Jacqueline W.
About me
| Jacqueline W. | |
| Psychology | |
| Psychology | |
| Undergraduate | |
| James | |
| 2007 | |
| United Kingdom |
My employment
| Digital Project Manager | |
| Penna TCS Ltd. | |
| United Kingdom | |
| Advertising, marketing and PR | |
| 2010 | |
| £20000~5000 | |
| £20000~5000 |
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A day in the life of a Digital Project Manager in the United Kingdom
Where I hope to be in 5 years
Currently on a fixed term 3 month contract - looking for more work, and very much hoping to get a similar role that will allow me to learn new skills and progress to project management roles with more responsibility.
My advice to students considering work
Take your time looking over the description of the job to which you are applying; it may look appealing if it has a high salary but it may not turn out to be what you had hoped. One friend of mine ended up in a sales job that made her extremely unhappy, since the role was entirely not suited to her skills and interests. Just remember that there are always more jobs out there, and that graduate schemes aren't the only way forward. May 'graduate jobs' are just labelled this way to attract high quality candidates into low quality work, so really take the time to consider the job description.
What I do
Managing the schedule of work for all members of the digital department, ensuring work is prioritized correctly and allocated a sufficient amount of time; and managing the expectations of client services teams by ensuring deadlines for delivery are accurately forecasted.
Compiling proposals for recruitment-focused websites and microsites for a broad range of clients. A recent proposal, incorporating the design of webtrees and wireframes to illustrate the site’s layout and functionality, has been approved and is currently under development.
Overseeing the collection of all content for new website build; e.g. ensuring factual information has been requested from clients, image designs have been completed, and copy has been signed off.
Communicating technical information in clear and concise terms in order that clients are fully informed during all stages of a project’s development.
Completing amendments and additions to websites using Umbraco (content management system).
Skills I use and how I developed them
Degree skills:
Organising the various sections of a research project taught me excellent organisational skills. Write-ups of experiments taught me to convey information in a clear and concise manner.
Extracurricular skills:
Excellent communication skills - improved while travelling as I needed to approach strangers, sometimes in foreign-language speaking countries - for information.
What I like most
This is a great industry to work in because there is, on the whole a fairly informal culture in advertising agencies, while employees remain professional about the actual work they do. I like this because, while I come to work in jeans and as such feel very relaxed, I am still amongst colleagues who take their work very seriously.
What I like least
At the moment I am finding myself at a loose end rather a lot of the time. This seems fairly typical of the type of project management I am doing; I am very busy at the beginning and the end of a project, but in the middle it is just a matter of monitoring progress and keeping everyone in the loop.
What would I change? Everyone at my company was told they were at risk of redundancy but I was reassured off the record that my department would not be affected. In the end, I was told I would be made redundant, and that the following day would be my last at the company. Looking back I regret not taking the initiative to look into other roles while I was at risk of redundancy, instead of waiting until I actually WAS made redundant to start this process. As a result of this I was one of the millions of young people claiming JSA.