How I got into Marketing

I would like to think, like most people when I was in school I didn’t really know what I wanted to do in my “professional career”, the closest I ever got to this was around when I was 5, and after watching Postman Pat, I wanted to be a Postman. This even continued when I had started university, I assume like others, I felt I ‘had’ to go to university, as it was the right thing to do in order to get a job and become an ‘adult’.

At University I studied Computer Game Design, because why not? I loved video games sounded like a perfect match, right?

Luckily there is a silver lining in this brief story, as within my degree one of my modules was around Marketing, and I really enjoyed it. Fast forward to finishing University, my goal was just to get ‘any’ job to start working with the aim of getting into a marketing career.

My first job out of university was in Data Entry, very exciting I know! I think this job is one if the reasons why every time I see Excel I tremble a little. Within this role after a few months I felt I was ready for more responsibilities and as luck would have it, they needed work doing around signage, their website and a few other things. Even though I had started in a role that seemed to not have any link to marketing I was slowly moving towards what I wanted to do.

After just under a year and after a lot of thought I could not see many marketing opportunities at the time in Northern Ireland, forget to mention that, I went to University in England and when I had finished I moved back home to the glorious country that is Northern Ireland!

I had seen more opportunity’s and roles over the seas and felt that if I wanted to really get into a marketing role and career, I would need to consider moving. As fate would have it a friends, father had started his own business over in England, and had offered me a job, primarily focusing around marketing and sales, jackpot!

This was the first start up I had worked for, and within the year of working there, I had learnt so much, and been involved in a range of different areas and roles, even packaging and testing the products! I would always recommend anyone starting out in their professional career to consider helping out and working with a local start-up, the hours might be tough, the salary might not be great, but the lessons you may learn will be invaluable.

My fresh start into the world of marketing

Fast forward another year and I wanted to give myself a fresh challenge and get into a more structured marketing role, after about a month of searching I got an ominous interview, stating they were a well known and large company in the area I lived at the time… exciting stuff, I know! That job ended up being what I would consider as my first marketing job since leaving university almost 2 years prior, although I had done elements of marketing within my previous roles.

That job was as a Digital Marketing Executive at Stoke City Football Club, and boy was I nervous for my first interview. After a lot of sweat, nervous twitching and finally some degree of composure, I ended up getting the job, to this day I don’t know how, which my boss at the time echoed!

I worked at Stoke City FC, for over 3 years, alongside some fantastic and intelligent people, and learnt a great deal around marketing, design and people. One of my key takeaways was it helps surrounding yourself with intelligent and more experienced people, and sponging as much information and knowledge of them as you can, and please remember to ask questions, there really is no such thing as a stupid question!

After the 3 year mark of working at Stoke City FC, I was doing a lot of thinking and self reflection, I loved the role and job, but part of me felt I was getting too complacent, and although I didn’t want to leave I felt I needed to get out of my comfort zone and challenge myself in another career, in order to keep growing and learning more.

The present

Fast forward again to 2018, and after a few months of research, interviews, I found my next challenge, which leads to my current job at Codeweavers.

One of the first things that intrigued me about Codeweavers is that apart from some initial research and understanding they were a software company in the automotive industry, I really did not fully grasp how little I knew about this industry and although challenging, thanks to a lot of help from my colleagues across the business, I started to ‘sponge’ as much information as I could.

I will look at doing a more detailed story on what I have currently learned while at Codeweavers, as well as some of the great help around learning they have provided, including supporting me in completing my Level 6 Diploma in Digital Marketing with CIM, in a later post.

For now, I wanted to start with a very high-level overview of how I got into my marketing role and career, and what excites me the most, is this is just the beginning, as corny as that sounds!

Have any questions?

If you have any questions, fancy a chat, whether you are thinking about getting into a marketing role or not sure what ‘professional’ path you want to take, please feel free to leave a comment or drop me a message on Twitter.