ShareWhen this year began I wasn’t 100% sure on the career I wanted to pursue. I studied Music Management at university and in my final semester I had a sudden realisation that, although I had enjoyed my degree, the chance of me making it in to a successful career was slim to none. The music industry has become extremely commercialised within the past ten years and with digital technology taking over there were less and less opportunities for graduates. The chance of becoming successful within the music industry has become more about luck rather than skill and experience.
Finding Inspiration
After applying for, what felt like hundreds of jobs, I was beginning to worry that I’d wasted three years of my life at university. I decided that to look at the other skills my degree had covered for inspiration; accounting wasn’t my bag and so my next option was marketing. I had studied marketing each year I was at university, and in my final year we had to produce a business plan, which included how we would generate profit from a PPC campaign. So I had some knowledge of digital marketing beforehand. Once I began to search for digital marketing roles, I discovered an internship advertised on the Coast Digital website. After two interviews, I was lucky enough to be offered the intern position for a three month period.
My First Experiences of a Digital Marketing Agency
In February 2014 I started my internship with the Digital Marketing team at Coast Digital for two days a week. The experience definitely wasn’t the way I imagined an internship would be. I wasn’t there to just make the tea; everyone took their time to teach me about their specialised subjects from SEO to Email Marketing and everything in between. In those three months I learnt so much more than what I had learnt at University and a lot quicker too. The team gave me actual tasks to do in each area that included supporting with deliverable work for clients. This made it easier and more enjoyable to learn instead of trying to learn from reading guides and blogs online. I enjoyed all the aspects of digital marketing; including trying to keep up to date with Google’s ever changing rules and algorithm updates.
The Future and Beyond
After my internship I was sad to leave Coast Digital, but I then knew that digital marketing was definitely the career I wanted to pursue. Fortunately for me three weeks later I was offered the position of Junior Marketing Executive! Since then I have continued to thoroughly enjoy working at Coast and my knowledge of digital marketing is growing rapidly every day.
Now I no longer have to worry about what career I’m going to pursue, instead my next objective is trying to decide what area of digital marketing I’d like to specialise in. Although for the moment, I’m just happy to work in all areas of digital marketing, and to learn as much as possible from everyone at Coast Digital.
So to all other struggling graduates out there; the subject you studied may not be what you’ll enjoy having a career in it, it may be more about how you can adapt your skills to find what makes you happy!