Passion Pioneers

"When the attitude is there, the action will follow." This is a personal saying of mine, because I truly believe more & more it's about how you work than what you know. I did a Media & Communications degree, and by the time I'd finished my 4 years at uni I had done 3 unpaid internships. By my last year, I decided I wanted to get paid for the skills I had, and applied at small creative agencies for roles. I was lucky enough to get some awesome first steps into my paid profession with Vitamin X (thanks Tania and Alex !) and Republic of Everyone (thanks Matt & Ben !). At the time, I thought it was critical to get real world experience in the workplace to lay a foundation for a MarComms career. Now I do believe work experience is important & valuable, especially with the high numbers of university graduates struggling to find full-time employment ( in 2014 this was around 40% ). You might need more than a piece of paper to land your first j...

Remember Jenga? It’s that game with the wooden blocks that you stack in sets of 3 into a tall tower. You and your opponent each take turns carefully teasing out a block one by one to place on top, stacking the tower higher and higher. Until… a slight imbalance, one stable foundation piece taken too soon, a gust of wind, a sly underswipe from your friend... and CRASH! BANG! BOOM! - the whole thing comes toppling down, wooden blocks asunder and you left frozen amidst your shattered dreams of victory. Well my friends, your career is NOT like Jenga. We often talk about climbing the ladder when it comes to our careers. Taking step after step in the right direction, usually up, occasionally sideways, but rarely straying far from the rungs we know. We build a foundation, and start to lay down levels of experience, one on top of the other, to reach ever-dizzying heights. Yeah - sort of like Jenga. But what happens when it’s not working for you anymore? What happens when the foundat...