I’m almost done with week 3 at my new job, appropriately nicknamed “Hot Guy.” I am the Project Coordinator for the Interactive Department in a full service advertising agency. I am basically the third in command for the department. My first week here, my boss was gone to Hawaii for a couple days to pitch to their Tourism Board, and the second in command was out every afternoon meeting with a client, so I was sort of thrown into the fire and made to dance. It was a challenge, but I learned quickly.
My main responsibilities include making sure the details don’t fall through the cracks. That’s where my absolute attention to detail comes in handy. Currently I am managing about 10 projects, most are HTML emails, banners and landing pages. I get to manage all the small ones while the boss and #2 deal with the big ones. I’m also a bit of a glorified secretary. I do research, pull reports, populate expense reports and such. It keeps me busy.
The office is a very creative environment. It used to be an architecture firm so it has lots of interesting features. Each of the conference rooms has a theme and a cool name. We have the Armstrong, Da Vinci and Wright brother’s conference rooms just to name a few. There’s always free food in the break room, including bagels on Friday! I won’t have to spend money on food during the week ever again! We take up all of the second and most of the third story in our building. It’s a bit like a loft. The creative team sits in what is called the green house or bird cage. There is this huge window that is the roof over their heads. The second floor over looks the third and has a staircase that leads down into the maze of cubes, walls and random conference rooms. I go up and down those stairs quite often. It’s good exercise. I don’t get lost anymore, but it can be confusing down there.
I got my own spot earlier this week. I’ve been here three weeks and I’ve already got my own office. Be jealous. For the first two weeks I was squatting in my boss’ office. I kicked him out, he sat on the couches upstairs. When I came upstairs on Tuesday he told me he had something for me. I was expecting more work, but he walked me over to a small corner office that had just opened up and asked me if I wanted it. HELL YEAH! I’ve got my own space with actual walls and a huge window! Not to mention my own extension. I’ll be here until the new interactive space is finish being remodeled next door (who knows when that will happen…). One of my developers came in earlier to have a chat, he sat in the chair in front of my desk. It’s like I’m special or something.
This is the largest company I have ever worked for, the US Government and Alma Mater not included, and the first time I have ever worked for a traditional agency. At my previous position I was one of less than ten in the field office with about 40 more at the home office in California. At Hot Guy, I am one of about fourteen on the team with about 70 people in this office and other offices around the country, and even two abroad!
My previous position was at an interactive agency. Websites and online marketing was all that we did. It is not uncommon to find stand alone interactive agencies like that. At Hot Guy, the interactive department is the baby of the company. And also the red headed step child. We are the most expensive department to maintain. One of the biggest issues we have with the rest of the company is that they don’t understand us and how our process works. When the creative team gets their layout approved, they’re done with their project. For us, that is only the beginning. We must then take that layout, cut it up and make it functional online. They also don’t understand that an HTML email is not a JPEG dropped into the body of your outlook email after you change your settings from plain text to HTML. We’re hoping to host a brown bag and attempt to spread the knowledge of how we work with the rest of the company.
My boss was just in here to check up on how I was doing and what projects I was working on. I’ve got the radio streaming from the internet and he just started dancing. Then I started dancing. That was fun. I knew I chose to stay in the agency industry for a good reason.
But after all the fun is said and done, I really am liking what I’m doing. I’m extremely busy and I think I’m a real asset to the team. I have taken a lot of the work off of the boss and #2 so they can concentrate on the large projects. And that’s what my position was created for.