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Hello and welcome to the Center for Success Career Talk Podcast, a series that provides tips and advice for fine-tuning your resume, networking and getting that first job. The hosts for the series are members of the Center for Success at St. Xavier University in Chicago. Hi everyone, thanks for joining us.
This is Debbie Beale, I am the Director of the Center for Success at St. Xavier University. I'd like to welcome you to the Career Talk Podcast series. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Mr.
Steve Curran. Steve is the Head of Sales Midmarket at Outbrain. Steve, thanks for joining me. Absolutely, absolutely.
I'm excited to be on here and talking about digital marketing and the kind of career opportunities for students and region graduates. So I'll just start by asking you to tell us a little bit about Outbrain and your role. Absolutely. Outbrain is one of the world's leading native advertising platforms.
We pride ourselves on connecting audiences with relevant brands and experiences across the web. So if you think how Netflix recommends the next movie or Spotify to next artist, we're doing that with content and brands across the open web. We do that by powering you to add the product of the world's largest and most premium publishers. And in my role, I oversee a team of sellers that are responsible for educating clients on the power of native advertising and getting new brands onto our platform.
One of the things that my office does is we do career advising, so for a lot of undecided students. And so we have to pick up on hobbies and things that they enjoy and their interests. So can you tell me a little, tell us a little bit about what are some of the characteristics of individuals that might, that might steer towards digital marketing? Yeah.
It's really anybody that is an individual curiosity and a personal prize. I say that because overall the digital space is changing on a daily basis. The way we consume content today is not going to be the way that we're consuming it. A year from now, never mind five years from now.
When I think of individuals that excel in this space, they're going out on their own in an effort to absorb and learn as much information as possible. So that could be through TikTok videos or it could be through things like webinars, link in post, network events or peer to peer interaction. I personally think the most ambitious people discovered in topic try to go out and learn more on that and then form their own opinion. They're not waiting around waiting to be told what to think about if something matters, but rather trying to resolve their own personal intellectual curiosity, pushing them to learn more on their own and connect with people that can help grow that knowledge.
So sort of, yeah, so go getters and people that are thinking creatively outside the box. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. When I think of social media and what people could be getting into today, I think there's somebody to be successful in digital marketing.
It has to be a comfort level with not knowing what you're going to be doing for the rest of your professional life. I know that kind of sounds contradictory for career guidance per se, but if you look at TikTok, for instance, that's been come to the U.S. until 2016. So when I'm graduating college in 2010, how can I say I want to work for this company or exclusively do that for the rest of my life?
Quite frankly, it's impossible and that's what makes it the most exciting. So, you know, when you have individuals that, you know, like to solve problems, for instance, what add creative to their local motion or what best investment strategy that your client or brand to profitability, anybody that's stimulated by solving those problems, should be able to find a home as a digital market. We actually have a digital marketing major here at St. Xavier University, which I'm sure will give some of our students that advantage.
But it sounds like you don't necessarily need to be a marketing major or a digital marketing major. And are there any specific career or majors that you pursue when you're looking to hire someone? So that's a great question. There is more of a formal route now, right?
There's universities that have concentrations in fields like digital media, marketing, entrepreneurship as well as some of the more traditional fields like sociology, which tend to align with the quote unquote, marketer profile, but there is absolute value in learning with hands-on keyboard. So, when I'm looking at candidates, you know, there is a balance of, hey, what does that education look like? What does it drive? I think that's the great representation of where they're trying to go.
But on flip side, you know, there's just as much to be said for candidates that has been hands-on keyboard running marketing programs, even if it's for a local business, you know, what are they doing to try and elevate their brand's profile within a community? Are they growing their followers base? Are they growing their customer base? That type of hands-on experience is irreplaceable.
And it might be a digital marketing is one of the few fields where you can really try it without any formal training on, like, per se, like an account, right? Are there anything else you want to share with our audience? Any career advice or anything else you'd like to say? Yeah, it's actually, it's no short of the thing.
I think when I think about advice in terms of preparation for coming into the field or being aware of pitfalls, I talk to the pitfalls first. And this is a specific objective that's digital marketing for my experience as an app to anyone entering the job market or anybody that's still very young in their professional careers. I cannot emphasize more that it's a marathon, mouth-to-read. So oftentimes, I see individuals comparing themselves to their peers far too much.
Comparison games, thinking the grass is always greener. Those are the scariest pitfalls that I see in real time. Chasing their data, the treatment, such as, you know, I get asked therefore I get live promotion, will only get you to a certain place in today's market and job economy. I try to shift the mindset of my team to think about what am I learning now and how can these fields be used to help me and my career trajectory, whether that is within my current career craft or outside of that.
So, transferable skills like project management, creative thinking, analytical abilities, their value also for so many fields, the more you're able to sharpen these skills, the more option to be created for yourself in the long run, which really helps, obviously, remove yourself from that they did this, I need to do that, I can like that. And that's really what I see most young professionals making the biggest mistakes right now. So, as much as I can encourage you guys to go out there and focus on the things that you can control, I can do that all day, every day. Terrific, that's great advice.
Thank you. That was Steve Kuron, head of Sales Midmarket at Outbrain. Thank you for joining us for the St. Xavier University Center for Success Career Talk Podcast Series.
Thanks for listening to this episode from the Center for Success Career Talk Podcast Series. For more information, please visit them at sxu.edu and search Center for Success.