What advice would you give to someone trying to get a foot in the door? "One thing that always annoys me is when people don’t personally address emails to me. It doesn’t take much to ring up the company you want to work for as ask for the name of the person to send your application to. Always personalise your application to the individual, maybe find out something about the company, tell them why you want to work there and what’s special about them. Secondly, I would say that to gain some work experience is always a good thing to do. Sometimes it’s unpaid but if you want to work in advertising I think you have to be prepared to show the company you want to work for, why you want to work for them." What can a candidate do to make themself stand out? "I was once sent a little toy bus with the creative team’s url on the side and for the destination it has Profero and Tina Brazil written on it. Not everyone will apply for jobs in this way but I think in general what really impresses me is someone who’s done their research. They know which clients we work on, they know what work of ours they like. They have a point of view on the industry and those candidates who’ve gone above and beyond are the ones that impress me the most." What do you look for in a candidate? "For creative and design jobs, we normally look for some kind of degree in that area. For the rest of the agency, we don’t really specify a type of degree. And we do look for people with experience, which is why work experience is so important. Having said that, we do look at candidates who don’t have degrees – I myself never went to uni. So we’re not closed off to the idea of people joining us straight out of school or a college." What kind of talent is in demand at the moment? "There seems to be a shortage of skilled digital talent and because of the convergence of advertising and the different media it’s getting a lot more difficult to find people to do those roles that we have within our agency." For more advice on finding an advertising job, drop us a line here. Search for the latest jobs in creative and design or a marketing or PR job now.