This article, written by Flow’s very own Tara Turkington, was published in Urban Reality magazine. Click here to see the original online.
Considering a career in media or communications? Read on…
1. Get educated
Get the best education you can. A degree – it doesn’t really matter what it’s in, although the more general, probably the better – will never go amiss. Education is like travel; no one can ever take the experience from you. You’re going to be competing in a tough environment, and a tertiary education will prepare you well in terms of critical reasoning, and in research, writing and negotiation skills, among others. Negotiating a university education provides you with a good conceptual underpinning, but it’s unlikely to give you many actual media skills.
2. Be active on social networks
In the 1400s, Gutenberg changed the power relations of communications by inventing the printing press, which ultimately empowered people to become literate. In the 2000s, it’s all Zuckerberg and his ilk - social networking on sites like Facebook (Zuckerberg was a student at Harvard when he founded Facebook in 2004), Twitter and YouTube are fundamentally changing the power relations of how people communicate.
In the old days (10 years ago or so), we relied on big media owners to disseminate the news. Now we watch the news happening in real time or close to it and, more importantly, we can choose the news we’re interested in, rather than it being dictated to us in predetermined news programmes. Anyone with a smartphone can be a publisher now. Get on the social networks and play – understand them, experiment with them, master them – the power is in your hands. But remember that quantity doesn’t necessarily translate into quality. Of the last three appointments in our company, two were from initial interactions on Twitter.
3. Be adventurous
Try your hand at as many things as possible to understand the industry, and to become adaptable. Flexible, multi-skilled employees are often more attractive to employers than specialists. Because the global media landscape is evolving fast, you may be able to pick up highly desirable knowledge and skills just from experimenting. In this industry, age and experience matter less now than 20 years ago. Look at being able to do lots of different stuff to ensure you are always employable.
4. Be humble
Never think you know it all because there will always be someone more knowledgeable and experienced. Seek out good mentors and take their advice and, in turn, give others help and advice whenever you can. There is no work too humble. People will remember your attitude and how you made them feel long after they remember what you actually did. The media and communications industry is small and people in it are well connected to each other, so never burn your bridges. For example, I have worked for one particular boss three times (so far) in my career, in different organisations.
5. Be passionate and work hard
Not everyone knows what they want to do when they grow up and that’s ok – chances are you’re likely to change career a couple of times during your working life. But be sure to invest in what you do when you are doing it, and love it. Learn all you can, put yourself in the way of opportunity whenever you can and throw yourself at the teensiest break with everything you have. Particularly when starting out, you need to work harder than anyone around you because you have the most to learn. In the beginning, be prepared to work for nothing or almost nothing in return for good experience. Try not to see your work as work, but rather as an extension of who you are and who you want to become.
Tara Turkington is the CEO of Flow Communications (http://www.flowsa.com), a top South African communications company with offices in Joburg, Cape Town and Durban.