How did you get your first advertising job?

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Recruiter came to my school and did portfolio reviews. I thought I wrecked the review but she emailed me a week later offering me an internship. Crushed the internship, stayed positive and proactive, and eager. They hired me on full time

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After being fired from reception at AKQA, worked really hard in grad school, visited the agencies during spring break that I wanted to work at and asked lots of questions. Second one from the program to get hired.

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Temp worker. Not even a "freelancer" but straight out temp through Manpower.

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Took 6 months to get my first Ad job out of school. Finally got into a super tiny agency as a freelancer, by way of an external recruiter I was in touch with. After a year, They hired me at $12k a year. Almost didn’t make it into advertising at all.

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I applied to over 100 internships and didn’t get any of them. Kept my eyes peeled and when someone dropped out of theirs halfway through the agency posted about it on Twitter. Got very lucky cuz my student book was not great but I worked hard once I got there and tried to learn as much as possible.

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Got rejected from 3 different Starbucks, desperately ended up on craigslist, found a listing for an internship at an ad agency

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Emailed and walked in asking for an internship.

Craigslist was how I got my first agency job.

Reaching CDs and above at their office desk phones by calling before 10 am. Sometimes I’d get the person I was trying to reach, more often I’d get to leave them a voice message directly.

Only took one call back to get the right opportunity to send a well-written email to land an interview for the internship I badly needed.

I met a girl at a party who put in a good word for me at her agency.

Applied online for internship and was hired full time after my internship ended.

A colleague in the biz recommended me for a PM role.

Hired through a temp agency. Agency lost a client, but had almost a year transition period and FTEs were dropping like flies, so they hired a ton of temps, most with zero experience to keep the place afloat. Only worked there 6 months, but it was enough to easily get a full time job at another agency. 2009! What a time!

Ran into a creative director/former instructor of mine at a record store and he told me they needed interns. Got hired from the internship.

Was a temp at an agency, asked the CD what the hottest agency in NYC was—applied to said agency as a secretary. Got hired to work for 5 amazing copywriters. Took classes at SVA, asked the writers I worked with for input. Cleaned the portfolio up and got hired as a jr writer at a hot agency and there you go!

In-house connection

Was in a best-of portfolio show in my senior year and was contacted from a recruiter based off that.

I went to a picnic.

Freelance to hire.

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I almost tripped over myself because I was checking out a slice of pizza.

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When some asshole won't quit singing in your meeting. I don't need to hear your "rnb sounds" 😘

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