Josephine Boye
Course studied: Marketing Management & Multimedia Journalism BSc (Hons)*
Year of graduation: 2020
Current job title: Facebook and Instagram Manager
Current employer: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/
Industry sector: TV/Entertainment
I spent a long time thinking about whether to study journalism or marketing and on A-level results day, I saw a tweet from a student saying they were about to graduate from the University of Northampton. The course they’d studied was Marketing Management and Multimedia Journalism and I knew straight away that was what I wanted to do!
I really enjoyed the practical side of the course, like going into the town centre and finding news stories. I also loved the fact that I could merge both courses and the two elements would link together when I graduated. The foundation modules in marketing were particularly helpful to my career and personal development and I still use what I learnt from them every single day.
As soon as I graduated, I started at BYP Network, an empowering platform which facilitates the employment, mentoring, networking, and up-skilling of black professionals. My role as Social Media Manager was a tech start-up that allowed me to develop my skills and have confidence in them. I then moved on to Channel 5 (Viacom CBS) where I worked for a year as a Social Media Executive and I’m now at Guinness World Records (GWR) as Channel Manager, where I look after around 45M of their 100M followers.
The knowledge I gained on my degree that is most useful in my current role is an understanding of the foundations of marketing, which has helped with the day-to-day terminology that’s used within my role. Also, the journalism side of the course allowed me to be more creative with my copywriting and has come in very handy as I recently presented on behalf of GWR for their social media channels.
Aside from my studies I enjoyed lots of extra-curricular activities that I could link to my course. On the journalism side, I did work experience at a radio station, presented on red carpets at events, wrote music and fashion blogs and lots more! For marketing, I worked on social media for small companies, as a Marketing Assistant for PureGym, and did influencer marketing for companies. These extracurricular activities really helped to enhance my career, as they gave me something to talk about in interviews that demonstrated I already had experience in the jobs I was applying for. I also created showreels, presented statistics of the work I’d done on social media pages, and copies of blogs I’d written, so I had plenty of examples to talk about during interviews.
The advice I would give to undergraduates interested in this career path would be to get experience! Everyone comes out of university with a degree, so you need to have something that makes you stand out. When it comes to marketing, one thing employers love to see is creativity, so make sure you have something to show them!
Studying at the University of Northampton really allowed me to become the best version of myself.
* UON no longer offers Joint Honours programmes. Study Marketing BSc (Hons) or Multimedia Journalism BA (Hons) as Single Honours courses.