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In the words of Media Lounge, “we don’t pick our employees; they pick us” and I am another to prove them right!
How I got to picking Media Lounge:
As a student looking to make it in the ‘real’ world, I know it’s important to attend industry networking events for two main reasons. One, to network, meet faces and develop a presence amongst the right people, and two, to show you’re proactive, keen, and most of all excited to be a part of the industry itself.
In May of 2015 I was due to attend Meetdraw‘s Student 3-Minute Sizzler. I had been to a couple of networking events prior to this – including a previous Meetdraw, but this was my first “student sizzler” so I was keen to see how it differed.
The difference was this: Twelve Bournemouth based agencies had organised a representative to attend the event. Each guest (me) was then invited to have 3 minutes to sizzle/chat/tell jokes/whatever they fancied with a representative before being ushered on. It reminded me of a blind date affair. The attractive part for most (since we’re talking about students here), was that for each 3-minute sizzle, a free beer token was given! I know, what a result! …But unfortunately for me, I was still suffering from an all-day hangover (classic) so the beer tokens were wasted!
Stereotypically I found that most students at the event were eager to chat with the representatives from the bigger agencies in the area, such as Thinking Juice and Walker, however I didn’t have such an agenda for the evening.
I walked over to Adam, a stranger at the time, sat down opposite him, and engaged in conversation for exactly 3 minutes. All I can say is, something must have sizzled!
Once I was home I drafted an email to send to Adam the following morning. I think two things stood out to Adam from my email: One, my obvious charm and proactive nature and two, taking the initiative of attaching a photo of myself from the night before (it was to help him recognise/remember me from the other students not anything creepy!)
Moving on… A date was arranged, a meeting took place, work experience was offered, and a first day was about to commence…
The work: Adam and Marcus (my marketing manager) were keen for me to gain as much valuable experience as possible and drew up a plan for my next 6 weeks of work. They covered a wide variety of marketing areas including PPC, direct mail, data driven marketing, content, and social media.
What I immediately liked about Media Lounge was that the employee’s regard themselves as a family rather than a group of colleagues.
Here comes a second Media Lounge quote for you:
‘Companies don’t succeed, people do!’
This is definitely a mantra that Adam and Mike (his partner in crime/co-owner if you must) abide by. They encourage a pleasant working environment, no hierarchy and no rigidity of a usual agency. Each month we are treated to a social outing, if targets are met then a quarterly one is arranged on top of these. Not to mention each Friday we have a cooked breakfast at a local restaurant (whoop)!
To celebrate the end of my work experience, we went out for drinks and to a Thai restaurant. I felt sad to leave as I’d just started to bond with the other employee’s but I didn’t dwell on this as I was about to embark on my next adventure: 10 months’ work in Cape Town, South Africa!
…
One year on and I’m back at Media Lounge after being offered a full time job as a Marketing Executive! It just goes to show putting yourself out there (even if hungover) pays off!
My plan from now is to work hard and graduate, grow my knowledge base, add value and above all, continue to wind Marcus up daily!