Ryan J.
About me
| Ryan J. | |
| Mathematics | |
| Mathematics and Computer Science | |
| Undergraduate | |
| 2003 | |
| United Kingdom |
My employment
| Assistant Head of Paid Search Marketing | |
| Search Laboratory | |
| United Kingdom | |
| Advertising, marketing and PR | |
| 2008 | |
| £18000 |
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A day in the life of a Assistant Head of Paid Search Marketing in the United Kingdom
My career history
Immediately after graduation, I returned to my home town (Doncaster) and worked in finance for the NHS for a year or so, though this was only ever supposed to be a temporary job.
In 2006 I left this position on a bit of a whim and went to South Korea for a year teaching English to 4 to 16-year old kids. This was an amazing, crazy year, and served to dispel any vague thoughts I might once have had about going into teaching. After travelling for 6-months after that (Thailand, Cambodia & Australia) I returned to the UK.
A random call from a recruiter led me to where I am now. I worked at Search Lab for just shy of three years as an Account Manager, before itchy feet at the beginning of 2011 meant ended up leaving the company to spend four months in South America.
I arrived home in the summer, and was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to find another job again. Internet marketing is in incredibly fast-growing industry, and experienced account managers are in high demand so I pretty much had my choice of agencies to work for.
A year later though, fate was to bring me back to Search Lab - http://www.searchlaboratory.com - again when the assistant manager role opened up, and I jumped at the chance to return.
My advice to students considering work
I loved my time at York - maybe my only regret would be not taking more opportunity of the incredible amount of clubs and societies there were going on. Chances to connect with like-minded people in this way diminish as you get older.
We interview a lot of people - quite often fresh graduates - and what we're generally looking for are strong communication skills - spoken and written (the amount of CVs and covering letters I see that candidates haven't bothered having anyone proofread is astounding); also an analytical mindset along with common sense and some genuine passion and interest in the industry and the wider world around them.
My advice about working in my industry
We interview a lot of people - quite often fresh graduates - and what we're generally looking for are strong communication skills - spoken and written (the amount of CVs and covering letters I see that candidates haven't bothered having anyone proofread is astounding); also an analytical mindset along with common sense and some genuine passion and interest in the industry and the wider world around them.
What I do
The account manager role with Search Laboratory - http://www.searchlaboratory.com - involves being directly responsible for the portfolio of campaigns relating to your clients. Day-to-day, this involves researching the client's industry to build up a full picture of the kind of keywords that prospective customers might search for, writing compelling adverts, in-depth analysis of the results, and frequent communication with the clients, who must be kept up with the latest activities, plans and performance.
As assistant department head, I continue to manage campaigns for a smaller set of key clients while also co-managing the team and continuing to innovate to expand the company's paid search offering.
Skills I use and how I developed them
Maths graduates in particular are very sought after in my field, so without that background, I would never have even been in contention. That said, the maths and computer science sides of my degree have probably proved equally useful to me over time. Although I rarely use degree-level maths these days, the analytical approach that my degree nurtured has proved crucial. Likewise, though I don't program in any of the languages that I studied in computer science, the principles of programming never left me and have proved invaluable over recent years after I have done a lot with Visual Basic for Applications and more recently Javascript / Google App Scripts. I think knowing a bit of coding can bring unexpected dividends in many diverse career paths these days.
Extracurricular skills:
In my own time I've put a lot of time into refining my (still shaky) coding skills though the plethora of free internet resources that are out there (eg. Code Academy); I've also done a couple of distance-learning language courses. I'm currently in the middle of a Spanish A-Level. Although not necessary for my role, the company does specialise in multilingual campaigns, and studying a second language (which originally I never did beyond GCSE) has given me a deeper appreciation for the issues involved in translating campaigns between languages.
What I like most
I enjoy the variety: we work with a mix of clients from small local businesses with just a couple of staff, to huge international brands, where we'll be running worldwide multilingual campaigns, dealing with campaigns on Google, Bing and Facebook, as well as more exotic search engines such as Baidu, Naver and Yandex.
The many sides to the job are what keeps it interesting: it involves creativity (writing ads), statistical analysis of performance, lots of interesting client communications, not to mention the occasional bit of VBA or javascript programming.
The industry itself is consistently changing too - whether that's Google releasing new tools or targeting methods, or a new advertising platform launched by Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon...so there's always more to learn.
Next steps...
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