The week of discovering new digital tools and jumping into ‘the business world’ was an eye-opener. Being my first ever experience of using social media and utilizing my creativity as part of work, was so enjoyable that I ended up volunteering to work every Wednesday afternoon.

So now looking back to my personal experience, I knew I wanted to do the same, to offer some sort of support or guidance for other young students finding their way in life. The opportunity to offer the insights of my job role, Digital Marketing, popped up recently and I took it INSTANTLY! Sharing the day-to-day role in Digital Marketing is hard to show, as one day you could be creating pages for a website, and the next day attending an event. The variety of opportunities to network and constantly gain new insights into the fast-pace role is what Digital Marketing is all about.

I was offered an hour to mentor a young lady who was on her day of work experience, gaining insights into HR, Finance, Marketing and more. As it was my first time in mentoring, I decided that providing the chance to create a video clip and create a social media post would be the best option for Ellie to get the ins and outs of Digital Marketing.

Video clip
We initially started producing a short clip on a digital tool called Lumen5, it’s a short number of slides with images and text that can be used as Ads around the Saïd Business School Tv screens or via social media platforms.

To begin with, we went through the brand guidelines of the school. To promote any organisations work, you must have some sort of brand image, so people recognise who you are i.e. by communicating in a specific tone of voice. We then inserted the scripted text, to which some slides were automatically generated. Now, this is where the fun started. We could insert images from the event (Map the System – Global Final 2019) and play around with the layout and the position of the text. This may sound easy but it’s quite fiddly, in the way you don’t want the text to override the image itself.

As Ellie’s first try, the clip looked great! I was impressed by how quick she picked things up (see above)!

Social media post

After the amazing try of producing a clip on Lumen5, I thought we could give a go at creating a post for social media. We began with HootSuite, a digital tool that allows organisations to schedule posts for all social media platforms. Which was a shock to Ellie, as she always thought all social media posts were published live. Though this can be the case sometimes when ‘live-tweeting’.

We began with Ellie’s interests and what she would typically see on Twitter, we then used this idea to draft a post on Hootsuite for our Twitter account @SkollCentre. Expressing the key message of the post with the use of hashtags, @ holders, URL links and use of media. Creating this ‘rich’ twitter post while being within the 280 characters. Once happy with the draft, we both asked ourselves, would we find this post interesting? Does the post stand out? When answered yes that’s when we decided to schedule the post.

The experience in shadowing Ellie producing some amazing content in such little time, was rewarding. Spending an hour sharing insights in Digital Marketing to a young student, who came out with a newly learned skill. Made me want to carry on providing support to young people on their journey of finding their ideal job.

Written by:
Daniela Cazan, Digital Marketing Apprentice, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Saïd Business School.

Name: Frances Murray

Age: 19

Job Role: Apprentice Library Assistant

Department: Bodleian Library Collections and Resource Description

How long you have been an apprentice: Since early December 2015.

What is the first thing you do when you get into work in the morning? We pack up books from our backlog into boxes to be sent off to the Book Storage Facility in Swindon twice a day, so the first thing I do each day is take the boxes from the previous day to the drop off point, wheel back some empty ones and pack them so they’re ready for the afternoon pick up.

Where do you spend most of your day? As I’m learning more about cataloguing my day is becoming more desk-based, but I still get to spend a lot of time in the book stacks which is my favourite place in the world.

What keeps you motivated at work? As a legal deposit library, we have a claim on every item published in the UK and Ireland. This means that when I’m working through something particularly boring, I can look forward to whatever weird and wonderful book is likely to show up next (my favourite was one about mind controlling wasps).

Tea? or Coffee? I would be disowned by my home county of Yorkshire if I didn’t say tea.

Favourite job? Least favourite job? My favourite job is anything that takes me into the book stacks, so manual tasks like packing boxes and locating books on the shelves are great. My least favourite would be working through a report we receive every week to find errors in a book’s records, which involves going through records and changing the same thing in each one. It’s incredibly dull and repetitive, and as soon as you think you’ve finished them all another one appears.

What qualification are you working towards and when do you hope to achieve it? I’m working towards a BIIAB Level 3 Diploma in Library, Archives and Information Services, which I’m due to finish in December.

How has studying with your college provider helped you at work? My qualification focuses my individual role in the library as a whole unit, so it means I’m much more aware of the importance of the tasks I do, and I’m constantly asking questions and learning more.

What has been the biggest surprise of your apprenticeship? Contrary to popular belief, not all librarians are scary old ladies with grey hair and ugly cardigans. They do all have an unhealthy obsession with cats, however.

Sum up your job in 3 words. So. Many. Books.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I’d love to continue working in a library in some way, whether it’s the Bodleian or elsewhere. Working with books every day is a dream come true, and, as frustrating as readers can be sometimes(!), knowing that you’ve helped someone find what they need is a wonderful feeling.