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On February 6, the Loyola University School of Communications hosted a career fair. Lucky for me, my scheduled cleared and I was able to attend. More than anything, it was valuable on a personal level. While I was limited by my age, and was told that a pretty much every table, there were also flaws to the set up that could have been avoided.
My main suggestion: find a way to improve the elevator situation. I waited at least five minutes for an elevator to get from check-in on the second floor to the fifteenth floor event. That’s valuable networking time. The service elevator was not in use and I do not understand why they wouldn’t dedicate that elevator just to the event. It would be like a vertical shuttle. Second floor to fifteenth floor. Fifteenth to second. So easy. The stairs...thirteen flights...are not a good option before networking. Nobody wants to talk to a heavy sweater.
Now for the important part:
LEO BURNETT.
WAS.
THERE.
... but they don’t hire freshmen for internships.
I felt honored just to talk to them. I got valuable information about starting a portfolio and that it is common to go to graduate school for two years just to build a portfolio. With a look of malcontent on my face, she said if I worked on a portfolio over my next few years, I could still get there. They hire mostly seniors, but they often get offered jobs after completing their internships. Wow. The grail. This was good news and bad news.
Bad news: I have to wait three years before my dream company will even consider me.
Good news: I have three years to work on a portfolio. I have three years to try and get an internship or two to wow them. I also got one of the notorious souvenir big black pencils. This is particularly good news because, as Leo Burnett himself said, “big ideas come out of big pencils.”
They may have given me the most powerful tools of all. HOPE. DETERMINATION. A FOUNDATION. And a big black pencil full of ideas, inspiration, and history. I may be their biggest fan at Loyola, so this pencil meant much more to me than just being a writing implement. It was a promise. A promise that I’m capable. A promise that the opportunities are out there, I just have to be well-equipped and ready to impress. I need to put in the work and time, but they haven’t said no yet; they’ve just said not yet. They better be ready for me when the stars align and the time comes. My portfolio will be good. It has to be. It’s not going to be easy, but it will be worth it.
Leo Burnett said he wanted his name off the door when they spend more time trying to make money and less time making advertising; when they forget the sheer fun of ad making; when they lose the itch of trying to do the job well for its own sake; when they lose the respect for the lonely man, who reached harder, and reached one of the hot, unreachable stars.
I want to be an employee whom Leo Burnett would be proud of based on skill and tenacity of creativity. I want to be the lonely man who reaches the stars.
The career fair was a stepping stone. It didn’t get me an internship, but it did give me hope. It gave me a chance to meet my advertisement heroes. It gave me a bigger freshmen complex than ever before.