“Don’t Think Your Part-Time Isn’t Important”

           

Since the beginning of my advertising adventures, I have always thought that my part time retail job would be irrelevant when moving into the advertising industry, but I was wrong. The first 6 weeks of the advertising account management program focused on consumer insights that has a great correlation to my retail experience. Consumer insights in advertising is about understanding individuals, groups, and societies’ interest and reasons for purchasing a product or service, which is then used to develop strong and engaging advertisements. I believe this highly significant component of advertising connects well to what I have experienced in retail as I have to gather data and information from my customers to develop a strong sales pitch to getting them to purchase my products.

            Apart from developing an understanding of consumerism, I have also gained some other soft skills that I are essential to our industry. These soft skills include customer service, team work, and overall work experience. During a coop info-session with Cossette and Blue Hive, the HR representatives talked about how your soft skills experiences will be evaluated as students, such as myself, do not have industry experience to discuss about in our interviews. One of these skills was customer service which demonstrates your proficiency in helping and communicating with customers. Customer service in retail is no different than serving advertising agencies clientele, as in both situations, you have to make your customer/ clients’ happy by addressing their needs. I have also learnt valuable team-working skills where I had to learn to work with both people I love and hate which your instructors will you that this will always happen in the industry. As my instructors have stressed, in this industry, you have to work as a team so my suggestion is that you better be loved by your peers or else. Finally, work experience, in any industry, just having worked for a company before demonstrates that you’ve joined the workforce before and if you’ve been with a company for a long time, that will also demonstrate loyalty as well.

            So for those of you that will be joining this program next year, don’t quit your dead end job because your skills there can easily be transferred to this program and especially with our industry.

Networking Night, “PREPARE”.

Last night, the advertising students had an amazing treat as we had a chance to meet representatives from different agencies and companies. These representatives were invited by the SAA to discuss the number of entry level positions that we could potentially apply to and to also share some insightful knowledge on the cultural and business aspects of their agency and companies.

For this post, instead of sharing my wonderful experience going into my first networking event, I will be talking to you about the importance to “PREPARE”. My definition of “PREPARE” means to be ready and have yourself well equipped before an activity or performance. In consideration to network night, you want to be well prepared when approaching these representatives. This means you have to research these agencies and events that are coming to the event as you don’t to look clueless or confused when conversing with the representatives. Research includes looking through their “About Page”, following them on social media, and my favorite part in this is to review and analyze their past campaigns. Asking about their opening positions and about their agencies can only take you so far in comparison to talking about what attracts them the most about their past projects. For myself, with Dentsu AEGIS, I immediately asked about their interactive media campaigns and with Cossette, I have greatly followed their McDonald’s campaign.

 In consideration to researching the agencies and the companies available, the next to you should “PREPARE” for is your professional portfolio; which means have your resumes, cover letters, and linkedin account edited and viewed for positive and negative criticisms. My advice for your professional portfolio, please build one that best describes the job you will want in the future.

The final and most important “PREPARE” is to develop a professional image of yourself. As we all know you will be a student prior to work, that doesn’t mean you can’t look your best and to look as if you are already working in the industry. When you are meeting these representatives, have your best business/working attire ready. Dressing to impress is the key to building a good rapport with the representative. Apart from your attire, another aspect of the professional image is to learn to develop good eye contact as you don’t want to look down but at the representative, a clear voice that will ensure you will communicate properly, and finally, a good hard handshake to seal the deal.

Hope This Helps.

Joining the SAA and Why?

            Before I talk about the start of my winter term as a Sheridan advertising student, I’m going to discuss the importance of extra curricular involvement at SheridanCollege. With any career, employers, especially the ones from the advertising and marketing field, are always eager to hear about your involvement apart from your educational life. For future Sheridan’s advertising students, I would definitely recommend you to join SheridanAdvertising Association (SAA) because from my knowledge, this club/ organization can help you network with other advertising students to further expand your interest and understanding of the advertising world as well as to providing you with the workshops that will teach you to perfect your future advertising career applications.

           

            As for myself, I am the postgraduate student representative for the SAA and my responsibilities include promoting the SAA sponsored career development workshop, social, and networking night events to my fellow postgraduate classmates. This opportunity has allowed me to learn more about the advertising industry and to also understand the values of advertising from different advertising enthusiast outside of the postgraduate block. So if any of you who are interested in the Sheridan Advertising Account Management Postgraduate Program, I strongly suggest you to seriously join the SAA to better grasp what this wonderful industry is all about and to help in developing your professionalism and network.

P.S.

            To whoever, the postgraduate student representative position is very exciting as you are not stuck with your postgraduates but you are given the opportunity to work with the advertising undergraduates as well.