Action speaks louder than words

Finally, you’ve landed a job!

Everything went well in the interview. The agency was impressed with your past experience, your credentials and your background. But is that the end?

Those who are successful at agencies are quick to learn that the interview is just the first impression. The starting point that got you through the door. But how to stay there, survive and even thrive at agencies will depend less on what you have done in the past or what you say and more to what you do.

Because of this, you must always remember that it is not enough to want to do this and that, or talk about growing and improving or wax lyrical about “when I get promoted”. Action matters.

If you want to be the top dog, you need to act like the top dog. You need to get results. You need to prove your worth and get beyond the first impression and build lasting impressions.

Talk will get you only so far, and talk without the backing of action is just talk.

In the words of Master Yoda “It’s do, or do not.”

Filed under: 2. The First Years, 3. Going Up

If you want to succeed, do anything, everything

Once upon a time, we hired a young graphic designer to join the team. He had no experienced whatsoever in print graphic and was considered fresh in the advertising line.

The art director at the time gave our young hire pretty much everything that he didn’t want to do. All the seemingly lousy assignments, boring layouts and clients that were deemed “too difficult”. The art director chose only to do things that he wanted to do.

How did the young designer react? In most cases, anyone in his position would have resented it, build a negative attitude and simply complained how unfair the whole thing was.

Instead, he took upon every assignment gladly. Every assignment that came his way, no matter how big or small was seen as an opportunity to learn. Our designer created layouts. Build concepts. Made revisions after revisions. He took on difficult clients and learn how to adapt to them. He took boring work which turned out to be cash cows at the agency. Pretty soon, he has done enough variety of work that he began to grow in ability, knowledge and experience.

Our graphic designer soon became an art director.

Moral of the story is: if you’re just starting out, or even if you’ve already gained some experience, never be too arrogant to believe that you are not meant to do the dirty work. Only through the small and hard things can you learn and grow. Only through growth can you succeed.

Filed under: 2. The First Years