The life of an AV graduate

The Process-

I graduated from university in 2020 with a degree in Business and Marketing. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, finding a graduate job was initially a tough process. I applied for Walk-In Media’s graduate scheme and soon got a call for a graduate day which was massively insightful as we had the heads of each department come in and talk to us about what they do. The people who were on the graduate scheme the year before also gave us further insight into what it’s like working for a media agency as a grad.

We were made to feel comfortable as members of senior management were with us throughout the day, and we were able to ask as many questions as possible. Shortly after a second interview, I was told that I was accepted. After graduating during the pandemic and waiting over a year for a job, everything felt worth it.

What is it Like Being a Graduate at Walk-In Media?

The first few weeks were full of great insights as all our inductions showed us how each department in the company works in more detail. We were also taught how to use a range of different platforms including Ad Intel and Media Ocean, also getting a deeper understanding on how to navigate booking platforms such as Prisma and Caria.

I was placed across two teams, Planning and Strategy (P&S) and AV Investment, and have been able to build my knowledge and experience of working in media across both disciplines. I’ve found that working within different teams has really helped with my development and allowed me to understand how departments work together.

I was brought along at great pace within the Investment team and learnt all about reporting and how to book TV and VOD, whilst on P&S I have learnt a lot about how to plan a campaign from the initial client brief. The teams that I am learning from have a huge amount of expertise and experience working in media so it’s great to learn from them. I've seen all the teams at Walk-In Media show they’re willing to take time out of their day to work with you to achieve your goals.

Day to Day-

A good element of working in P&S is working together with the different teams to achieve the clients’ desired outcomes, which means every day can be very different. For instance, we may be in a planning phase and researching what are the best channels to use and forming rationale on why they’re the right choice, or we might be in an active campaign phase where we need to manage regular communication with the client on how the campaign is performing.

The same goes for working in AV, what we do on a day to day varies too. We might be looking ahead at future months of activity and choosing the best stations and programming for the audience that we’re trying to reach, or we might be in a reporting phase and pulling together a post-campaign analysis where we look for highlights and trends to talk to the client about.

What Am I Looking Forward To?

Going forward, I can’t wait to learn more about the world of media, work on larger campaigns across a range of different client sectors and build my expertise in forming strategies to deliver the best outcomes.

Written by Kingsley Armaah