We talk a lot about being an event manager on our blog, but that’s just one role out of many. There are dozens of different roles and specialities within our industry and today we’re going to outline a few of them.
We don’t have the page space to outline all of the best jobs in event management but we’ll cover a good number of them.
All so you can begin building an idea of the area you would like to specialise in or help you decide whether you want to work in events or not.
This is probably the job you hear about the most. The leader of the team and the person responsible for bringing everything together.
It’s a job with the most stress and the most challenges, but also the most reward.
There are few jobs quite like it and something we all aspired to when we first joined the industry.
Event coordinators are essential members of the team. They will usually oversee areas delegated by the event manager and be responsible for individual areas of responsibility, or the whole thing depending on size and scale.
Event coordinators will be the eyes and ears of the manager as well as responsible for keeping budgets and the dozens of spreadsheets updated.
A marketing coordinator has a similar role as the event coordinator but is usually solely responsible for marketing.
That could include marketing as a whole or further specialities like social media marketing, email marketing, print marketing and so on.
Marketing begins long before the event and can run until after it’s finished. There is a lot of scope within the marketing function if you’re the creative type.
Depending on the size of your company, you may or may not have an event designer or event architect. Their job is to make the vision real.
The job is part designer and artist and part psychologist. You need to understand a customer or attendee journey, what they would expect to see and do and how that reflects the stakeholder or sponsor.
You also have to design concepts and everything down to merch and swag bags.
A customer experience manager is responsible for customer service and satisfaction. It’s often one of the toughest jobs, but also one of the most rewarding.
Whether it’s managing a customer service team, being on the ground managing queues and security or ensuring the event app works as planned, you’ll have fingers in many pies if you choose this role.
Venue managers are also known as space managers in some companies. These are specialist roles often employed by the venues themselves.
Your role would typically be to work with the event manager and their team to ensure your venue is ready and able to host an event.
You will usually have your own team of caterers, maintenance specialists and other roles to ensure the full availability of the space.
If you work with nonprofits, you’ll usually work with a sponsorship coordinator. This is one of the many hybrid roles within event management.
It would be your job to plan events and invite potential sponsors for nonprofits. You would need to perform all the tasks an event manager would, or coordinate with an events team to deliver income for the organisation.
We have always recorded events but the increase in virtual and hybrid events has brought video more to the fore. Now it’s a key role within the industry that can be very rewarding.
Think of yourself as a documentary filmmaker and you won’t go far wrong. Film the planning and execution of events for the company or film the event itself.
It’s all part of the job.
The role of catering manager or catering coordinator is a specialist role that mainly concentrates on the food and drink aspect of events.
You’ll work with your own catering team or suppliers, make sure you have enough food and drink, manage waiting staff and everything that goes with it.
If you’re from a food or drink background, this can be a dynamic and challenging role, but is also very interesting.
The event technology manager is a newer role in the industry that has become one of the most important.
You would be responsible for managing, building and deploying the event app, any digital experiences, the virtual event platform, the coordination of live and video for hybrid events and anything that uses technology.
It’s an ever-changing and always-fascinating role if you’re comfortable with technology.
That’s a snapshot of some of the many interesting roles within the events industry.
You’ll see many of these at some point in your career. Each offers the potential to develop and specialise as well as stick with an area of events you may like more than others.
Whatever role you choose, you’ll need a solid grounding in events first, which is where a good course and some real work experience comes in!
