Marie-Laure is 23 and has been working as Communications & PR Executive at Beyond Communications for a year and a half. She is one of those people who’s always 100% committed to her clients and colleagues… We invited her to share her experience in the hope of inspiring and motivating young communicants who might be hesitant to start their first job. She confides how she was able to #GoBeyond!

Between fits of laughter, stress and crying spells, the experience of a first job in a communications agency is one of a kind. As a Communications & PR Executive, my to-do list is rather long and… varied. Writing articles, press releases and website texts; following up with clients and journalists; proofreading & optimising texts; writing content for brochures; looking for brand names & taglines; managing projects; translating English and French texts… In addition to meeting my clients’ needs and expectations, carrying out work for the agency and helping my colleagues out every now and again, are tasks that also require their fair share of time. Being the only franglish within a francophone agency, I’m often requested to help with a pitch, proofread the email of a colleague dealing with an English-speaking client, or explain a complex English brief.

What I’ve learned over the months:

• No matter how small, all customer requests require time, patience and discipline. What sounds “simple”, “easy” and “quick”, is often more complicated, difficult and time consuming than the rest.
• Communications goes beyond simply thinking out of the box. Ideas are all well and good, but one must be able to bring words and images to life in a style and tone of voice that match customers’ brand universe – all the while meeting their expectations 😉
• Criticism can only be constructive. The rule in a communications agency is the same as for all companies offering a service: the customer is king. While communicants can give their own opinion, they must also accept that everyone’s taste is different!

Wearing many hats – Copywriter, Project Manager, PR Executive, Translator… – I quickly learned to identify my strengths & weaknesses and differentiate between the tasks I enjoy doing and those that are as appealing as boring household chores. Let’s make a list:

YES

Challenging? Yebo. Rewarding? Absolutely!

Just like a rainbow full of colours, the unique experience of a first job in a communications agency can quickly go from the “very difficult-under pressure-ready to jump off a cliff” red, to the “all good-coping-I’m on the right track” purple – and vice versa! Fortunately, when you work at Beyond, you can always count on your colleagues to cheer you up 😀 More than a job, Beyond is like a family: always there, in the good and hardest times…