I was a student at RMIT from 2006 and
I graduated with a Bachelor of Business majoring in Marketing.
I currently work as a senior CRM campaign manager at Country Road Group.
I began working at a different company, it was called Guild Group and that's where I started my work experience.
I started planning my career second year uni, after my first year at RMIT.
I very much encourage work experience, as a student, that's how I landed my internship.
It was free work but the amount that you learn as a student is invaluable and
I can't encourage students enough to put their hand up to do work experience,
even if it isn't at the ideal company, getting your foot in the door and being exposed to how a company works is super invaluable.
I think students at RMIT should start planning their careers as soon as they can and
start asking as many questions as soon as they can and talking to anyone that they can.
You could know the person already that works in a company that you could get a role at, so speak to as many people as possible
and don't underestimate how well-networked you already are.
When I started off at Guild I actually got that role through a family member who worked for the company
and that was how I managed to secure work experience.
The biggest extracurricular activity at RMIT was probably Brandstorm.
We were required to design a product range with commercial reality
and we were able to work with design agencies that L'Oreal funded and
we actually ended up winning for Australia and going over to Paris.
Entering a competition like L'Oreal Brandstorm does seem like a lot of work and it is a lot of work
but I can't encourage students enough to put themselves out there
and take that risk and dive into a project like that.
It's something you can add to your resume and talk about and it really does make you stand out.
(Here's my resume.)
When students start to plan their CV, the most important thing that they need to think about is
what can I put on this to make me stand out?
It's about the experiences that make you different and having a practical component is so important.
Marketing is a very digital world so having an understanding of all things digital is really going to make you stand out
and that includes things like learning about how a website's built,
social media, learning about design tools.
An example of how I've used InDesign, not on the job but it has helped me put together a beautiful portfolio
to demonstrate the work which, again, has helped me in interviews and as well as that
I've used InDesign to put together my CV to make it stand out a bit and make it look beautiful.
LinkedIn is very important in terms of building your career and making connections in the industry.
If you're going for a job do some research in terms of the key words that may be used in that job.
So you'll see a job ad, for example, with a key list of the certain levels of experience that are required to get that role.
If you can get certain words from that job ad and feed them back into your LinkedIn account,
all of a sudden when the search engine's used, you'll get picked up on that search and you will fit the profile for that role.
I think the most important thing that employers look for,
experience, knowing that you're going to be able to do the job and knowing that you may bring something different to the table.
Marketing is very competitive and having a practical component to your learnings is so important
and making the right connections with the right people
and speaking to the right people is really important.
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