Marketing and advertising specialist skills for your resume and career

The pandemic is accelerating the general trend of digitalization. By far our most in-demand graduates are those with social media and digital marketing knowledge. Remote work, e-commerce, and internet-enabled services will be growth areas during the recovery from the pandemic's recession.

Strong written and verbal communication skills aid employees in serving both constituents inside and outside the organization. Assessing when action is needed, planning a response, and having a positive attitude go a long way in developing a professional reputation.

In any business role, employees that can analyze data and craft strategy are really important. In a coordinator role, those skills may not be as necessary but will certainly make them stand out and gain attention for additional roles and responsibilities.

If a graduate needs to take a gap year, what skills would you recommend to enhance, and how should they go about doing it? - Again, I think this depends on your area of expertise; the industry is always evolving and growing, and you need to be evolving and growing with it. So if you're taking a gap year, try to stay involved or engaged in some way. Ideally, you'd be involved in the production and exercising your skills. Still, if that can't happen, you can stay engaged in other ways - help do props for your local community theatre or even volunteer as an usher. If nothing else, you should always be reading about what's happening in the field. Not just Broadway either - what plays and what work is being done in regional cities. Get your hands on and read the new plays coming out, watch the videos released (full productions, interviews, promotional and dramaturgical videos, too), and read the available reviews. Keep your head in the game, even if you're unable to work the way you want to be doing.

That all depends on the available position. For animation, they want someone with a strong understanding of how to bring an inanimate object to life and how to apply the twelve principles of animation. For VFX, an understanding of physics, how things work, and they would fall apart. And for games, one must know the game engine a company is using. They should have a set of well-rounded skills in the foundations of modeling, texturing, lighting, and effects. And they should be familiar with and be able to adapt to a company's style.