Professional Futures Lecture- Finding Your First Role and Early Career Development – Friday 9th February

Guest Speakers:

Louise Sullivan, Ralph Lauren

Daniel Peters – Fashion Minority Report

Alison Smith – Rock & Soar

Nico Lockhart – Wildbrain

Rebecca Lewis – Getty Images

Lucy Torr – Cartwright Communications

Fiona Duncan-Steer – RSVIP

The lecture was given by a panel of successful industry creative giving tips and their own stories of how to make it to your first position in your career after graduation. The majority of them didn’t make it straight away, and the early months/years were rocky, and sometimes discouraging, but they insisted the key to making it through was not to lose hope and keep trying.

Something that is mentioned pretty unanimously by creative professionals is the importance of networking and how crucial it is to getting your foot in the door. When I think of networking I think of attending parties or conferences and conventions but this is not necessarily the case, you can go to find people, and for want of a better word, stalk them a little and create an opportunity to meet the people you need to meet, not come right out with ‘can you give me a job?’ but have a chat, let them put their guard down, give them your insta.. then maybe mention the job.

It seems the key is to make yourself memorable, I once sent a card from moonpig to WhiteStuff asking if I could have a visit to their pattern cutting studios but I never heard back, I need to go bigger next time!