most is the fast-paced nature of the work and that I’m always learning. There is always a new problem to solve and I get to figure out how to solve it by leveraging my skills and the tools available to me. Some of the specific things that I like are; our CBD office, getting to work on big media campaigns, exciting new product innovation and meaningful purpose activations.

What are the limitations of your job?

There is a lot of responsibility, getting to look after a large brand portfolio. I really like the ownership and autonomy that comes with it, even if it does mean there is a heightened level of pressure. The hours fluctuate a lot, busy periods may require working late, but these are usually off-set by quieter periods where you can take a longer lunch or clock off early.

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

  • No matter how late you work on a Friday, Monday morning will always be busy so don’t work late on Fridays!
  • Do something that you enjoy for 30 minutes every day.
  • Try and keep perspective, it is great to take a lot of pride in your work and be passionate about what you do, but it also means that you can get very emotionally invested, which can drain your mental health when things don’t work out. I’ve always found it useful to consciously try and take a step back to check in with myself.