Variety is the spice of life…It also provides you with more career choices in the future!

When I start to have re-occurring conversations, I believe it’s a great time to put together a blog or video as it’s a topic that needs to be shared.

As I recently learned this is a contentious issue, so please don’t take it to heart nor believe these to be my personal views.

I’ve been working on a senior Performance Marketing position with a client-side company in London.

As you can imagine, my inbox has been inundated with applications, however, there’s a certain background I’ve been unable to help.

You see, my client, and there are a number of companies just like this in the market, have said…

“At this level, Alex, we won’t consider those with pure or very strong agency side backgrounds.”

Now, whatever your views on the subject, I think it’s important to point out the following;

I’ve had this same conversation many times over the years…

If I had started a career in the world of digital marketing, having had thousands of conversations over the years, I too would have probably started life agency side.

I think it gives you a great foundation, whereby you get to experience working with different types of clients in different sectors and have an opportunity to get exposure to different channels and get put through all the qualifications…

HOWEVER…

It’s important that you gain in-house experience sooner rather than later.

After spending a few years client-side, you may decide agency life is better suited to you and you know what, that’s fine.

But what it does do, is give you choices! Opens doors that otherwise may have been closed to you.

It gives you choices in the future to look at BOTH agency and client-side roles with even more companies as you can say you have a good mixture of both sides of the fence.

By spending 7, 8, 9 plus straight years in an agency environment and then making the move client-side into a senior role, can sometimes be hard work. I can vouch as I’ve had these exact conversations with professionals with exactly this type of background who have found making the switch tough and wished they knew about this earlier in their careers.

Now there most definitely are companies out there who will take those with purely agency backgrounds at senior levels, so don’t despair.

The reason for getting this topic out in the open is to make you aware before you find yourself in this situation and to give you the chance to think and plan what you’ll be looking for in the future, so you can best plot the path that will lead you to success in securing those types of positions.

Whatever you decide, I wish you the best of luck! And enjoy it!