From trainee to Junior MarTech Consultant

Finished university, then what?

This was a major question for me. Finally, you finish your studies and so you have to start looking for a job. But looking for a job without work experience is difficult anyway, let alone when you also don’t quite know what you want and can do. I think this is an issue many recent graduates might struggle with. Therefore, I would like to share my experience as a trainee at Chapman Bright and describe how I kick-started the first years of my professional career.

How I ended up at Chapman Bright?

I started working at Chapman Bright as a Content Marketer during the final phase of my master’s degree. Since this was a side job for me, I still had no idea what the beginning of my career would look like. Until Diederik and Jacques indicated they wanted to start a traineeship to train and prepare future MarTech consultants for the consultancy profession. As I was not yet sure what I wanted with my career, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to find out. After all, during a traineeship you will work on various projects with different topics, in this case all related to Marketing Technology. Little did I know how much experience I would gain in a period of 2 years.

The first year in the traineeship

During the first year of the traineeship, together with my fellow Trainee Rosie, I spent a lot of time studying, gaining hands-on experience and obtaining certificates. Besides experiencing what it is like to work full-time within a company, we also had to fully onboard into a tool that was new to us. We did this by first creating a theoretical base for ourselves, followed by a period of slowly integrating into real projects, under the guidance of the consultants. I considered this combination of learning and working a very pleasant and smooth transition from student life to working life.

Transforming into a MarTech Specialist

Whereas the first year was indispensable in gaining knowledge and experience, year two was the period that really made the difference in my career. Because we had gained the right skills during our first year, we were now ready to run as full-fledged MarTech specialists on client projects. During this time, we got the chance to specialize in topics that had our preference. This gave us the opportunity to shape our careers ourselves into the direction of where our interests lay. I personally focused on how to apply MarTech to contribute to sales enablement and lead management. I, for example, also deep-dived into the topic ‘consent and regulations’, where I have applied international legislation into multiple email preference centres, making sure that our clients are compliant with all regulatory requirements. By the end of this year, we have evolved into fully developed specialists, and this also marked our transition into the role of Junior MarTech Consultants.

From that point on…

After completing the traineeship, I felt capable and confident to work independently on projects and guide clients towards success, and so I did! Together with my colleagues, I worked on diverse projects where I actually continued to learn more every day. And I will take that acquired knowledge with me for the rest of my career. In fact, another challenge is already on the horizon for me, at a new company. The experience I have gained while working at Chapman Bright in the past few years has formed a solid foundation for such a new challenge and ensured that my new employer-to-be had enough confidence in me to hire me with a great enthusiasm.

So, if you have doubts about your first step as a young professional, definitely consider starting your career with a traineeship. It will challenge you to discover your own skills and gives you the right tools for a successful further career. If you are particularly interested in the traineeship at Chapman Bright, be sure to take a look at this page!