Breaking Into Event Management: Less Than a Year to a New Career

Happy New Year! 2018 is here and, as ever, the start of a fresh new year is the time when we take a close look at ourselves, our lives and our futures: making resolutions, rethinking approaches, considering changes and exploring opportunities.

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And our professional lives don’t escape this focus either – in fact, careers are an important part of who we are, or have the potential to be.

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So, whether you left school or uni in 2017 and are still looking for career inspiration, you’re feeling like another brick in the wall of your current career, with few windows for promotion and skills development, or you’re emerging from an existing profession and looking for something new – event management could offer the ideal career start, change or opportunities you’re hoping to explore for 2018. But what makes many would-be event managers hesitate, when it comes to making a fresh start in the direction of a professional event production role, is the idea that skilling up to become an event industry professional will take too long. Howver, the good news is, Event Academy courses could bring you to a new career in event management in less than a year …

A year in the experience of …

2017’s certainly been a living example of this for Emily Beard, alumni from one of our Live Diploma in Event Management 2017 courses. Frustrated with her existing office role, Emily felt drawn to event management and hasn’t looked back since. At a recent Open Evening, Emily outlined her impressive timeline of less than a year, in which she moved from a frustrated role in admin to a professional, international role in event management:

“Jan 17 – I came to the Event Academy Open Evening and was really impressed with the courses and the opportunities that seemed to be available. I signed up for the Live Diploma course because I was already working 9 to 5 and wanted something which would fit in.

Feb 17 – I started the Live Diploma course and found I really liked it: 2 – 3 evenings a week for 3 months made it possible for me to try to get into events, whilst fitting in with the day job. I really wanted the chance to mingle, rather than work in an office forever, so meeting and interacting with new people as part of the course was really important. With the learning, you get thrown in, but they [the lecturers, tutors and support staff at Event Academy] make sure you really enjoy the course: they’re dedicated and have a passion for it, that gets you involved!

May 17 – The course finished with our exam and final project. We were given the brief and had to get caterers, venues and prices all organised. You develop your experience through the experiential learning, volunteering opportunities and the projects: you’re learning it and living it whilst doing the event planning! Working in groups on the course really helped, we had project sessions within the course evenings and sometimes stayed late or met up outside of the course, so that we could really make the most of the chance to work together successfully. The tutor worked with every group, to ensure we had a good experience and were on track.

Sept / Oct 17 – In September I was offered a salaried role with a prestigious exhibition event company and started the role in October 17, working globally in cosmetics exhibitions – in just a few months I’ve worked in Thailand, Korea and New York. The experience I’d gained from organising events on the course, and in volunteering, really helped to get me this role and it’s been amazing, especially when you think that this time last year I didn’t know what I wanted!”

Having started her event management journey at the first Event Academy Open Evening of 2017, Emily rounded off her year by also coming to December 2017’s Open Evening, but this time as a key speaker to answer questions and share her success with others.

Will 2018 be your year?

As Emily’s success shows, studying with Event Academy means that within a year you could go from having very little knowledge or experience of event management, to:

• Becoming a qualified events professional;
• Gaining a Chartered Institute of Marketing-accredited qualification;
• Gaining experience of working in events;
• Gaining an extensive network of other event professionals and services;
• Changing your career and life-opportunities – full-time, part-time, employed, agency or freelance, anything’s possible from the many event management roles out there!

What next?

If you’d like to find out more, our next Open Evening is on Wednesday 17th January 2018 – you can find out more about us, our courses and hear about what it’s really like to work in event management. Who knows, coming along could be the start of your own timeline to a new career in 2018.