Career Track Tuesdays: Student to Professional

- How to make a success of your work and business relationships...

What does being a Professional mean?
- Working to Deadlines
- A real job (get paid)
- Having a steady income
- Conducting your practice to the best of your ability
- Confident and mannerism
- Knowing your practice

Certain areas can consider what being a professional actually is. Do they have to be articulate to be professional? In my opinion I believe anyone has the capability to be a professional regarding the fact that they conduct their job to the best of their ability.

First impressions - People always notice appearance, mannerisms, body language, facial expressions.
Never draw anyone to anything negative, this will work against you, you must be positive and confident. First Impressions:
- Volume, accent, rhythm, tone, speed and pitch.
Studies show that the majority of people with first impressions notice, visuals 55%, words 7% and auditory 38%. I felt that I would most likely have a problem with the speed of how I pronounce words, with part of my being southerners, I've automatically picked up the speed and articulation of speech. I need to ensure that I slow down my speech so that I don't confuse the person I would be talking to. Body language is another slight worry I have, especially with how I twirl my hair without thinking about it when I talk to people or approach people; this form of body language shows shyness and timidness. I need to break out of this habit to create a first impression that shows how confident and passionate I am about my work.

What does a Professional look like?
- Stereotypes - Discrimination - need confidence, 'I don't care about what others think' - be careful with this as people can talk this as a form of arrogance.
- Smell - personal grooming
- Being Practical
Non verbal communications
- Facial expressions, it doesn't hurt to smile!
- Gestures
- Body language and posture
- Paralinguistics (tone and pitch of voice)
- If you are stressed it is really easy to forget to smile

Social Capital
                              }  Understanding people
Emotional Capital

Being able to read signals - the smallest things can give you a signal.

Professional image
- Overall style..
The brand is you - You want to include your own identity but need to fit in to the organisation that you are striving for. Consider the culture and the workplace.
- How do others perceive you?
Through appearance, personality... what do you want to be stereotyped as? Where are you working, is it informal or formal, you need to fit in first before getting your style.

The Written Rules
- Communication Etiquette: Emails/online, telephone calls/text messages and social media

Telephone calls
- Introduce, 'hello my name is ...., I am calling..' state why you are calling
- Taking messages - '... is not here right now, can i take a message?' or 'company name, ... speaking how can I help you?' - state the date, time, number and name of the caller when taking messages.

Social Media - Many small companies will google your name, google yourself and see what comes up - Linked In site will pop up straight away.

Work relationship and difference in the workplace:
- Compromises
-Understanding differences
- Feedback, needs to be constructive - its a way of learning about yourself, it increases your self awareness and helps development.
- Asking for feedback - firstly consider the feedback you want - listen and ask for more feedback with different peers to compare - the similarities and differences.

I found this lecture quite inspiring and it revised points that I already had knowledge of and expanded it further. Personally I think the two main things when dealing with other people in the workplace is compromise and common sense. Compromise is definitely a must, without this I doubt most teams would be able to work together as no-one would want to give up their ideas or want to expand on someone elses thoughts. Common sense is more of a basic guide to judging people and their personalities, how the other person will react to certain feedback - give you an idea of how to talk to them and get the best work ethos from them.

Career Track Tuesdays: Practical and Creative Approaches to Jobs notes

The Foundations:
- Knowing the industry
- Considering location, is it rural or industrial?
- What can you offer? What can they offer you?
- Marketing yourself
- Brand identity, show this creatively in your cv

Identify where you can meet the right people, networking. Look into internships - approach via email, other forms of communication, organise studio visits! Animation studios are more likely to accommodate you with studio visits then immediate internships or work experience placements, they want to get to know you. Get to know the company, get them to know you.

You need to know where to look, they want to know that you have a good track record. This can be in the form of the freelance work you have done, experience within a certain role you have had - internship? - simply just a graduate? You need to be able to advertise yourself to get work out there. Research more into New Blood, student work festival, costings with the price of travel and stall.

Animation is a growing industry - the number of students that want to join this part of the industry is constantly growing. This means more competition.
- Internships, this allows you to gain experience within the company, learn how they work, compared to anyone else applying for the same job as you. Get to know studios - skill set adapts and absorbs new information that can help you with other jobs in the industry, gaining more experience.

Ideas for studio visits that are local:
- Inkco - York, Clifton Moor
- Kilogramme - Manchester

Need to look in the right places, you need to have confidence about yourself and your work, you MUST network! Get your work seen. Flattery to people you want to work for. Look into related fields, possibly less competition? Any feedback you gain, research - even if you are not suited to that particular place - will feel less personal.

The next step to move yourself forward (my personal action plan):
- Collect work together, begin to build a portfolio
- Talk to the studios you want to visit
- Build up confidence
- Research into internships or apprenticeships

Remember, never give in, never surrender! And most importantly try your best.