Behind the scenes : my journey from Intern to Senior Digital Account Manager

Learning as a Digital Intern

I graduated from the University of Birmingham with an English language degree. I had some limited marketing experience from an internship in Birmingham, and had decided this was the avenue I wanted to explore. I came across the Digital Intern role at Bright Network as I was already a member and was using the network for job & internship hunting.

I knew this would be a great opportunity to get a taste of an industry that really intrigued me and get some incredible exposure in a start-up - all whilst getting to move to London and see if the city life was for me!

As a Digital Intern, my role was to work in a supportive capacity for the Digital Delivery team (at the time this was a team of 3) helping to run digital marketing campaigns for our clients, but I very quickly got exposure to client-facing responsibilities because the team was so small at the time, there was so much room to put my hand up and get involved.

Just a week in I knew this was somewhere I could see myself working long-term - I felt a great sense of belonging with the team and was so impressed by how talented the people I was working with were. I really wanted to prove myself and got involved with as much as possible to showcase this to the wider team and give myself the best chances of securing a permanent role after the internship.

Gaining confidence as a Graduate Digital Account Manager

After a successful six month internship, I secured a permanent role as a Graduate Digital Account Manager and took on full responsibility for managing a portfolio of our digital clients. This was a big jump, both in terms of the number of clients I was working with, but also in moving from a supportive role to having full autonomy of a client relationship. The entire campaign’s results (and therefore long-term success of the client’s relationship) were in my hands, so with the increased responsibility, came increased accountability.

Whilst this was a huge learning curve, it was also an incredible opportunity to really build my professional skills, learning to hone my communication skills and build effective relationships with clients. 

This was really the year where I built the confidence to comfortably communicate in front of clients in a knowledgeable and impactful way. When I look back, this was all because I was given the opportunity to have real autonomy over my clients. Bright Network’s culture is all about giving people true ownership over their work & trusting people to deliver it in the way they see fit - and this definitely helped me grow.

Honing my skill-set as a Digital Account Manager

With my new found confidence and a promotion to Digital Account Manager, my focus was on deepening my client relationships, strengthening my knowledge and becoming an expert in the field - a go-to person for my clients.

I was able to field increasingly complex questions from clients by myself, upsell & grow smaller clients onto larger campaigns, and take a truly consultative approach in building client relationships. My highlight of this year was a really enjoyable dinner with a public sector client celebrating some record campaign results that were the best they’d ever seen in four years of working with Bright Network.

It was incredibly rewarding and satisfying to see the year on year comparison and improvement from the previous year I’d worked with them - a tangible example of where I was able to apply my knowledge and skill-set for the benefit of the client, the business, and our members.

Making the most of my expertise as a Senior Digital Account Manager

Four years and three promotions later, I’m now a Senior Digital Account Manager. My clients see me very much as an extension of their team - and that’s how I act. They see me as a trusted source of knowledge who provides integral advice that informs their wider graduate recruitment marketing & attraction strategy.

But I don’t just have the opportunity to leverage this expertise with our clients, I’m also able to make the most of this internally too. I work in close collaboration with our Digital Director Hanna on a range of projects outside of client delivery - taking the lead on hiring Interns for our team, leading discovery workshops for clients in collaboration with our Marketing team, supporting in the training for new joiners, and helping Hanna define our team’s strategy as we move to a tech-enabled service offering for our clients - which will undoubtedly bring new challenges and mean a whole new skill-set to develop!

The journey’s gone by in a flash, and thanks to the supportive and collaborative working environment I’ve had the opportunity to learn huge amounts from others, but also to impart that knowledge and really contribute in a meaningful way to the Digital team and wider business