Such a Good Example

Lately I feel like juniors have a sense of privilege that the second they are done with school the industry should have a job ready for them. When that doesn't happen, graduates are deflated and discouraged, cursing the very industry they aspire to be in.

When you search and search and no job turns up, you gotta look beyond your resume and put some other efforts in. I have counseled so many students about cultivating themselves outside of school and what is on their resume. Constantly read, research, listen and learn. Find interests, travel, explore and expand their horizons. Most times it is through these extraneous efforts that a job ends up popping up.

Following is a note I received and I thought I'd share it as an example of someone discouraged by not finding what she wanted and then deciding one day to do something about it. She analyzed what she truly loved, she spent time researching, she took other related-to-advertising jobs, learned what she could and came at the industry in a whole new way. Such a good example of initiative we can all learn from:

Dear Ms. Gorman,

I hope this email finds you well. 

I am not sure if you remember me but my name is Lizette Lee and I am from Sydney, Australia. Over a year ago, I asked for some advice with regards obtaining an internship in the US as I was then studying Pre-press and Graphic Arts. The reason for this email is that I want to take the time to re-thank you for sharing your wisdom regardless of your very much limited time to do so. You were very nice to me, even though I came from a land far, far away and was lost as a street puppy. 

I would also like to let you know as well how I am doing. After our brief email exchanges, I was fully frustrated with the results of my applications, decided to give up and be complacent with my dead-end waitress job as it was paying the bills, anyway. I must say that I never stopped reading your blog along a lot of other resources you constantly post on Twitter. After a year of suppressed frustration, I decided to re-jumpstart my career track. I also was able to determine that advertising was not really what I was looking for but rather, I realised I am more passionate with marketing. I believe I was not fully able to distinguish the both so well and it led to confusion of what I really wanted. Blogs like yours and those you link out (i.e. Baby Food for Creatives) gave me a clearer understanding and drew the big picture of the advertising world that textbook definitions could not. 

For now, I am re-opening my career path by doing a lot of self-studying, offering myself to work for free in marketing agencies and studying how Social Media works in a bigger perspective by reading plenty of published journals, researches and statistics. I've grown to learn that I want to build my career towards specialising in Social Media strategies when I worked as a research assistant (Mostly doing proof-reading work, but I learned a lot!) for a German(why he needed a proof-reader) researcher from the University of Sydney in the subjects of Disaster Management using Social Media. I've just started to to create/use Social Media streams(Twitter, LinkedIn) to learn from usage and stabilise a public identity for potential employers. I also started a new blog, which I hope, someday, could be as insightful as yours. Once again, thank you very much for your generosity of sharing your brain and maybe 10 years from now I will bump into you and be able to personally thank you.

Yours,

Lizette

http://www.twitter.com/ilovelizette

http:/thelizettechronicles.blogspot.com