The competition for creative jobs in advertising and marketing is fierce. If you’ve ever hit the streets looking for a book crit, or have attended events hoping to impress the creative director of your favourite agency, then you’ll know that landing that dream job is about as easy as thinking up an appropriate simile to accurately convey the complexity of the task.
So, what can you do to boost your chances of getting that coveted copywriter or designer role? In the creative industry, the pressure is on to be, well, you know, creative. You need to make the traditional CV or your online portfolio do all the hard work just to get noticed. But, no matter how great your work is or how unconventional your job application, quite often something is missing.
Take a different approach
Agencies hire the person. A standout CV gets your foot in the door, but if they meet you face to face and decide that you’re not the right fit, then it’s not likely you’ll get the job. So, wouldn’t it be great if there was a way that would-be employers could find out more about you before arranging to meet? Without the need for a gimmicky cv or the need to tell them that you ‘work well alone and as part of a team’.
How can One Minute Briefs help?
In the past few months alone, I’ve secured interviews and work with digital marketing agencies, advertising and branding agencies, and landed some great in-house projects, AND they all had one thing in common. Each email exchange and each conversation mentioned the work I had done with One Minute Briefs.
These daily designs and doodles are presenting real, and exciting opportunities for those that take part, and for someone who hasn’t got a formal background in this industry, my little examples of wordplay and dubious photoshoppery are giving me an advantage and have actually changed my life (without exaggeration!).
Showcase yourself
Whilst the work is a representation of your talent, your Twitter feed is also a reflection of you and your personality. Here the quiet observer, or potential recruiter, can learn things about you, the things that interest you, and decide whether your online persona is potentially a good match for their organisation. You reveal your stance and awareness of current affairs, showing how you dabble with the zeitgeist, how you handle a hashtag, and ‘disrupt’ or ‘influence’ conversations.
So, whether you’re polite and professional, or bold and daring, there’s likely to be an agency watching that shares similar values. If people dislike what you produce, then maybe, just maybe, your work wasn’t for them. Maybe it’s for the people who want to take risks, or for those who actually enjoy a painful pun in the most excruciatingly enjoyable way. And, they’re the people you want to work for.
OMB really is for everybody. If your willing to give it a go, and not take yourself too seriously, it can help to open doors that might otherwise stay tightly shut. If you find your gender, ethnicity, orientation, or background are under-represented, then OMB could be the first public platform for you to take a step and make a small, but noticeable, change.
Development
OMB is also a place to develop. Nobody gets it right EVERY time. Not even those sat in the heady heights of a high-paying creative executive role can claim that every idea they have is an absolute winner. Or, that their initial concepts don’t flirt with cliche or allude to the crude or obvious. There are creative agencies who regularly drop the ball or miss the mark on campaigns, costing clients hundreds of thousands of pounds…if only they took part in One Minute Briefs from time to time.
To take part in One Minute Briefs is to be brave. To tip the contents of your head out in an uncontrolled burst of creativity, and then release it upon an unsuspecting public can be a terrifying notion. But, a sixty second (or slightly longer) idea is just that, it’s not your life’s work, you won’t lose your career, your family, or your gym membership just because you had a crap idea once on that Twitter thingy.
Get some perspective, and the best thing that could happen is that you start to improve, learn from a community, and attract the attention of potential employers who admire your gutsy stance on creativity and want to snap you up for their next project.
Network
The OMB reach is pretty amazing, with over 17,000 followers, the potential for your work to reach a massive audience is there for the taking. Those that take part, or OMBLES if you will, come from a range of backgrounds. Students, graduates, freelancers, in-housers, career changers, retirees, they all have a network.
And, they all see your work and the way your creative process adapts and evolves, noticing your strengths and any niches you start to develop. The day to day support from the OMB community is one thing, but they’re also your word-of-mouth recommendations, who’ll put in a good word for you, who can tip you off about an upcoming vacancies they think you’d be just right for.
Your vibe attracts your tribe, and by just being yourself you may discover that the right work opportunities come and find you, all because you did ‘a thing on Twitter’ one day.