Advice on Advice: Take It or Leave It
There’s a tonne of advice out there for juniors wanting to break into the industry — books, blogs, and people wanting to give you their two cents. But advice comes from experience, and experiences are personal. Which means there’s a lot of conflicting advice out there. In a regular column Lauren Ami MacDonald tries to make sense of it all.
Wait until you’re qualified
Prime example: me, writing this column. Clearly I’m no Luke Sullivan[1]. But hey, taking my, or anyone else’s advice is not my point–questioning it all is. I’m also not responsible for anyone, which isn’t the case when you accept a position at an agency you’re not qualified to do. I once worked with this dude whose flash-banner-creating-company was absorbed into an agency, and part of the deal meant becoming a Creative Director. While I’m not undermining his ability to do what he did previously very well, he went from a tech-based role to creative directing basically overnight.
But people are capable of all types of crazy shit when they’re thrown in the deep end, and he did he have choices: he could of (a) risen to the occasion or (b) asked for some guidance, instead of (c) masquerading around as someone he is not.
The problem with working in a small industry is now everyone knows he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and what’s worse is, because he’s entitled, he’s a total jerk about it.
Obviously I’m pro throwing yourself in there, and giving the scary stuff a go, depending on what responsibility comes with that, but your intentions should be pure. You should at the very least have a desire to fulfill the duties of that role. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger and politics. No one really wanted to take him seriously, with the muscles, and the voice, and the “I’ll be back”, but it was up to him to change all that. He served for eight years by the way. I just Googled it.
Lauren Ami MacDonald is a Copywriter at The Secret Little Agency, Singapore. She’s got a lot to say about the advice she’s collected.