Two more schemes open...

Two more open (sesame)

Hello there gang. Two more schemes to draw your attention to.

1) Saatchi & Saatchi

The original Saatchis' has opened its doors to its Summer Scholarship on Facebook. Sign up to its group here for more information. There's no closing date at the moment, but I imagine it'll be updated as it goes.

2) Publicis

Publicis's scheme has opened. Check it out here. Their twitter stream is here. It shuts on February the 1st at 6pm. I have been told that the initial graduate email was incorrect, so use the email gradteam@publicis.co.uk if you've been eager and sent your details in early.

Best of luck with those two.

Final lot of Grad schemes...

One final grad scheme post, to get to those I've forgotten about.

Beattie McGuinness Bungay's graduate/non graduate scheme/alternate grad scheme is also open. To apply, email recruitment@bmbagency.com with your CV, answering the following question:

"How would you promote a forlorn, forgtotten, unloved shop on your high street? Reinvent and revive it; be Mary Queen of Shops for a day. Think about how it'll look, what it'll be like and how it'll thrive.

We're not looking for theory and jargon. We want you to think about it as if it was something you were really going to do. Speak to local shoppers, think about the environment, the community, and show us how it would work.

Tell us your idea however you choose - a blog, a film, an essay, an interpretative dance or something else entirely - and remember that presentation can be an idea in itself.

We'll be looking for business brains, creative flair and a risk or two to reach us by the 31st of December 2010. Go on - surprise us."

Finally, Elvis's grad scheme has opened too. More information can be found here, or here's the application form. The scheme closes on the 31st of December.

I think that's the lot. Shout if there are more/some we've missed.

Two more graduate roles....

I don't think either agency will require you to dress like this. Honest.

More and more graduate schemes have come out of the ether. These may be the last two, but I just don't know.

1) Dare/MCBD: These guys have combined their graduate scheme/s into one. Apply through their Facebook page here. The closing date's the 15th of November.

2) DLKW Lowe: My former employer is recruiting. Find out more here. The deadline's the 12th of November.

Phew. The schemes are certainly coming thick and fast.

An Amend, & A Final Countdown...

Dee dee. Dee tee dee tee dee.

Ah, hair rock. Lovely.

Anyway, three things have just happened:

1) AMV have a new graduate scheme link, which is here. The details are just the same, though their twitter stream (@amvacademy) will hopefully keep you updated.

2) Leo Burnett's grad scheme is about to close (this Friday night, the 1st of October). So get those apps in.

3) M&C Saatchi's grad scheme IS open. I've been on a search to try and find it, and it does exist. Here 'tis. It closes on the 5th of November.

Here's hoping those are useful. Let us know how you get on, or if there are any other schemes out there which we've missed.

2011 Grad Schemes: The List

You will not (happily) be working with these people.

Hi gang.

As it’s graduate recruitment season, I thought it would be a good idea to run down which agencies are (currently) doing what, and provide some helpful links.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and for any agencies who are reading this and want to promote their grad scheme (little or large, UK or not), shoot me an email.

AMV-BBDO: Their graduate page is here, with some details about the 2011 scheme – it will open in mid September 2010. First round interviews will be on Wednesday 24th, Thursday 25th and Friday 26th November 2010. Final round interviews will be on Friday 10th December 2010.

BBH: No graduate scheme this yearas to this year’s intake, but keep an eye on their London office’s twitter here.

BMB: Their site says they are finalising bits and bobs, but keep an eye here for the opening date.

CHI: Their page has a graduate page, but no news as yet. It should open soon, if recent years are anything to go by.

Dare: Their 2011 grad scheme has yet to be announced, but keep an eye on the Facebook page – it should be announced nearer December/January time if they run one next year.

DDB London: These guys have just opened their grad scheme, with the details here and the Facebook group here. Applications close 29th of October.

Engine: As noted in the comments, these guys have opened their grad scheme now. Applications close on 20th November 2010. They'll contact you by the end of December to let you know whether you've been selected to attend a first interview.

JWT London: Their scheme has opened, and you can see more details here. In short the deadline is Wednesday 3rd November 2010, with interviews the week commencing 22nd November 2010. If you’re successful at interview, they’ll invite you to a two day seminar on Tuesday 7th and Wednesday 8th December 2010.

Ogilvy: The graduate scheme is here. Sadly, the 2010 intake has closed, but you can sign up to follow their twitter here.

Leo Burnett: Check the Facebook page out here, or click on the link to their site. The recent grads have a newly minted blog too, which is here, and if you have any further questions of the Grad team,
email them. Their deadline is midnight on the 1st of October, for a start date early 2011. Get your skates on.

Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe: Their page is unusually quiet, but it’s worth watching their blog for more details.

McCann London: Their McAcademy has ended this year, but if it is run next year (too early to tell – their site hasn’t been updated to say whether or not), it applications will open from July/August time.

MCBD: I can’t see any evidence of a grad scheme this year, but it’s worth keeping an eye on their Facebook page, which should liven up soon if they’re recruiting this year.

Publicis London: No news on the new summer school, but it is due to launch soon, if their Facebook page is to be believed.

VCCP London: Their site appears not to be working (?), but here’s their twitter stream.

WPP Fellowship: The fellowship is open now, and you can click here to find out more. Essentially, the deadline is 12 noon (GMT) on Thursday 11^th of November.

I hope those are all helpful.

Grad Down The Track: Jonathan Drennan

Hello gang.

A little while ago, we used to do a more regular feature on grads who've recently broken into the advertising industry. What with all the job features, it kind of fell by the wayside.

So it gives me great pleasure to provide a post from Jonathan Drennan, a grad who is on Leo Burnett's graduate scheme. The Leo Burnett graduate blog is here, if you want to have a read.

FROM IRELAND TO ADLAND

Five months ago I was sitting in the cramped office of the Belfast newspaper where I worked as a reporter. I remember the day clearly, I had just interviewed a distressed primary school headmaster whose school had been the victim of a sectarian arson attack. Suddenly, my phone flashed an unknown number. Groggily, I picked it up. It was the Head of Account Management at Leo Burnett offering me a place of their graduate program as a trainee account handler. My life changed in an instant.

A question I am constantly asked is why did I decide to switch from journalism into the world of advertising. From a young age, I was writing for newspapers. I walked into my local rag in my school uniform on a Friday afternoon and was writing a theatre review that night. I progressed until I had worked for a variety of newspapers in South Africa and Ireland before I had left university. However, during my master’s degree in Dublin, I had started to become frustrated with the profession that had always been my dream.

Due to financial constraints, news reporting in many cases had simply descended into adjusting press releases to suit an editor’s needs that day. Creativity was being stilted in order to provide a more cost effective product. After speaking to a variety of university colleagues working in the industry, I started to look into advertising as a career. I wanted a job that would be able to utilise any skills I had learnt in journalism. Formulating and delivering an idea, working under a strict deadlines, time management and learning how to talk to a wide range of people all seemed to fit the bill. I became desperate to make the change.

My parents were cynical. I had no direct experience of advertising agencies and they thought I was wasting my time in even applying for graduate schemes. However, I was and still am absolutely convinced that the beauty of advertising as a career is that any experience you have from life is relevant. To give you some context, on my graduate scheme we have a former PR executive, a former English teacher, a former translator and a former investment banker. We are in the business of dealing with people, so why shouldn’t these experiences be relevant?

The application process is extremely tough for everyone. Sometimes you wrestle with a quirky application question for two weeks and then you don’t even get the pleasure of an automated response from the agency you applied to. At other times, an application that you are almost ashamed to email due to your contrived responses can get you a coveted first round interview. It is certainly not an exact science.

Rejections happen to everyone. I certainly had my fair share. Advertising is a highly competitive industry and the sheer amount of applicants for every job is daunting. For each scheme you will find yourself against hundreds of similarly motivated and talented candidates. At times you are not a good fit for the agency’s culture which you can’t affect, but at other times you didn’t do yourself justice in your application or your interview which you certainly can change.

My Dad loves his cliches, but I really believe in this one. He says that every interview you do, you learn something new. This was certainly the case for me. After you have recovered from the day’s exertions, it is essential to be brutally self-critical. For the interviews I didn’t get, it was normally something I could improve upon. Deceptively, simple things like learning how to work well in a group task, is something that frustratingly can only come with practice.

In terms of positive advice for the interview process, I would say remember all the reasons you wanted to work in advertising in the first place. Maybe it was a Guinness advert that got you excited. Or maybe you are just absolutely fascinated by brands. Whatever it is, use this passion as a strength. Conveying enthusiasm is such a simple, but incredibly effective way of endearing you to the agency. Quite simply, it shows you care.

It is a rare luxury to not dread Sunday nights and I know I am lucky to fall into this category. This is a fascinating industry that is completely restless. No day is the same and I am constantly learning. I have received three months of incredible training and met a huge amount of people at Leo Burnett including the company’s global CEO from Chicago. I am about to start working on Client business in the next few weeks and can’t wait. At times the application process is incredibly disheartening. But if you keep banging on that door loud enough eventually someone will answer it for you.

The Great Lottery...

A possibility.

Quite a few of you will already have had, or will be beginning to have, second round interviews. Congratulations are in order. You're past the first round stage, which is a massive achievement in itself.

And I thought it'd be a good idea to write some second round tips and tricks, whilst underlining the most important thing to take away from the whole experience.

The most important (and honest) thing to say is that it's all a bit of a lottery, really. If you've gotten this far, you'll be good enough to work in this business. You have the qualifications to prosper, you undoubtedly write well, and know what you're talking about. But the second round is ultimately like preparing for an exam. You prepare for ages, try to second guess what you'll be asked to do, but it comes down to on the day. You can think you've done incredibly well and still not get through.

Depressing? Perhaps, but it's not meant to be. You're in a situation which has many chaos elements, and i'll outline them. These points should hopefully help.

1) Other Candidates

You're surrounded by the sort of people who only have two things in common with you. Firstly, that they want a career in advertising (for the most part - some are dabbling), and secondly, that they impressed your interviewers well enough to be there. But they won't be the same as you. Oh no. Some will be loud. Some will be quiet. Many will have done vastly different degrees and have had very different experiences. I remember one of my second round interviews; one of the blokes there was a very promising acoustic guitarist, and preceded to sing a song half way through the day. Never found out if he got through.

But again, don't worry about it. What you can learn from the other candidates is a little about the sort of people the agency is looking for. Do you think everyone else in the room is a bit of a ball-breaker? Well, that might tell you a little bit about the agency's culture. Maybe they like the sort of people who'd sell their own grandmothers to make an ad. Or, are they all the sort of people who've taken up knitting at 22? Again, it'll help you learn what the agency wants. And this is useful when trying to understand whether you'd fit in - because, God knows, this is just as much about you as it is the place. There's nothing worse than forcing yourself to like a place and hating it from the outset.

2) The Tasks

Hopefully, this won't be like The Apprentice. But if it is, don't panic; again, it tells you something about the sort of place you might work at. I remember being asked at one agency to try and make something (out of selected materials) to stop an egg from smashing. Wacky, a bit mad, but interesting.

Now, this might seem very trivial, much like some of the more spurious and odd questions you were asked in round one. And it can piss some people off. I mean, who gives a flying fuck about keeping an egg alive? Well, there are two points to this. One is the crux of the matter - there's always a question behind this sort of thing. Why, in God's name, would you be asked about something like that? It's really to see how you react and how you think. It's a lateral thinking exercise; only in this instance, you're in a room full of people who're keeping an eye on you, and assessing your response and how you work with others.

Throwing your arms up in the arm and saying 'it's fucked', while possibly the correct response if this was an everyday situation, won't endear you to your team or the people having a look at you. That said, being entirely po-faced about the situation isn't realistic either. Having a chuckle and a laugh with the people who're in your team is the right sort of response. The second (but no less important) point is that you get asked all sorts of strange things in advertising. Things that make you wonder why you need a degree to have gotten onto the grad scheme, that your client is potentially nuts, and that bond you and your team together. That's just advertising, and the second round tasks are the start of realising that.

3) The Presentation

I'm not going to go as far as saying 'it's like a pitch', because you usually have something ressembling a series of facts to go from in a pitch. But, it is just as much a 'on the day' thing as a pitch. That really confident, brassy Brummie girl, who claimed to love presenting? Her freezing on the spot might happen, and often does. That quiet Swedish bloke? He'll come up with the goods when it looked like a stiff breeze might blow him over.

Don't rely, or expect the presentation to go as planned. Also, those people who 'win' the presentation don't always get jobs. It'll be a combination of how you work with your team, and what you've contributed to the whole day. There won't be one moment where you think you've suddenly cracked it. You never truly know. You can have an idea of just what the individual judges are after (based on their job role - the planner will be interested in the sort of insights you've come up with, the account handler will want to know how you promise to deliver it, and how it'll work moving forward), but there's always room for someone to charm the room with a captivating presentation.

4) Your Judges

Already alluded to in point three, the people popping in to see you are a funny bunch. You can't really second guess them. Is asking for help, or for their opinion a good thing? Do they expect you to be self-sufficient? (Well, in truth, nobody expects you to do it on your own, so don't be afraid to ask them what they think).

And that friendly planner who's been giving you advice all day? He may just turn into an absolute bastard when assessing your presentation, just to see how you react. And what of agency management, who (if my experiences are reliable) swan in towards the end of the day - not having been able to give up the whole day - and decide just who they like during the presentations? What's worse...they have the ability to overrule people who have spent the whole day with you. The best won't, mind.

How the whole bunch are with you will give you an insight into that mysterious thing, 'agency culture' too. No matter how friendly, shiny or spangly the website or rumour about them in Campaign might seem, this is where you begin to have an idea about them. Would you, in truth, like to work for them? Respect is key in this situation. Sure, you want a job in advertising; you don't want to work for a bunch of fuckwits who mistreat you and have egos the size of small planets. Don't go in with those kind of preconceptions. People are those who make agencies - they may once, for example, have been a great agency, but the people you meet on the day are those partially responsible for improving it and winning business. Do you trust them to help train you and make you better?

Some Final Words...

If rumour is to be believed, Sorrell, Bullmore and Steel (the owner, ex-JWT ECD/Chairman and WPP special consultant and the man who runs the WPP Fellowship) were all rejected by JWT on their graduate recruitment scheme. One now owns the entire network, the other was Chairman, the last is still called upon by JWT to help with pitches.

Personally, I was rejected by Lowe when I applied for a graduate job with them in 2005. I've just finished two happy years there. Being rejected from the graduate scheme doesn't mean you can never work in a place, or ever work in advertising. Sure, it's hard to take when you're used to achieving academically - but that's real life, i'm afraid. Keep trying, and you'll get in. Grad schemes aren't always the way in. Getting in is by far the hardest thing to do though.

If you're one of the lucky few who got through; congratulations. It'll be a helluva ride.