We had a quick Q&A with one of our company leaders, Erin O'Sullivan. Erin has worked for graduatejobs.com for just over 2 years and in those 2 years been promoted to Senior Account Manager.
Q: Top tips for someone who considers a career in Account Management?
Tips - Organisation is absolutely key. When juggling all the things that come with the role, a disorganised person would struggle, so it helps to be able to manage your time and give each task your whole attention until you move onto the next.
The main tip is putting yourself in the shoes of the client and trying to understand where they are coming from. From my experience, it allows you to be empathetic to their needs and expectations of the service you're providing and also allowing you to build a stronger rapport with your client.
Q: What is a typical day in the office like?
I always start my day with a cup of Barry's tea before diving straight into emails! Reams of 'to do lists' normally follow whilst choosing the best spotify playlist to get the team motivated (we tend to lean towards the Summer Vibes playlist of late (ROLL ON SUMMER)
The day usually consists of posting jobs on to the site for the clients I manage, and internal meetings with the rest of the sales team and the marketing team. My day is never complete without wrestling with our office dog, Lenny for a little while and wrapping up making sure that all campaigns that are set to go live the following day are ready to rock and roll.
Q: 3 things you love about your job?
(*Warning - cliches to come!) I know it's said a lot in the world of work, but I do truly love my team and the people I work with. I consider them not only work colleagues, but very close friends of mine, and we actually enjoy each other's company after work hours just as much as during the working day. After being a part of GJ.com for 2 and a half years now (part of the furniture at this stage, so I am! :-)), much of the reason I look forward to coming into work is the people and the job I get to do.
Another thing I love about the job is the difference graduatejobs.com makes to the careers of young people - In some instances, we are considered the first step in the application process so also the first step in a student/graduate's career. That's pretty cool, if you ask me.
It's extremely rewarding to be able to build a close rapport with clients and deliver a quality service for them. Some of whom, I consider close friends now too which is fantastic. It makes the job a dream to carry out for me.
Q: How did you get to where you are at graduatejobs.com?
Great question! I guess you could say I fell into advertising, considering I never purposefully intended to end up in that kind of industry. I always thought I'd end up teaching as many of the placements I did throughout my education were student teaching semesters.
Studying English Literature and Politics at University in Ireland opened up a multitude of opportunities for me because it was very broad. I'd recommend studying English to a lot of students who are not too sure where they'd like to end up, as the skills and knowledge I learned in my years studying this stood to me massively to this day.
From then, I upped and left the lovely county Cork, Ireland for the big smoke of London and I gained industry experience at similar roles before moving onto graduate-jobs and ever since have been developing the skills I had already had.
Through a lot of hard work, I was then promoted to Senior Account Manager earlier this year which was a big step up in responsibility for me, especially with taking on some new junior staff members which I was asked to manage. I've loved every minute of it though, and hopefully rose to the challenge - You'll have to take that one up with my manager though!!haha
Q: What's your special talent in the office?
Making a mean cup of tea using Barry's tea of course!
I've won awards for my DJing skillz when it comes to our office playlists too so can I consider that a skill? I should also probably say my actual job here too, right? Haha
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