Hello world! My name is Andrew. I have been working at In Marketing We Trust as a Junior for six months now. I remember how I thought I would be well equipped to handle the role after completing a Digital Marketing course at UNSW. Boy was I wrong…
About Me
I am a Marketing/Economics and Finance major at the University of New South Wales. The reason behind my 3 majors is that in 2015 I made the personal choice to pursue a career in Digital Marketing as opposed to Finance and Economics I felt disillusioned about Finance and Economics making a material difference in daily business activities.
I actually applied for the role at In Marketing We Trust a year before joining, but realised how little I knew about SEO. I decided to suspend my application and take it upon myself to learn a thing or two about digital marketing. What I quickly loved about Digital Marketing because there were so many avenues that I could explore: content production, data analysis as well as web design.
It’s been an incredible journey so far and I wanted to make note of a few things for upcoming students about life lessons that University doesn’t prepare you for.
Success is a journey, not a destination
University is a place where we strive for success, failure isn’t an option. We constantly hear stories about entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Bill Gates failing on a regular basis, but we would never imagine that happening to us. It’s understandable though – who would want to fail whilst studying at University? As a result, university does not nurture a student to develop a progressive mindset, that a takeaway from failing is just as valuable as success. It’s not easy to be critical of yourself after a failure, but if done correctly it will allow you to grow immensely.
Thinking, not remembering
The general approach for students to tackle university problems to is memorise a predetermined method without an exact understanding of the problem. In the business world however, you must constantly ask what is the purpose of your actions.
‘Time Management’
Let’s face it, handing assignments one hour before the deadline does not make you a master at time management. All students know the terms “all nighter” and “last-minute cram” all too well. I honestly believe that this is a result of students feeling overwhelmed by the immediate size of the task/project but not having the presence of mind to divide into smaller, achievable milestones. Consequently, they rely on their ability to “pull an all-nighter” to get them across the line. Having this type of work style will not get you far in the world.
“It’s not about what you have to do, it’s about what you have to do TODAY…”
This is a big one, It can make the difference between feeling demotivated as opposed to feeling accomplished. In my attempt to get as much as possible in the week, I always felt I was coming up short and never felt happy. Once I learnt how to plan accordingly and set achievable goals for the day, I was able to appreciate where my efforts were going to where I was pushing the needle.
Professional Development
As university students, we are not given any real incentive to learn outside the specified curriculum. In a world where technological advancements are rapidly occurring, it’s foolish to not invest in your skill uptake. I’d encourage anyone who wants to become a valued member of an SEO agency to never stop learning. Develop an appetite for learning.
A perfect example is learning how to code. I’m no expert by any means, but I’m grateful that a few ‘Google searches’ led myself to create a script that automatically updates my Google Spreadsheet with data from Google Analytics everyday. I’ve recently signed up for Team Treehouse as I’m intrigued about the magic behind web design (namely HTML/CSS/JavaScript).
