When I get into a good recruiting call conversation with someone I’ve never talked to before, Inevitiably a question I ask is, “So, how did you get into advertising?” Often the answer is “accidently.” I can’t say much about that myself, as I’ve already detailed my own accidental fall into the industry, here. Sure, lots of people enter college, take an ad/copy/layout class which really turns them on, and plan to enter advertising. But many art directors start out wanting to be gallery display artists and get into agency work to pay the bills until they open their own show. Some PR executives graduate with Journalism, RTVF or mass communications degrees thinking they will be the next Katie Couric.
The point is we often don’t know, upon college graduation, what it is we want to actually DO with that heavy stock piece of paper tacked into a folded pleather binding that gets dumped in a moving box and never pulled out again.
In the course of an email conversation with my friend Michael Iva over at Adholes, he linked me to this article he posted there last year, and a concept he calls Vocation HITCH-HIKING. It’s a great introduction to building your career based on your passions. Do you work to live, or live to work? Does it mean you can’t “fall into” a career and discover a passion? No. But it means a little planning keeps you on track.
Enjoy.
Be the One. Find the One: Recruiting in the World of Advertising and Marketing. 