Help!!

Today I checked my Twitter to find that someone had tweeted me:

"Hi @JosCanavan I have just seen your blog on a website that a friend contributed to. I think you are my guardian angel, I've emailed you at your Gmail account for some advice on non-graduate aspiring marketing students making it into this industry! Help !! x"

As I read Amy's email I couldn't help thinking how much she sounded like me in my final year of university. Of course I was more than happy to try and offer what advice I could. I thought it would be great if I published Amy's message and my reply, in order to share our dialogue in the hope it might help one or two of you. I would also be really happy (and I'm sure Amy would appreciate it too!) if anyone had any comments to make about her position, and to add to the advice I have given.

Hi Jos,

My name is Amy Jackson and I recently found your blog whilst reading a friends contribution to the website TargetjobsBloggers.

Your About Me section really interested me and I thought I'd email you mainly for some advice, I hope this is ok.

I am in my last two months at University studying a Journalism and English Literature degree. My dream job is to be a Marketing and Advertisiting Co-ordinator. However, after a four year degree of something that isn't directly related, I am struggling. At 18 I was unsure as what I wanted to do at University, but as the years have gone on, I've realised I have found something I am passionate about and feel I could put my whole self into.

I have done many placements in the last four years, I have travelled to Vietnam and Africa with the BBC, worked in publishing houses working with events management and helped to arrange many charity events around the North East. However, no immediate connection to Marketing and Advertising.

I have an interview on Thursday for a 5 month placement with DiFFERENT Marketing and Advertising, in Newcastle. The email I got back regarding a graduate job invited me along for a chat about my options, and they said I would be more suited for a PR role. I am unsure as to how this meeting will go and what my options are, but if you could give me some tips on how impress at this sort of interview, then I'd really appreciate it.

Besides not actually doing a marketing degree, I regulary read books about it and speak to other people who are involved in this industry. My experience is limited but I want to show I can learn quickly.

Best Wishes,

Amy Jackson

 

Hi Amy,

Thanks so much for getting in touch! It’s great to know that people are reading Jos Can and taking something from it, as well as the fact we are able to connect and share advice and experiences. Your email struck a chord with me as I was in your exact position in my third year of university.

You seem really on the ball though, passionate and knowledgeable, which will definitely work in your favour. You mentioned you read marketing-related books and network with people in the industry – this is a brilliant demonstration of your commitment and enthusiasm, and you should definitely bring this up in the interview. These traits will probably be your greatest assets.

You mention that you have been invited to have a “chat about your options”, which seems to imply that the exact nature of the placement is not set in stone or that there is more than one available. So they might start off by explaining a bit more about what it is they’re expecting the hired candidate(s) to get up to, which will be a great chance for you to make connections to your own interests and past experiences in order to demonstrate your suitability.

Equally they might ask you what sort of career you’re looking for in order to scope out how right you are for what they have in mind. In this instance, I wouldn’t spend too long talking about the exact thing you’re looking for. For example, if you were interested in doing events for big sports brands but they were looking for someone to support the social media for a food and beverages client, you could focus instead on what you want to get out of the role – “I’m looking for something challenging, where I can take on responsibility and make a difference to a company”…”I’m a fast learner so this would be a great experience to work alongside and learn from industry experts”..., but obviously tailor it to what it is you think they’re looking for.  In a lot of interviews I’ve been to, they have been hesitant about revealing that a lot of the role will be admin/support–focused as they are aware it is not very appealing, but although it wasn’t what I was after, by showing that I wasn’t loath to get involved with that sort of stuff I found my way in, which then provided a chance for me to prove myself in other tasks that came along as part of the role.

When preparing for an interview I find it a good exercise to imagine yourself as the interviewer and that you have someone you have never met before coming in to talk to you. What would you want to know? Surely: why has this person decided to try for the job? So this is where you would talk about your passion for marketing. You can say where your interest came from - perhaps a particular campaign that first caught your eye, or the fact that you have always paid attention to brands and how they are interacting with their consumers. You said you've come to realise you have "found something you're passionate about and could put your whole self into", so make sure they see that and you'll be halfway there!

Try not to present your degree as anything but an asset (I know I have a terrible tendency to jump straight in and apologise for my lack of marketing degree!) You can point out how your degree has allowed you to develop important skills, in writing (an obvious one)/analysing (from deciphering news articles)/teamwork (from any group project work) etc.… You know that you want a job that allows you to use these skills, and marketing, coupled with your interest in the industry, fits this well.

Please forgive my majorly vague interpretation of your degree! It just goes to show how not everyone will have a really distinct idea of what it is you worked on as part of your degree, so it’s really important that you can clearly explain what skills you developed, and translate that to the job role you’re after.  Similarly, don’t view the fact that you haven’t had any experience directly related to marketing as a flaw. I’ll bet you’ll have picked up lots of useful skills in your past work experiences – they sound really interesting and unique and I think they would make you stand out.

It’s my (cynical) suspicion that they have suggested PR because of your writing and journalism-focused degree. Don’t let them pigeon-hole you if that’s not what you’re interested in! If it turns out in the interview that the placement you are going for is more focused towards PR, take the opportunity to find out all you can about what you’d be doing, as well as opportunities for the future - the placement is still likely to be worthwhile, and you certainly don't want to reject it then and there.

So! There's my humble advice - has anyone else got any comments to help Amy before her interview? Maybe you're in the same position as her and have struggled due to a lack of relevant experience. Are you from a similar course and able to pinpoint the key benefits/transferable skills of her degree? Or are you in the same boat and just want to complain! Even any words of encouragement that have come to mind whilst reading Amy's message. Personally, I think she sounds like she would be a great asset to any marketing team, and even if this opportunity isn't right or doesn't work out, that she'll no doubt go on to be successful in pursuing her dream. 

Guest blog post by language grad, Marie

Visit Marie's blog at
Grad and Looking

Today's post has been written by Marie, a French and Cultural Studies graduate whose career goal is to work in advertising. She writes spiritedly about the intense competition faced by those of us chasing our dreams in this popular industry, and highlights the main challenges and, even more helpfully, how we can face them.

Her story, of how she was inspired to carry out an internship in China in order to get that little bit closer to her dream job, emphasises just how much of a challenge today's job market can be. As she rightly points out, an internship abroad is not a viable option for all of us, but it just goes to show how important it is to make the most of the opportunities we are presented with. And, as I pointed out in my TARGETjobs blog post last week, the extra hurdles that we have to jump will just make us that much stronger candidates than if we had only to walk to the finish line.

Graduated and looking…

Hey everyone! My name’s Marie and like Jos (and many of you reading this) I am trying to break into the increasingly difficult marcoms industry – more specifically advertising.  A recent French and Cultural Studies graduate from the University of Sussex I know that there are two main things that advertising agencies think twice about when I apply:

1) I don’t come from a business/marketing/advertising background

2) My lack of agency experience (particularly because when I was first applying for grad schemes this time last year, I’d only had a couple of weeks of experience at an independent B2B agency in London)

So what to do you when any one of those two things are held against you? Well determination and pro-activeness play a huge part.  During my final year last year I applied for virtually nearly every advertising grad scheme that was out there that appealed to me, from AMV BBDO, to Iris, to Ogilvy, balancing uni deadlines with application deadlines, which always seemed to coincide. Unfortunately, despite all the hard work, out of the fifteen or so applications I sent I only received one invitation to interview (and as you can see from this blog entry, I didn’t get through to that agency’s assessment day that year). What had I done wrong? I had worked so hard and spent so much time on every single application. Couldn’t they see my extreme passion for the industry and eagerness to learn? I knew that my lack of experience was my main hindrance and that I needed to go out and get some, but I also knew that if I didn’t focus on the one important matter of gaining a good degree, my chances of working within the industry could be taken away from me completely. So for the last few months of my degree, I knuckled down and the hard work of a 4-year course finally paid off! But as graduation approached, reality dawned on me. Whenever bumping into relatives and family friends the same old questions and exclamations kept resurfacing, “What will you do now you’ve finished?”, “What, you haven’t got a job!?”, “There are lots of sales and recruitment roles out there, why don’t you pursue those options instead?”, “How about teaching? Lots of language students go into teaching…”.  The questions were never-ending, and whilst annoying, I knew that they all had my best interest at heart. But I didn’t want to go into sales, or recruitment, or teaching despite the constant competition and rejection I knew I was putting myself up for. There were simply industries that I wasn’t passionate about.  As the questions kept flooding in I started to do some research and finally found my solution: I was going to do an internship… in Shanghai.

Yes, that’s right Shanghai, China. I took the extreme option of moving halfway across the world for several months in order for me to get some of that integral work experience under my belt. And what an experience it was! It was undoubtedly worth every single penny that I had scrimped and saved up for during the summer at my part-time job. But why China of all places? Well three reasons really. Firstly, I’ve always had a soft spot for China, having grown up in Hong Kong until the age of 11, and I knew that I always wanted to go back. Secondly, being a language geek, I knew sometime after uni I wanted to start learning Mandarin, so what better excuse than to go and learn the language whilst being immersed by it! And finally, and maybe most importantly, the fact that China is an emerging market, that has not only become the second largest global ad market but that it is expected to surpass the UK and become the biggest consumer market in the next 10-15 years. As a result of this huge expansion, I know that employers, no matter what industry you want to go into, will start to look for potential employees who have had experience and understand the subtle differences between China and the West. It was easy for me. I didn’t need much persuading as I have never been one to be afraid of a challenge, particularly one that involved travelling and living abroad, having already spent a year living in France in my 3^rd year.

So last October, after 4 months of saving, I said goodbye to my family and friends, got on a plane and joined 30 other interns from around the world to take part in a two-month internship organised by CRCC Asia Ltd. I was working as a marketing and events intern for a small independent local advertising agency whose main channel is a website dedicated to helping expats moving to and living in Shanghai (I wont go into great detail about my internship but if you want to know more about what I did there feel free to visit my blog www.gradandlooking.blogspot.com). Whilst it wasn’t specifically an advertising internship that I had initially asked for when applying for the programme, I threw myself into it and as I was working for an SME, I learnt an extensive amount about event marketing, event management and social media marketing, and was given a huge amount of responsibility from negotiating with sponsors to devising and planning the agency’s biggest event of the year! I also learnt about Chinese business culture, including the importance of networking and guan’xi, and keeping ones face (mian’xi) and more importantly I learnt so much about myself as a person. Despite the never-ending cultural shocks that I faced in a city that is in a continuous state of change and growth, I never felt lost.  Even though frustration became a frequent sentiment in my day-to-day life as a graduate on my very own journey to the East, I learnt and improved upon many skills that were unbeknown to me! Whether it was my acting abilities during my first weekend when trying to look for coat hangers and struggling to find the word in my phrasebook (I am proud to say that I am pretty good at charades now!), or my ability in hiding my true feelings towards some unknown Chinese delicacy that I had to eat out of politeness (there were many dishes whose ingredients were unrecognisable, and perhaps to my relief will continue to remain unknown), or successfully holding my own on the metro and reaching my desired metro stop without being shoved and pushed off the stop before, Shanghai showed me that I can adapt to any unfamiliar situation.

Now I’m back in the UK, my life in Shanghai seems like a blur and I miss China terribly – I know it’s a place I would love to return to in the future to live and work. So what am I doing now? Well unfortunately I missed out on the majority of advertising grad schemes whilst away, but I have managed to apply for the few schemes whose deadlines were after Christmas and consequently been invited to interviews and an assessment day. I am also applying to entry-level advertising account executive job vacancies that I have seen, but surprisingly I have seen that even with me having several months of experience, for most vacancies this isn’t enough – they want at least a year’s worth! We just can’t win. For that reason I feel that grad schemes are so important to aspiring ad execs like myself, and that more companies should have them, or at least have a few trainee vacancies as many of us cannot afford to work for free for a year, especially with our student debt looming above us! Without a doubt my two-months of overseas experience have been integral to the success of my grad scheme applications this year, and I now have so much more to talk about during those important competency based questions that we are all so familiar with! However despite the fact that there is a high possibility that I may have to undertake some more work experience whilst working part time, I do not regret any part of my expensive decision to go abroad. I am not saying that you all have to go to the same extreme lengths that I have (after all going all the way to China might not appeal to everyone’s tastes and pockets), but that the key to getting noticed in the marcoms industry is to definitely get as much work experience as you can whether it’s an independent local agency or one in the big cities like London, Manchester, Birmingham etc. It really annoys me when I see headlines and reports stating how lazy our generation are. If they call people who are working for free for months on end just to get a foot on the career ladder in order to start paying off our scarily high debts lazy, I don’t know what more they expect from us. We all just have to keep at it and maintain our sense of humour. Be determined, be pro-active, be patient, and hopefully someone somewhere will see how much we want that ever-important first job. Good luck to you all J!

Marie xox

(If you have any questions or comments please don’t hesitate to contact me by following me on Twitter @mklw20 or connecting with me on LinkedIn).

Guerrilla Giveaway

I first came across this amazing piece of communication on one of my favourite blogs by The Awkward Stag. Please watch before you read below!

(I realise that this is a tad late given that we're now in January, but what's the harm in spreading some belated seasonal cheer?)

The usual charity campaign premise is to tug as hard as possible on our heart strings. Unfortunately, this is not always enough to encourage action, and more often than not merely incites the generic thought: "I really should do something for charity". That's why this piece is so refreshing. 

Contrary to the tired charity appeal format, Inferno have created the character of 'Good Will', who is full of his namesake's seasonal spirit and takes us on an emotional flight to the highest heavens with his generosity for generosity's sake. And if Good Will can be so generous for no reason in particular, surely we can take a leaf (or a fiver) out of his book and give to a worthy charity?

Some agency self-promo videos

Came across this little gem by Fold7, a London agency who've gotten into the Christmas spirit with this little self-promo vid. The title is 'Advertising With Bells On', and you'll soon find out why...

I love the build up at the beginning that gets you guessing about who exactly they're talking about, and also the transition from support and enthusiasm for Santa to showcasing his less endearing traits as creative director in an ad agency - almost getting caught looking at a sexy Mrs Claus, having the two interns sit on his knee, wanting to put Christmas tinsel and bells on everything. The video is hilarious and of course perfect for this time of year, and hence is a perfect means to persuade us of Fold7's capabilities as an agency.

Another of my recent favourite agency vids is this one by John St, a Toronto-based agency who share how they're keeping on top of industry trends:

Hilarious! So relevant, light-hearted and effective in demonstrating their creative capacities. I thought I'd share these videos as they really are fun to watch and it's so interesting to gain an insight into the culture of the agency. Then I came across this by Sapient Nitro...

Still hilarious - but in a very different way, and probably not in the way that the agency intended. It's like the producers of Rebecca Black's "Friday" got together with those of Band Aid. Maybe it was a team building day that was never meant to reach the public spectrum. That might be the reason it was taken down from the Facebook page. Or then again it could be because it's atrocious..