Happy 2008, Sam You're a Little Late

The sun sets on 2007, in 2007 - I took this picture, I think it rocks.

Greetings fair readers.

I've been really really slack in my posting habits and for that I apologise. I could attempt to spew a litany of excuses, but as my brother used to say 'It don't *£$%*& matter!'.

Now January exams may be on your radar / just dropping off it and some of you who haven't had any luck on the job front may be beginning to lose hope. I have one word of advice for you: don't.

There are plenty more places to apply to and even more non-traditional opportunities out there. This whole thing is far from over. I'm in Dubai at the moment causing trouble in the world's largest hard hat zone, but I'll be back later this week and should get my (more) regular posting back on.

Until then - for those of you who feel kinda like it's going nowhere, I leave you with something from Ben Stein:

"It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life. The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated...it is finished when it surrenders."

And a big thank you for all the emails you guys have sent me, I do have some things cookin' job wise, I just can't say them out loud yet. x

When What You Want Isn't What You're Getting

Grad recruitment isn't the be all and end all

We've all been quiet over the last week but in our defense we do have good excuses. Anton has (as usual) high-tailed it out to the Middle East for some winter sun, Alex is growing a classy tache (which you'll hear more about) and Will has been waist deep in the art of planning.

What about me? Well like a lot of us, I've had some first round interviews this week, I had JWT on Monday, M&C Saatchi on Wednesday and AMV on Thursday. I think they all went ok, but as is the nature of the beast, you only know how it went when you're told. And waiting is a big pain.

A lot of you have asked us for a post about other ways into the industry, and it's something that we'll go a little bit deeper into in the early part of next year, but as a starter, I hope this is useful.

Sam

There are nothing but rejection letters on your desk and in your inbox, your friends are asking in lectures how the interviews went, you have a dissertation to do and feel deflated or all you can see is another year ahead without a grad training job as you’ve held out for the previous round with no joy.

Well, it doesn’t have to be so shit. Firstly if you’re still at uni you will need to drag yourself up to focus on your finals, without a 2:1 it’ll be hard to find a grad training scheme anyway. If you’ve finished uni there is still a boat to catch.
There is an emerging trend where agencies don’t actually practice the usual grad recruitment which is the usual 2 stage interview process. Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and Publicis now use their Summer Schools as grounds to recruit for their grad training schemes, so keep a close eye on their websites.

Also there is the other way which isn’t the traditional grad route. It’s to join an agency as a junior account exec. This is where you pretty much feel like you’re on work experience, don’t receive the training the grads get and usually paid a little less. But it is actually one of the best ways to enter the industry.

While the grads get pampered with training, you, as an account assistant, are thrown into the thick of it where you’re expected to be a strong support line to your account team. You’ll learn quicker than the grads and you’ll be under more pressure than the grads. If you’re worried that you’ll do twice as much work as the grads and not get promoted like they are think again. Agencies are very prude when making promotions and it usually is made on merit especially at the more junior levels so this is still a great chance to enter and climb the ladder of the ad industry.

So how do you go about becoming an account assistant if you’ve missed the grad recruitment boat? Well, firstly you need to have some kind of experience within agencies. Account assistants are usually hired because they were a close choice to being on the grad rounds and usually its experience that speaks volumes. So if you don’t have any get on the blower to some agencies and organise the odd 1 or 2 week stint or apply to the summer schools as you could still make a grad scheme. Once you have the experience and a paper reference from it, you can start approaching agencies.

Start by finding out which agencies have just won large accounts and jump on them straight away (large wins are usually screamed about in Campaign and at BrandRepublic). What usually happens with a large account win is that the agency will start to organise moving key people off other accounts to front the new one, it’s pretty much all hands on deck - a perfect opportunity for a budding account assistant who rings the agency, tells them they are ready to go to work and help out where needed. Don’t be disappointed if the first few say ‘no thank you’, like all things it’s a trail and error process. If you really want it you’ll come across an agency that is looking.

Sign up with some recruitment agencies (eg. Pathfinders), Google for the ones who specialise in advertising/marketing and be prepared to go with an agency in digital, marketing services, DM as well as the large networks.
The point being is that just because you didn’t get into a grad recruitment scheme it doesn’t have to mean that advertising isn’t for you. It could have been a number of things that just were not in your favour on the day and how can a lifelong career be judged simply off an interview that lasted maybe 30 mins?
Well….it can’t so if you really want it go about making it yours through whatever means necessary!

And don't give up.

Taking A Blind Corner

There was going to be a cool caption here, but I'm too tired now..

Today is kind of like the rounding the first corner of a road that is totally unknown to you. As of about 6pm tonight, there will be a handful of agencies left for us all to apply to, and many of them haven't started their respective processes yet. Off the top of my head, only DAS and Iris are open right now, with Leo Burnett, Publicis, Ogilvy and DraftFCB yet to show their hands.

I feel relieved. Out of all the applications, the only one I didn't do was BMB, because at some point I felt I had to give my degree some time before it's too late.

I think next week is chock full of interviews, so I'm hoping everyone does well in all the ones they have. As a reminder, interview advice is here and here.

Also if you haven't heard anything good from the places you've applied to, don't worry because throughout the year and the summer there will be formal and informal opportunities to get your foot in the door, we'll cover some of these in future posts.

Application season might be turning into interview season, but we're not done yet. For tonight though, I am.

Sam

Lowering The Boom On Round 2

Always, always, always..

Raineys round 2 is tomorrow, and I couldn't leave y'all out in the cold without a post. So, with some help from Anton here's a flavor of what to expect in final round interviews. And we have a post about other ways into the industry sitting on my laptop waiting to be unleashed, so don't worry - it's time will come.

Sam.

So you’ve made it through to round two. You’re wondering what it’s going to be like, what’s going to be expected of you and what is the competition going to be like. Well, if there is one word that sums up how agencies frame the second round it’s teamwork.

The thing about these final round assessment days, is that you'll all encounter people off the charts in the try-hard factor, they'll wanna tell you every joke they've heard, every strategic idea they've ever had, and well...you get the picture.

Get some decent shut eye before you go into the bear-pit of showmanship. Don't let anyone intimidate you into not saying anything, make sure that you do yourself justice and put your personality and thinking on show, they picked you for being you at round 1, so stick the to your guns. If you're crazy stay crazy, if you're not then don't try to be, it gets messy. Man that must sound boring us going on about being yourself, but it's true. If you fit in then you fit in, it’s really that simple and there isn’t really that much you can do to prepare for this type other than keep reading up on the industry from Brand Republic, visit4info and Campaign. And the agency's website, look for the ways they describe themselves, the way their offices look, the colors on their website, this is all their personality, so study it well.

Some you'll be successful at, others you won't. So what kind of things do you have to do?

• Together build a bridge from this point to that point using these materials.
• In a group present to us the perfect Graduate Trainee.
• You’re given 30 items listed, pick 15 you would take with you to a desert island and why and tell us why you dropped the remaining 15.
• Speed interviewing (this is when you’re all in a line sat opposite a member of the agency, you then have 3 minutes to answer a question and then whistle is blown and you rotate to the next, much like speed dating).

The standard diet of individual questions will come at you as well, so read up on our first interview post, and re-read your application form as well.

You get the picture. Once you’re over the guard up phase and you all collectively realise you’re all in the same boat it can actually be good banter, especially if you feel you’ve done well. We highly recommend spending time with your counterparts afterwards as these could be the people you spend the next year training with….

All in all, keep calm, be yourself and always be witty and reasonable, which I’m sure most of you are anyway.

Watchy'all think about that?

I Got Some Bad News..

Even though you know it's bound to happen, it still stings..

9:25am Friday morning, and the email account I've reserved for all things application-flavored gives the little squeaky sound effect. You got mail. I open up the mail and it's the first rejection of the year from McCann. And despite the fact that I knew this was definitely going to happen with some of my applications, I felt miserable.

But the 'thanks but no thanks' message will no doubt be given to the grand majority of us applying at some point, and the best thing is to pick yourself up and get back to it. I'm a big fan of the groups on Facebook that allow us to let everyone know who's heard what from where. Yeah it's not going to change any decisions that are made, but it's easier to take waiting when you know others are waiting.

I really believe we're all in this together, it's not easy to get into advertising and I really believe that everyone who wants it enough will get in. I don't see the point and think it's so petty to sit in a corner and not share what's happening with others. If you're confident in yourself (which we all should be) then telling someone who's got an interview a day after yours what the format was isn't a big deal. One thing that's very noticeable is that people in advertising are very open to giving out advice and sharing experiences with others, our star stories are a testament to that. And all us applicants are by and large, sharing our experiences with forms and interviews, which I think is awesome.

I realise that this post has turned into a bit of a rant, because of a message I got from someone who asked what was the point in telling people about what format my RKCR interview took. Rather than send a sarcasm-laden message back to that person about how they needed to grow up, it's all come out here. I hope it kinda makes sense.

The 1st Conversation

Would you hire this guy? Probably not...(weird eyes courtesy of bad red-eye reduction)

Something I say quite often is every first conversation is an interview. Now I don't know where I got that from but we are now officially in interview season with Raineys interviewing people as I type this up (in the middle of a finance lecture).

So you have an interview, how do you prepare? Let's talk about some general things first, like appearance. More specifically, what do you wear? For guys a safe bet is either the suit/shirt look or a combo of trousers/blazer (and shirt please). But we'd say no ties, this ain't a banking interview y'all. Girls have it easier (or harder, depending on who you ask) with the general 'look smart' mantra.

Now we know how you look, what's it going to be like? Generally first round interviews will be conducted by 2 members of the agency and they'll last between 30 minutes and an hour. You might get a good cop / bad cop routine, you might get no cops or you might get we'renotreallysurewearecopssolet'sseewhatthisfoolknows. But you can't control that.

What you can control is your research. This is where I go to numbers:

1. Read your application form at least enough times for you to virtually memorise what you wrote. And remember why you wrote what you did.
2. Have some answers to these questions ready
• Why do you want to get into advertising?
• What's the coolest / most iconic thing in your world and why?
• What advertising do you admire and why?
• Which brand's ads aren't doing it justice?
• How do you see the futures of TV and digital advertising?
• What is a brand?
3. Be ready to have to sell an ad to your interviewers, think about:
• What the brand is trying to say, what are they trying to achieve with the ad?
  
• Who they should be talking to? Are they talking to them?
• How effective is their conversation with the person paying attention?
• Why does it work? Is it funny? Is it totally removed from the competition?
• Is the idea transferable across different channels?
  
• How will it build upon where the client is right now business-wise? Do they want to create market share? steal market share or maintain their lead?
  
4. Watch their showreel on their site, soak in as much as you can about their site and head over to visit4info to watch ads they've created that may not be on their showreel.
5. Give yourself an hour's margin when traveling long distance, it gives you time to compose yourself when you get there, rather than crapping yourself that you're late.
6. Have some questions for them. But don't ask questions for things that are on their website or you'll get shot down. Ask them about what they think about one of their questions, or about how they see advertising changing in the future. Having a well thought question could be the thing that makes you stick in their minds when it's time to make the cuts (Thanks to Alex for this point).
   

And finally, the most important, crucial and underlying thing that will dictate your success in your interviews is being yourself. Try to relax and answer the non-advertising questions as normally as possible (obviously there are some boundaries, if you swear like a sailor put a sock in it, or use replacement words). And be yourself. Be confident that being yourself will get you the job. Seriously.

It’s well known that individual agencies have individual cultures etc, but that by no means means (how many times can I use means in this sentence?) that you should try and conform to a type. Go in and do your best. Chances are if you’re well informed, enthusiastic about ads and able to back up your opinions you’ll get through.

And if you don’t? It's the agency’s loss. So don’t mope around, ring them up and ask for feedback, if it’s something wrong with the way you delivered your answers, you can fix it. But if they say you're not the right type, move on. Don’t try to be their type - because eventually you'll find out it's hurting you and them.

This is the part where I'd like to end up on something profound. But I'll defer to Anton who told me a while back: 'Don't be a lemming'. That pretty much says it all.

As always comments/criticism/abuse are welcome.

Sam

How I'd Sell Coal To Eskimos..

Some of the good stuff

I'd show them a fistful of diamonds and a handful of coal. I'd tell them 'One day, all this coal will be just like this..". Then I'd fly away and never, ever visit them again.

Open Day Time

Everyone loves a rainbow, or so Will tells me. Copyright moi.

I'll be at JWT's open day tomorrow, if you're gonna be around say what's up. I'll be the one looking tired cause I'm up late typing this..

This Mad Season

I feel stupid, but I know it won't last for long,

And I've been guessing, and I coulda been guessing wrong,
You don't know me now, I kinda thought that you should somehow,
Does that whole Mad Season got you down?

The first verse of Matchbox Twenty's song Mad Season sums up how I feel right now having ploughed through a variety of agency graduate recruitment applications over the last week or so.

I personally get into a groove with these things and find I can get them done in quick succession if I'm in the mood, but then if I'm not it's useless even opening them up because questions like 'How to sell coal to an eskimo' bounce around the inside of my head and exit rapidly.

And what I and the rest of the guys all agree on is that one of the most important things you can do when filling out these applications is to let your personality shine through. Now that is infinitely easier said than done I agree, but it's crucial to you getting noticed in the piles of applications that will cross any given agency's desk.

So how do you do it? There's no magical silver bullet I'm afraid; if there was someone would be filthy-rich by now by patenting it, so it boils down to this: be you. Personality is something unique to you so don't try to find it in someone else. I would advise against typing 'How to sell coal to an Eskimo' into google and trying to use anything you find as the basis of your answer. To see how other's have attacked the question is of course, great to do. But your answer has to be all about you. Which is what will make you get an invitation to interview as well. So when it asks for your favorite song lyric think of your favorite song, why you like it and leave it all on the page (that's my way of saying that the more personal the answer the better). If you wear your heart on your sleeve in real life do the same on your form, and conversely don't try and be something you're not. Your application forms, CVs and all the rest of it should be extensions of yourself - recognisable as you.

Another thing that could be useful to keep in mind is that when faced with the blank spaces of application forms - especially the questions at the end (like 'is there anything else we should know about you?'), continuous prose may not be the best way to go about a particular question. I'm not saying do the whole thing in bullet points, but think about how to visually differentiate yourself within a written answer. Maybe do a flowchart, a mindmap, a cartoon, graffiti, a picture, maybe import a digital picture, maybe string a couple together to do a montage. Think of how you want to make it you. Graduate application forms should be something that you know you're ready to send off because you're happy you've indelibly stamped them with your personality. A friend should be able to read through your answers and know it's you who wrote it without seeing the name on the top of it.

The 'anything else' or 'use this box as you like' sections on applications are the best sections - they let you give the reader a flavor of what you're like, don't waste them.

Application Form Cool

A really good question from Gemma on the AdGrads Facebook group about application form questions got me thinking. So I wrote this over at AdLads but thought it may be pertinent to put it here as well.

How To Be Cool

A bit of an ambitious title huh? Yeah I think so too. But see, I’ve been thinking a lot about cool; not the word, maybe not even the concept, but the connotation. What is cool? It’s all so subjective right? But I think cool is pretty closely related to confidence. They even go together well in a sentence; cool and confident..see? I may be onto something. And you can make an argument about creativity being very closely related to cool and confident, maybe like first cousin-close. And then it’s pretty clear that cool, is well for want of a better expression, pretty damn cool.

What has really got me thinking about all this is the mad season that is graduate recruitment. I’m trawling through applications that ask me questions like ‘How do you sell coal to an eskimo?’ or ‘Which superhero would you be?’ and thinking ‘What the hell do I write here?’. That combined with something my main main Richy B said a while back, something along the lines of ‘We get along because we know cool when we see it’ got me thinking about what cool is and how you can be cool.It’s simple really, cool is inside every single one of us. Really. It’s about being self-aware, and being self-aware is something I go on about a lot to Anton, Will, Alex, all y’all who read the blog and pretty much everyone I know. But I’ll say it again, being self-aware, and really knowing what you’re good at and what you’re not is one of the most powerful tools you can have in your life, forget about career type things. So you’re self-aware and you know what you’re good at. Be confident in it, like really really confident. Ooze that stuff.

Confidence is one of those things that is really easy to see through if it’s false bravado, and confidence masked with arrogance is like me on a Sunday night in front of the TV watching the NFL: right in your face. So real confidence is easily spotted and comes naturally, because that’s what it’s the product of, being naturally at ease with something you know you’re good at. And that’s where creativity comes in. Think of everything you’ve seen that you consider to be creative. Was it forced? Awkwardly out of place? Not at all. It was really at ease with itself, natural even.

At this point I’m sitting here smiling because I think this post is coming together now, it’s a load of psycho-babble maybe, probably even. But I think it makes sense. And it’s right at this point where I can get to the crux of the matter, when y’all are sitting there trying to figure out a way to be creative and cool and original when answering a question on an application form / coming up with an idea for something at work / for anything at all, remember

• The things that come easiest to you are the things that are natural. No matter how people will try and put you into boxes ‘numerate’ ‘orator’ etc, everyone is creative, every single one of us. So be natural and take yourself out of the boxes that you’ve been put into, sit outside, sit on your bed, sit on a couch, sit in the bath with a notebook - wherever you feel at ease is where you’ll be in the most natural frame of mind. Go to that place (be it mental, physical or both) and just zone. And you’ll find (and trust me, every single one of us will) that you’ll be more creative than you thought you could be.
• Natural is confident, confidence is natural and both of them are pretty damn sexy.
• Natural, creative and confidence are so intertwined it’s not a coincidence, they all stem from the same thing; being at ease with yourself.
• Find out what it is about yourself that makes you without question you, like patent-pending you, what about your life has made you who you are? That’s your gold-mine and that is where you need to be knee deep in sifting for the nuggest of the good stuff, because that’s where you’ll be most confident, most unique, most effortless, most cool and most you.
• Take this feeling of confidence outside the box of ‘work’ and things will seem almost effortless compared to what they were before.

So take it from someone who used to be so uptight about things I used to work myself into a frenzy about how to be original. All you have to do is be the thing that comes most naturally to you. I’m no good at being anything but me. To everyone that matters and in everything that matters, that’s always more than enough. And that is pretty damn cool.

Brand Republic Ahoy

This picture may have nothing to do with the post. But I took it and think it's damn cool.

After much procrastination on my part, the first post for the Brand Republic edition of AdGrads is up. I'll put the first post up here but for future posts we'll whack the links here for you guys to go check it out over there. That made sense when I wrote it, I swear.

W1, We Have a Problem..

When thinking about what to write about as a first blog post on Brand Republic, I toyed with a few ideas. Maybe a bit about each of us and why we started the AdGrads blog in the first place? Or perhaps we should let one our stars tell their stories about how they got into the industry?

But what swayed me was something that happened today. I walked back into university for the second day of my final year, and was guided to the careers service, where I was informed that this week was finalist career week - and over 100 companies would be giving sessions about their companies to students from Warwick, Aston and Birmingham universities.

After a quick question to one of the staff members, I was told that the number of final year students in these three universities was in excess of 10,000, all who had been emailed details of the week and (hopefully) a good chunk of them interested in what life after university entails.

And guess what? Not one piece of literature, not one prospective employer, not one reference to advertising. 10,000 finalists, more than a hundred companies, and nothing from the advertising industry.

In a nutshell, that is why Will, Anton and Alex and myself set up AdGrads, because as hard as it is for anyone to hear the brutal truth about themselves, the industry is not doing nearly enough to help themselves find the best graduates. Not nearly enough, and today was another example of that. There is a gap in the market for educating students about how amazing the advertising industry is as a career choice and why the often obtuse application forms are worthy of their time and effort. If there wasn't a gap, then to be honest, this blog probably wouldn't exist. We are here because there is a problem.

The reality of the situation now is that the advertising industry is not on a level playing field. Banking, consultancy, accountancy et al are a good way ahead in communicating, educating and ultimately recruiting the cream of the graduate crop. Advertising as an industry now has to try and kick start their drive to get the best talent, and that means doing the things they can do the best: getting creative.

Both individual agencies and the industry as a whole have to ask themselves one question: Do we really want to attract the best? If the answer is yes, then go in wholeheartedly and do it. Utilise all the tools at your disposal and get the word out there.

Brand Republic's online careers fair is a great example of how to get things started, as it acknowledges that the internet and all things digital are media that we have grown up with. As we live and we breathe it everyday, adopting these channels to get to us is a wise move. Agencies; use your talent in creating innovative solutions to your clients' problems to help create a solution to your biggest problem, because the gap will only get bigger if things keep going as they are. That may be a bitter pill to swallow for the industry.

But the truth sometimes is.

The IPA's Essential Graduate Reading

Statcounter's trusty referrals feature has informed me that the IPA have released a newsletter that has all sorts of advertising related reading for y'all to catch up on.

It should be here.

And yeah, we're on there as well. That is damn cool.

And So It Begins..

Ok guys as the saying goes in parts across the pond, we're officially in the ballpark. JWT and BBH have opened up their grad schemes for '08 entry. The links are below, any questions/things you're stuck on should be carefully placed in the comments - hopefully we can get some discussion going. 

Good Luck!

Edit: M&C's grad scheme is open, links below:

BBH

JWT

M&C

Your Greatest Weapon

My rejection letter from Saatchis.

Right. I'm totally wired right now and Firefox just crashed so I've lost what I wrote. So as I try to remember what it was that got me to write something in the first place I'll apologize because this post might make less sense than usual.

Your greatest weapon in trying to break into this industry is people telling you that you can't. It's that simple. So you can quit reading this now. Still here? Well then I better tell you a story about how I got to this conclusion.

Earlier this summer I applied for the Saatchi summer scheme. I had a totally rockingly awesome idea for the application. Note how I didn't say 'I think I had' because I know my idea was awesome. Like feel-it-in-my-bones-at-4am-even-though-I'm-totally-tired-and-wired-and-I'm-writing-this-for-the-second-time know. The sob story is here and here, but what I'm trying to tell you is that when I got the letter in the picture above I was pretty much devastated. Like I'd been kicked in the gut. By a horse. But it was the best thing that's happened to me. Honestly. Failure and rejection makes you question yourself. And the one thing most people (and I'm talking about in general here) lack is a true measure of what they're about.

Failure makes you look in the damn mirror and ask yourself 'Am I really, positively sure this is what I want to do?'. Agencies will often ask, in their application forms for a lot of effort from you. And you'll get the standard letter with your name and address mail-merged in if they don't like what you do. It's pretty soul-destroying at first. But what you need to do when it happens - and chances are it will happen to each and every one of us at some point on this graduate recruitment trail, is really use it as opportunity to re-focus. Think about why you want to do this. Why you're choosing to pursue a career in advertising. It won't be the money at this stage, no chance. Not the hours either. But each and everyone of us has a reason they want to do this. Find that reason and harness it. And use that rejection to make you a little more determined.

The people that apply to grad recruitment schemes are by and large, shit. Sorry but they are, agency staff will tell you and Campaign will tell you. That's why you'll see mostly the same faces doing the rounds come interview time. It's the truth, ask Anton and Will and JB. The people who really want careers in this industry are the ones who get them ultimately. Not the people who think having champagne for lunch in Cannes is a career because (and write this down) it's not what advertising is about now, in 2007. You might have champagne for lunch in Cannes but only after having busted your ass to get into an agency and then busted it some more to convince finance and your boss that you're worthy of blowing some cash on.

The ad industry in 2007 is, in some agencies still fighting the future and in all cases trying to figure out how to grab the attention of the person on the street in this maze of communication that is modern life. You have to want to be there.

Ultimately experience, degree subject and a thousand other things are just branches of the 'applicant desirability' tree, the trunk of that baby is desire. You have to want it. And if you do, then that pile of rejection letters will become your muse, it will drive you on. And you'll feel like writing a reply to every single one, saying 'Thank you, you've made me realize how much I want a job in this industry, how good I am going to be, and how wrong you are for not taking me on because I don't tick your boxes. Thank you'

Grad season is about to begin. When you get those rejection letters remember why you want a career in advertising. And remember, all it takes is one agency to say yes, and it won't matter how many letters you had telling you that you weren't good enough, because you'll have proved them all wrong.

I Am Sam

Target market. That's what I'd say I am in two words. In relation to this blog that is. I am the type of person that we're all trying to help. The desperate, poor student that yearns for a job in the glamorific world of advertising. Or something like that.

I'm just about to start my final year at university and am standing on the edge of the real world hoping adland is the place for me. I stumbled upon advertising as a career choice 3 or 4 years ago (the truth being I can't remember exactly when) with Andrea Neidle's How to get into advertising and the old Brand Republic forums. It was there I first met Anton and JB, the meeting with Anton ultimately responsible for The AdLads, but it's important to remember (for me at least) that we're friends before bloggers - I don't know why it's worth saying, but it is.

So I read the book and I liked it, and I thought now what? Need some of that work experience. My first place (which I won't name) they tried to make me do PR stuff. So I did the foolish thing and didn't bother going back after one day. I had the problem of not going to university in London as well as the fact that vacation time is often spent in the Lone Star State so I had to be well organised and lucky to try and get a couple of placements lined up.

I applied to BBH's work experience scheme twice and got the standard rejection letter, which annoyed me no end. So I decided to ask why I wasn't getting anywhere with them, and within an hour of sending the 'why not' email, I had a week secured. Bingo. I spent a week there with the Audi and Levis teams, doing work experience stuff but trying to soak everything in, I talked to a couple of planners and pretty much made my mind up right there that adland was it for me.

The next vacation time I had, I had a week at Saatchis and a fortnight at Leith London. Saatchis was good because I actually semi-knew the account director I was with, in that she had gone to the same university as me, I got my hands dirty with designing the application process that Will completed for his scholarship and generally had a pretty good time. The fortnight I had at Leith was probably the most valuable thing I did, because it's such a small agency that you really get the chance to see what goes on everywhere, creative / production / accounts / planning etc. They had just lost the Carling account so it was a place in crisis as well and you all know that crises really tell you about people / organizations.

My ultimate goal with the work experience stuff was to get a years placement (because I was doing one as part of my degree), I got close but the agency that offered me one was going through the blender money-wise and I heard no more from them. So I took the offer that I had on the table, from one of the top 3 car makers in the world and spent a year in their digital marketing department, learning about this internet thing.

While the year client side was good, I felt disconnected from adland and thought I should apply for summer schemes to get back in the groove of things (at this point Anton and I had started to write AdLads as well). The Saatchi Summer Scheme application ended up being my secret weapon, as I created a fake eBay listing for the job (with, as the song goes, a little help from my friends), which got me into Campaign but eventually got me a rejection letter as well. But the silver lining was that I met a ton of cool people over the course of the next few months, and eventually I got myself onto a summer school type thing (Omnicom's), which I'll be at next week (if you are as well drop me an email).

So I talk too much, sleep too little, have an unhealthy obsession with the Dallas Cowboys, Superman/Smallville and Heroes, use the word 'awesome' too much and am pretty much totally crazy. And I'll see a lot of you come grad recruitment season in the Fall (yes I call it Fall, in real life). I'm Sam.

A razor and the light is what I seek

Anton, Unmasked

Anton started out at the funky hot shop that was Leonardo for part of his university placement year. After which he went on to experience life at Leo Burnett working on McDonald’s loving the return to his home town, Newcastle and getting into arguments with ‘alternative’ friends in fields on the topic of global fast food brands. When not holding a shield with a phat yellow M on it he was contributing to the launch of Salads Plus and Maccy Dee’s Euro 2004 Sponsorship.

Wanting to finish his placement year on a high note Anton applied to the Saatchi & Saatchi Summer Scholarship Scheme. Not happy with his brief to take an A4 poster with ‘Nothing is Impossible’ and put it somewhere ‘interesting’ he and two friends convinced the industry that they had hacked M&C Saatchi’s website and animated the poster over its homepage. Anton attracted attention from M&C’s lawyers, a Gold DMA Award (2004) and a place on Saatchi’s Summer scheme working on Visa. Returning to University for a finale of studying and indulgent abuse he applied to numerous agencies for graduate recruitment, accepted 1 of the 3 offered for reasons such as ‘greater training’ and ‘a more integrated approach to a heavily fragmented media space’ but we all know it’s because they offered him more money.

Anton is now a Planner getting filthy in traditional and non traditional media, can’t stand networking but loves to bore those who he finds natural and good with his visions of how to fuse TV with digital and theories of restructuring agencies.

About The Wiki..

...we had it planned, and you asked for it as well, so a wiki is on the way. We'll stash our guest contributors' stories on how they got into adland there along with a meaty reading list, graduate recruitment deadlines and whatever else you guys put on it. Remember, this site and its content are yours, so keep telling us what you want.

Just give us some time to make the wiki look cool.