Majors: Communication Studies (and Journalism through CoJMC)
Graduation year: 2009
Current occupation: Senior Marketing Manager, Hudl
Like many of my colleagues in marketing and advertising, my work went remote in March. Thankfully, I have experience working remotely, though the thought of a sustained work-from-home environment was something I hadn't expected to be thrown into so quickly. Thankfully, my employer put their employees first and has been flexible and accommodating moving to a remote work environment. The technologies available today—Zoom, Slack—no doubt help us all stay on top of work. These weren't available in 2008-2009.
My experiences with this pandemic, and the economic fallout we're seeing because of it, are drastically different than where I was as a graduate in the spring of 2009. Entering my final semester, I knew the job outlook was going to be very challenging. It was hard to put my preconceived notion of "graduate and choose your job offer" on the shelf and realize that I had to dig deep and take on more work outside of the curriculum to refine my portfolio. The technical skills I had to learn on my own, but the reps of presenting and getting critiques made my work better and gave me the confidence to speak to my work in a job interview.
My message to those entering the workforce: Building your network in this environment is going to be much harder than normal and that's a reality you're going to have to accept. What you do with that challenge is up to you, and those who turn a challenge into an opportunity to reframe their approach will succeed and start their journey. The qualities that will shine in today's environment are being adaptable, resilient, a good communicator, and hard-working. Find ways to speak to those traits in your interviews.
