Lisa Jones, Talent Director at Access and an integral part of the Two+Two team, talks through her 4 Top tips to help all participants maximise their experience.
“Congratulations everyone! Sounds really cheesy, but you’re all winners! I spent time with lots of groups on the day and without exception, you were amazing. What’s really important now, is that you get the most out of your experience. Here are my 4 tips to help you to do that…
Tip #1 Time to reflect.
Take the time to think about your experience. Ask yourself a combination of these questions: What was good / easy / difficult? How did you feel, walking into that hall and seeing the other students? How different did you feel about your group and the event at the end of the day? Did your group come together seamlessly, or did it feel more difficult to get engagement and contribution from others? Why? What role did you play in that? What was the impact of the things that you did on others in the team, and their impact on you? How did it feel getting feedback on your idea? Communication, collaboration, teamwork, being open to constructive feedback – all really important skills that Two+Two is designed to help you to develop.
Then when it comes to the process: what about the research element of the day – were you able to follow Rob’s guidance, and pick from what Julian and Kae talked through to find a suitable problem to solve? How easy, difficult, or enjoyable was that? Once you had that in mind, how did you find the process of trying to identify an insight that would be robust and true enough to base your creative problem solving on? How was the idea generation element for you? Did you learn new approaches? Then when you were thinking about how you reached your audience: how much did this element get you excited?
Think about this yourself, maybe even write some of your thoughts down, and then come together with either people from your team, or people from your course who were in different teams and ask the questions, and chat through it together. You’ll have other questions that spring up, and other thoughts that are really worth exploring.
Tip #2 Work out what that means for you moving forward.
Following your reflections, you have two things to do: when you’ve worked out what you learnt – pick the highlights and get a few lines down for your CV, and think about how you’ll talk about them when someone like me asks you about them in an interview.
“When trying to land that all-important first job, what is crucial is knowing what area (or department) you’d like to work in. You’d be surprised how many people leave education and then ‘humm and harr’ on the area they want to excel at. This makes you hard to hire or train up. The more specific you can be, the more employable you are.” – Rob Steeles CD at Sideshow (who you met on Friday!)
To Rob’s point: use the experience to help you to determine your direction, and talk to your careers team about this, or to someone in the industry already (your mentors are great for this). Are you someone who thrived in the early stages – might you have a future in research and strategy development? Or was it the channel planning and reaching your audience that was most exciting for you? Be open to this being different to what you thought it might be – that’s part of the benefit of Two + Two and the glimpse it gives you of something like real industry working. (Though in real life you’d get much longer on a brief like this!)
Tip #3 Get connected.
I’ve had LinkedIn requests from some of you, but not all of you!
Two + Two gives you access to some of the most amazing people in the Creative sector. Make the most of the chance to connect with them on LinkedIn. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t meet on the day – just fire a message to everyone you can find online and ask them to connect with you as someone who attended Two + Two. They’ll be happy to.
Then, research the companies that they’re from: head to their websites, Instagram, LinkedIn. Follow them. Work out how they hire juniors. Work out whether they might be interesting to you as a future employer, and if you apply for a job in the future, mention that you know that someone from the business was at Two + Two 2022 in your application.
“This was my first time at Two + Two and I was struck by how many familiar faces were present. It definitely brought home to me the collaborative spirit of people in the creative sectors and I was especially pleased to see how members of teams that I’ve not seen for a while are flourishing.” – Lauren Jackson, Research and Insights Lead at Access (one of the judges!)
As Lauren says, our industry is a tight knit one. So play the long game: you might find an agency that is perfect for you now, or they might be ideal in 3 years, or 10. You’ll have noticed from the way that the mentors, leaders and judges interacted on Friday, and Lauren’s comments: we tend to know each other or have contacts in common. It’s a small world, so developing positive relationships has a long-term benefit that no one can really appreciate or anticipate right now.
Tip #4 Take pride in what you’ve just achieved.
You’ve just spent a whole day, in the company of complete strangers, working through a new process to tackle the most difficult brief we’ve ever set for Two + Two. Then, whether you were ready or not, you presented your thinking back to a larger group of total strangers, and had to listen to their feedback, glowing or constructive, and take that on board.
You did this after 2 of the most turbulent years of isolated education that anyone has experienced in modern times.
You are all absolutely amazing. Please take a huge amount of pride and confidence from what you’ve just achieved. Congratulations!”