By Devya Joshi
Sometimes, when you are going down a career path, you might end up changing your mind or becoming unsure of what you want to do. There have been many people who have felt that way at one point or another. It could be at college/sixth form or a different point in their life. You can figure out what career you want and how to achieve your career goals, whether you are thinking of how to be a digital marketer or any other career. Within this blog, I would like to share with you a story of one peer that I knew from school who had changed their minds about their career paths and what they did after. Do continue so that you have some more ways to be inspired in your career. Always remember there is help available to you, in both your career and personal life. To respect their privacy and gender identification, I have kept their identity anonymous and will be referring to them as ‘they’.
Their background
My peer who was a year older than me had dropped out of college. They had an interest in teaching and had picked teacher training as a course in their college. This is because they thought the idea of watching someone you taught grow and that having extra holidays during half term would be give a better work-life balance. However, when they were studying teacher training, my peer realised that teaching was not what they expected and had not found a starting salary that appealed to them, when searching for teacher assistant jobs as a starting point.
Career prospects
Whilst my peer felt lost and was contemplating what they wanted to do in their career. I too was thinking about career prospects. First, I searched online for digital marketing apprenticeships, as a viable career option. I knew it would be a blend of creativity and being analytical. Some of the creative aspects would be in making content and coming up with new ideas that would attract audiences to a service/product. A few of the analytical aspects would be to analyse data from reports for different channels. E.g. Viewing Snapchat analytics to see the type of audiences that had clicked on an ad, the number of views, impressions etc.
My peer spoke to me and told me that they were unsure of their options after dropping out of college, as they no longer wanted to teach. We spoke to each other, and I informed them that digital marketing apprenticeships were available. Even though, they had not studied digital marketing in school, from the conversation, they were able to see that digital marketing had a higher scope for them. They realised that they would be able to take different career paths, as there were so many options within digital marketing. Also, there were many transferable skills that they had learnt from their teaching training which were: problem-solving, handling conflict, managing others, planning, and organising, communication etc. Additionally, working from home and hybrid working is a common occurrence in digital marketing, so they would have work-life-balance.
Their journey to digital marketing
With my recommendation, they checked out available apprenticeships for digital marketing and were able to start one at a creative agency called OLIVER. They started making content/ ads for clients to promote their services to intended target audience. Like other apprenticeships, which ‘Apprentice Now offers’ such as: Level 4 Data Analyst; Level 3 Infrastructure technician; Level 3 Network engineer; Level 4 Software Developer and Level 4 Software Tester, there is a structure that is followed. The structure is that that apprentices complete a portfolio, so they have a reference for all the work they are proud of and to showcase their skills, knowledge, and ability. Then, there is the synoptic project where apprentices will be given a brief and they need to complete the tasks set in the brief. An example would be: Making a marketing strategy plan for a client, creating content following the brief requirements, analysing/reflecting on the work done and presenting to clients in the form of a deck. The last part would be an interview, where you communicate what you did in your role, discuss your portfolio and synoptic project with your assessors.
My peer completed the assessment requirements and finished their digital marketing apprenticeship. They were promoted within the team and are enjoying their career.
If you would like your story to be like this, where you find your way to a career you will love and that will resonate with your values and beliefs, then do try digital marketing apprenticeships.
Apprentice Now is preparing to open opportunities for Digital Marketing within their apprenticeships so keep a look out…
