Plop a Fat Note Right in Mahoney’s Inbox

So my latest and greatest idea, yet to be dismissed and tossed onto the enormous, festering pile of already considered ideas, is to go to work in advertising. The goal would be to work for an agency for a while, branch off on my own after learning the ropes, freelance my skills to worthy, sustainable businesses with a soul, all the while sitting back in the local pubs and coffee houses writing radio jingles and commercials. Sounds pretty good to me at this point! So now what?

One thing that has been reiterated constantly to me lately is that the job search takes bravery. Being a total coward makes this difficult for me, but I did something COMPLETELY outside of my comfort zone the other day. I emailed a dude at an agency and asked him for an information interview in exchange for a coffee beverage of his choice with all the trimmings. That’s right! I just plopped a fat note right in Mahoney’s inbox, asked for 12.3 minutes of the man’s time in exchange for caffeine, and sat back to wipe the sweat off the keyboard while I waited for a reply. He declined the coffee, but….he did say I could call him.

I came up with seven well thought out questions and rang him up that week to chat, and got what I think is some excellent information. He told me most people in the biz are going to ad school nowadays to build a proper portfolio. I had never even heard of ad school, nor has anybody else I’ve told this story, so perhaps this is some phantom qualification that seems to have disappeared from the liner notes.

Since the interview, I’ve stopped sending my resume down the crap shoot in search of jobs I’m pretty sure I’m under qualified for. Yeah, it never hurts to try, but in a city where writers are running rampant, I just can’t do it. I’d rather put my energy into this portfolio building thing instead of dumping it into cover letters that in the end, feel like verbose flattery and generic tripe.

So I’m enrolling in a class this spring at the School of Visual Concepts to give it a whirl. If I like it, awesome. 500 dollars well spent. If not, I’ll toss the idea onto the stinky rubbish pile and move on to the next venture.

KB Cycler

Filed under Lost Demographic |