Even though many of our graduates will have progressed in their careers since completing a case study, they are still of interest to students who wish to gain an understanding of the world of work.

I work on the Off-Page team and my main responsibilities are working with global brands to create engaging content, coming up with search strategies and using the internet to build relationship with bloggers, journalist and webmasters.

A typical day involves searching for quality and relevant link targets or existing mentions of a specific client. I may have to brainstorm ideas for written content that could be hosted on their blog and research and write it. Some days we have meetings or brain-storming sessions and my role is extremely varied with lots of contact with people in and outside my organisation.

I get to research a number of topics and areas of business that I may not be familiar with and this varies day to day depending on which client I am working on. I have a lot of contact with a broad range of people and I have to approach situations in a strategic yet creative manner.

Time management, you must be efficient with your time as you can get carried away on a certain task therefore neglecting others. You also need to have unique ideas for approaching different niches as some areas of the job have already been written about and you have to think of ways round this.

It is an ever developing industry and an industry that is growing significantly so it is dynamic and demands a lot of creativity.

Team work
Collaboration
Good time management skills
Attention to detail
Good Communication skills i.e. for outreach emails, meetings and telephones calls.

The role requires full training (min 2 weeks) from the outset but I recently also had the opportunity to take up training on Google Analytics which can be developed further.

I worked in Spain teaching for four years and also with charities. I started blogging for a charity which sparked my interest in social media. I now have a job in the SEO industry.

Continuing a career in search engine marketing

Don’t stress if you don’t know what you want to do. Sometimes it is a process of elimination. Make sure you go for jobs that interest you and that you will enjoy, that way things will develop naturally.