A creative nature and an interest in business led Claire Best to a career in marketing and communications.
Read how she became an Account Director at Clearbox
Give a brief outline of your career to date.
My first job was as a marketing/ PR officer at the Bangor campus of South Eastern Regional College (SERC). Following 18 months there, I specialised and took a role at an events management company, running large scale events across a mostly corporate landscape. I later joined a global leadership development company as a marketing manager and worked with some of the world’s greatest corporate leaders from organisations including Thomson Reuters UK, Barclays and Panasonic Europe. I learnt a lot about business in my five years there and decided to branch out and start a marketing consultancy, Hummingbird, while I had my second baby. Alongside running my business and being a mum I freelanced at Clearbox when the agency started working with Amazon and eventually became a permanent member of staff. After some years managing Amazon campaigns across the UK, I joined Clearbox’s board of directors as company secretary and here we are today!
What was your favourite subject at school?
I favoured creative subjects like Art and English. Subjects that allowed for personal expression always appealed to me the most.
Did you go on to further/ higher education, if so what did you study and where?
I graduated from Ulster University with a 2:1 in Marketing in 2007. I absolutely loved my university experience, learning a lot and making friends for life along the way.
How did you get into your area of work?
My placement year of university was spent in the marketing department of SERC’s Bangor Campus and I forged great relationships with the team there. It felt very natural to apply for a job at SERC when I graduated and was really pleased when they offered me a marketing/PR officer role. Relationships have always been key for me – I can track my entire career from SERC to Clearbox through a chain of meeting the right people at the right time.
Is this what you always wanted to do?
Growing up, I wanted to be vet, but I quickly realised that I was far too soft for veterinary life. As my favourite subjects were creative, and I found the business world really interesting, I decided that pursuing a career in marketing might be the way to get a little bit of both. My role as an account director at Clearbox offers that same mix of relational and creativity led projects, whilst also allowing me to do the more business-focused, managerial kind of work that I enjoy.
Were there any particular essential qualifications or experience needed?
A third level qualification was required, with a preference for those in marketing, PR or communications. Experience wise, it’s important to be able to juggle a lot of things at once and prove yourself as a hard worker, but I didn’t actually realise this until I joined Clearbox.
Are there alternative routes into the job?
There are always alternative routes if you look hard enough. Sometimes these routes open up when you don’t expect them to – like the one I took into Clearbox. A desire to work hard and get experience will get you very far in the world of PR, even if you don’t have a specialised qualification. Do lots of research on companies and roles and make sure you stand out as a candidate who makes the extra effort.
What are the main personal skills your job requires?
To work in PR you have to be organised. You should be resilient, and you need to be able to use your initiative and think on your feet. Relationship building is one of the biggest aspects of any role in PR, so you have to be friendly, positive, and an excellent communicator.
What does a typical day entail?
It’s cliché to say, but no two days are the same. I tend to organise my day depending on what client projects are happening and do an email sweep in the morning to find out what’s new. I check in with the rest of the team, then my day could involve any of the following: writing social media content, drafting emails or profile pieces, making calls to clients, creating project budgets, creating new business proposals, generating weekly or monthly reports, launching new projects, coming up with PR or social strategies, overseeing PR campaigns – the list goes on! Throw in the odd meeting and brainstorm and that’s an outline of my week.
What are the best and most challenging aspects of the job?
The best part of my job is being able to work with clients from the initial strategising stage of a campaign, all the way through to completion. A happy client makes for a happy team, and I love that challenges crop up, but we get through them with quick thinking and swift reactions.
Why is what you do important?
Successful organisations are good communicators with internal and external audiences and it’s paramount that they share information accurately, quickly, and succinctly. We play a role in helping them do that, whether they’re talking to customers, staff, social media fans, or key stakeholders.
How has Covid-19 impacted your business/ role?
Covid-19 threw a spanner in the works for a lot of our client projects, so we had to come up with new ideas almost overnight. The need to generate these ideas in the face of something none of us have ever dealt with before was very interesting, but thankfully there’s still plenty of work to do, thanks to our brilliant clients. As a leader at Clearbox, I knew that I needed to encourage our team with creativity and a positive attitude, and reassured clients that there were things we could still do even if original plans couldn’t happen.
What adjustments have you had to make?
These adjustments have been mostly physical. We moved from working together in our Holywood office to working apart in our living rooms, but the transition to home working was quite smooth thanks to our set up of laptops with Dropbox and Slack. Clearbox has a work from home policy already in place, but we upped communication and allowed for adjustments in hours to facilitate home life alongside work.
What advice would you give anyone looking to follow a similar career path?
Work hard, talk to people, be nice to those around you, read EVERYTHING, get experience where you can, offer to help, listen to those that know more than you, be yourself!
If you weren’t doing this what would you like to do?
I’d be a midwife. Totally unrelated, I know!
What is one piece of advice you would give to yourself on your first day?
Listen, listen, listen… and listen some more.
Describe your ideal day off.
My ideal day off revolves around family and food. I would go for brunch with my children and husband, take a walk along the beach, see a movie, and finish the whole thing off with a pizza. Life is busy, so small things like these make me happy.
And finally, what’s the key to any successful job search?
Keep your CV short and direct, update your LinkedIn, and only apply for the jobs you really want.
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