Try to remember. The first day. You met maybe fifty people. Remembered three and-a-half names (that tall guy was Jack or Jim or Jebediah or something like that). Some of the people looked like they had careers that were everything you went to college for – they were cool and relaxed and having a great time at their jobs … or, you assume it was their job. I mean, really, people have serious creative brainstorming meetings over a clearly jerry-rigged X-Box and cold pizza all the time, right? And, some of them looked so weirdly like your parents you couldn’t imagine they worked in advertising. I mean, those pants were almost as high as her bangs.
But, onto your day.
While people literally dashed past your tiny, drab cube, alternately yelling, muttering and clinging to stacks of oddly-sized pages, you set about notching out the accomplishments of any good first day: you found the bathroom / water cooler / vending machine, met your boss – or tried to whilst she pulled her cell phone away from her lips just long enough to say, let’s schedule some time – and, you set up IM to message worriedly with your best friend who is still resume slinging from her parents’ basement.
The culture of an ad agency isn’t as easy to acclimate to as a typical company. In most, there isn’t a meaningful orientation and the job description is merely a guideline for the “bare minimum.” It can take months of annoying everyone around you, drinking too much, and being sure – SURE – that you’re about to be fired before you really start to understand … well, what your job is.
It seems that I’m at that point in my career when younger “Ad Guys” occasionally ask me for advice about their careers. And, I’d like to help, but I often find myself floundering because they generally ASK THE WRONG QUESTIONS. They want to know how to get onto another account when really they should be asking how to talk to their boss / client / coworker, etc.
So, I set out in this mini-series to share the best advice my mentors have given me and the “how tos” from my own trial-and-error education.
Feel free to print and share with you own army of bewildered twenty-somethings…
Upcoming titles:
- Account executives: This is your real job description
- The three pillars of success in (nearly) any agency
- So, you have a boss. Now what?
- Ten tips for your first client meeting
- Building the right reputation in the first three months
- Creatives: How to win the trust of clients and AEs
I honestly can't wait to read the upcoming posts, thank you.
Posted by: Kymber | June 13, 2007 at 11:44 AM