Nurturing future industry talent

Hot on the heels of our new recruit, Audrey, joining us, we recently welcomed a college student to the MGA Group for 2-days work experience.

Harriet, a bright and intelligent young lady, wanted to experience the creative industry first-hand. Sarah-Jane, one of our Account Manager’s, took her firmly under her wing, organising a jam-packed agenda: talking with various agency figureheads, attending client meetings, and being exposed to the everyday running of a creative agency – both from a Client Services and Creative perspective.

Harriet tells her own account of her time at MGA:

For my work experience I joined the MGA team for two days at the beginning of June. It was really interesting as I was involved in several Teams meeting calls and one-to-one meetings with MGA team members, explaining who they are and what they do at MGA and also telling me about their career journeys to the role each were in now. Before my work experience started, I was sent an agenda of activities which really helped to provide me with an overview of what was going to happen.

When I first started my work experience, I was introduced to Sarah who made me feel really comfortable and happy with joining the Teams calls and meetings, Sarah also helped me to understand more detail about the work, so I had a better understanding of each conversation. If it wasn’t for Sarah, I think I would have been very lost at the start!

As part of my work experience, I completed a research task which included reviewing a specific website to look at the different areas and articles that interested me; this included colours, text, styles and images. I shared my opinions and feedback with Sarah, and she took notes to see if there were any improvements that could be made or any new elements that could be added.

During my time with MGA I spoke with Damien, Olivier, Colin and Ellie (who works for their events division SGA Productions), I also got to listen in on some of the client calls which was very interesting to get a better understanding of the day-to-day tasks and real work life experiences.

The MGA work experience has helped me with my potential future career choices; marketing has been a strong option of mine to pursue, and MGA has proved I should explore further in this direction. I have realised however that I am more of a practical and creative person and enjoy customer service therefore, Sarah and Olivier’s job interested me the most and has shown me some of the challenges and exciting areas of a creative agency. Making sure clients are treated in the best way possible and listening closely to their opinions is definitely something new I have learned.

It was a pleasure welcoming Harriet into the MGA-fold, and it’s important to provide opportunities like this to nurture young talent and hopefully attract them into our industry. We wish her all the best with her future endeavours – perhaps an account handler in the making – watch this space!