practice lead Career Path | See the Career Paths People Really Take

general manager

technical project manager

marketing intern

risk manager

senior fellow

account manager

managing partner

principal consultant

chief compliance officer

administrative assistant

founder

An accounts manager is a person who manage the company account and maintains the company's existing relationships with a client or group of clients so that they will continue using the company for business and also serves to understand the customer's demands, plan how to meet these demands, and generate sales for the company as a result. They also assist with data processing, handle complaints, and ensure that customers get the best possible experience. Responsibilities of account managers are problem-solving skills to help resolve customer needs, manage customer expectation and lead them to customer satisfaction, make sure all deliverables fulfill customers’ requirements, comminicate with cleitns, review performance of team, conduct training to upgrade teh skills of individuals, up-to-date understanding of the industry's consumer behavior, strong customer service and interpersonal skills, exceptional analytical skills, time management, and multitasking skills, advanced motivational and negotiation skills, and strong organizational skills.

Discover the journey of an account executive in ad sales, from starting as a sales assistant to earning a six-figure salary. Learn about daily tasks, client interactions, and the importance of building connections in this dynamic, rewarding industry.

<h2>Advertising Sales</h2><p>There's kind of a ladder. You start as a sales assistant, then a sales planner if you're taking the direct sales route. Another way is working on the agency or client side of things and then moving over to the sales side.&nbsp;</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Sales Requirements</h2><p>It really requires a personality where you're interacting a lot with clients, so you have to be social. You have to be able to entertain your clients and understand them on a personal level so that they want to do business with you regularly.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>What It’s Like in Sales</h2><p>An average day for an account executive in ad sales involves going through your list and looking ahead to the next quarter. For example, if I sell TV and I’m targeting a kid-focused channel or movie, I’d aim at clients with kid products. Then you work with your marketing team internally to create a custom package. For instance, offering a promotion for a new show for a budget, like a hundred thousand dollars. You present that to the client and their representing agency.</p><p>You have a territory you work with, which sometimes involves traveling to meet clients. Some days you’re in the office working on proposals and pitches. Every day is different, which makes the job exciting and not mundane. Sometimes you’re entertaining clients, like taking them to dinner or a baseball game, to keep relationships and conversations ongoing for future campaigns.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Advertising Sales Account Executive Salary</h2><p>The salary for an account executive in advertising varies depending on the medium. Starting salaries can range from $100K to $150K, with commission potentially adding another 50%, bringing the total up to $300K.&nbsp;</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Pros and Cons of Sales</h2><p>The job's pros, especially early in your career, include experiencing entertainment and networking. The industry is flexible, offering various career paths if you decide to pivot.</p><p>A key part of sales is meeting your quota. Missing your sales goal can affect your job status and commission. However, the connections you make are invaluable. There’s a strong community of people you work and grow with in the industry.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Getting Started in Sales</h2><p>To get into the industry, it’s essential to understand that you can’t just jump into an account executive role. It’s rare. Be prepared to start lower and work hard, being open to different paths, whether agency or client side.</p><p><br></p>

The Administrative Assistant helps and supports managers in administrative and clerical activities.  Their role is handling administrative requests, organizing and scheduling appointments, scheduling meetings, preparing minutes of meetings, preparing reports, and maintaining appropriate filing systems.  Their responsibilities are arranging events, supporting office policies and procedures, maintaining client and employee lists, reconciling expense reports, and arranging the accommodation and travel of employees or visitors.

If you are just starting out or looking to switch careers, working in an office environment may be your ticket. Can you communicate effectively and enjoy people? Advancement opportunities may be in your future.

<h2>Office / Administrative Support Education</h2><p>Technically you don't need a degree to get into this field. This is a great career for anybody just getting started or anybody who has been in another career and wants a good career change. A degree can definitely help you in this career especially if the position is asking for management and this will help you especially if you want to supervise or if the position allows you to supervise others.</p><p><br></p><h2>Skills</h2><p>It takes just somebody who is <strong>willing to learn</strong> who's a good <strong>people person </strong>and somebody who just really likes to <strong>help others</strong>. Being able to <strong>adapt</strong> is a very important skill in this position. Your company that you'd be maybe working with may change their needs. <strong>Technology </strong>is always changing to be able to adapt and to <strong>grow</strong> with that is very important depending on your company. Strong <strong>excel skills</strong>. Being able to have strong <strong>communication skills</strong> is going to be key to be able to work with and communicate with your managers, your customers, internal and external.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Role Pro</h2><p>One big pro of this is you can work in an in-person setting, hybrid or remote.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Role Advancement</h2><p>In my current company that I work for I started as an admin assistant and I developed this position to be more of a management position. I've taken that to managing people and now actually taking over onboarding and doing more HR role, payroll.</p><p><br></p><h2>Role Challenges</h2><p>A Con can be that you can be working under a lot of pressure with a lot of competing demands especially if the company has a lot of internal and external customers. This career is definitely customer service related so if you don't like working with people I do not recommend it.</p><p><br></p>

The Chief Compliance Officer oversees and manages compliance issues within their company or organization.  Their role is to ensure that the organization is in compliance with various regulatory requirements, and that employees are in adherence to internal procedures and policies.  Their responsibilities are developing the annual compliance work plan, revising the compliance plan in light of changes, monitoring the implementation of the compliance program, providing guidance, advice and training to improve the businesses understanding of related laws and regulatory requirements, implementing strategic direction to the management team, preparing clear and concise compliance reports, and coordinating efforts related to audits, reviews and examinations.

The Founder sets a company’s vision by making it unique and attractive to potential consumers.  Their role is creating value for customers, and making sure that the company is constantly evolving and changing with the times.  Their responsibilities are to manage the board of directors for the corporation, assemble a successful team that is invested in the company’s success, develop a plan for the business, and oversee all of the finances associated with the business.

A General Manager is tasked with supervising regular business projects and developing the overall business functions.  Their role is training heads of departments, managing resources, developing strategic programs, creating policies, and communicating business goals.  Their responsibilities are overseeing daily business operations, developing and implementing growth strategies, training low-level managers and staff, creating and managing budgets, improving revenue, hiring employees, evaluating performance and productivity, examining accounting and economic data, researching and identifying growth opportunities, generating reports, and giving presentations.

This GM was inspired after visiting California wine country and moved out to Sonoma County to learn all he could about the wine industry. Learn tips for becoming a GM and getting into the wine industry.

<h2>How I Got Into This Role</h2><p>I'm the general manager of small family winery in Sonoma County. I chose this job after a birthday trip to Northern California and a passion for wine. I decided that I wanted to move out here and learn the wine industry.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>General Manager Requirements</h2><p>So here at a small winery, the requirements weren't many. It was just the ability to wear many hats and work hard and learn as much as you could. General managers at larger wineries, however, would likely have gone to maybe a management program. They would have to have leadership skills to run a team in a tasting room as well as production at larger establishments.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Winery General Manager Average Day</h2><p>The average day here for me revolves around a lot of customer outreach and answering emails from customers, usually club members. Then it kind of morphs into handling any guests that come into the tasting room and also helping the wine maker with anything that they might need, and reporting all things up to the owner.</p><p><br></p><h2>General Manager Pros and Cons</h2><p>Pros to this job is working in a beautiful place, being connected to nature with agriculture, and then serving up delicious wine to lots of interesting people that visit from all over the country. Any cons to this job would likely just be that you do have to wear a lot of hats, which is fun and interesting, but a lot of times that can be stressful, especially in busier times of the season.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Tips for Getting Started</h2><p>If you wanted to get into winery and running a small winery or even a large winery, the best thing to do is just to get the experience, always starting out in a tasting room, shadowing a tasting room manager, and then getting yourself into that position and then trying to really shadow a general manager of the winery. Really the important thing is to get your foot in the door just by being extroverted, willing to work with people, and again, really willing to learn.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Career Tip From My Experience</h2><p>What I would have done slightly differently is probably educated myself a little bit better, whether that would have been with some of the local junior college classes having to do with more of the business side of wine. I was familiar with wine and I can work with people easily, but running the business side, I would say really get yourself familiar with running a business.</p><p><br></p>

The Managing Partner sets strategic goals and objectives for a company.  Their role is to oversee daily activities, monitor performance, and drive business growth.  Their responsibilities are to develop and execute the company’s business methods to facilitate accomplishment, provide strategic recommendations to the board, communicate and maintain trust relationships with shareholders, business partners and authorities, supervise the company’s monetary performance, investments and business ventures, reward performance, forestall problems, and resolve issues.

A Marketing Intern is an aspiring marketing professional at the beginning of their career. They assist in the management of marketing operations under the supervision of a marketing manager.

Discover what it's like to build a rewarding career in marketing. From internships to agency work and in-house roles, learn valuable tips on networking, evolving with industry trends, and staying customer-focused for long-term success.

<h2>How I Got Into Marketing</h2><p>I've been in marketing probably about 15, 20 years. And I always knew I wanted to go into marketing and advertising. I'd seen a show that had a woman who was a successful ad exec. And I just thought it was so cool how she was able to come up with these campaigns and these creative ideas. And there's always something new that she was working on. So that was kind of I guess, my initial inspiration. And because I knew I always wanted to go into marketing at a young age, I chose a college that had a good program for that. So I majored in communications and I minored in marketing.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Tips for Getting Started in Marketing</h2><p>One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give you is as soon as you start college—I mean, if you can do it while you're taking classes, great. If not, load up on internships during the summer. That's just the best way to get kind of real-world experience and figure out which area in marketing or which topic of whatever you're looking at, you want to go in further.</p><p>I had an internship in sports marketing, which I thought would be really cool. Then I realized, hey, that's not really what I want to do. But yeah, had multiple internships and learned a ton that way. Also started to create my network, and creating your network in marketing or sales or a lot of different professions is really important as soon as you start. And so people you meet, even in early parts of your career, can still be ones that stay with you for a long time, either just people that you can bounce ideas off of or you can ask when you're looking for a new job, that kind of stuff.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Working at an Agency</h2><p>One of my internships turned into a full-time job when I graduated, and it was at an ad agency. If you can, working in an agency where you can, whether it's a consulting agency, an advertising agency, anything like that, where you have access to a lot of different markets and types of customers and companies is really valuable at a young age. You typically work really hard at agencies when it's time for, you're launching a campaign or about to launch a new project or something. I mean, the hours get pretty grueling, can work on weekends and late into the nights to get things done, but it's also pretty glamorous. You get to do some cool stuff.</p><p>So I got to work with spirits and beverages, consumer goods, technology, nonprofits, when I was there for about six years, and that was really cool.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Working In House</h2><p>I realized that I really liked technology. So when I was ready to make a change, I went in-house, meaning I went to work for a marketing team that was inside the company. And while that marketing team will still use different agencies or partners for certain things, you're the one, really the expert on the company, the product, the business, to build some things on your own as well.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>What Marketing is Like</h2><p>Typically it's a 40, maybe 50-hour week, it's Monday through Friday most of the time, but when you're in marketing, you also get to go see the customers sometimes. And especially if you're in events marketing or communications or products, you often support trade shows and conferences and things like that. So I've been pretty lucky. I mean, those can be long nights. I mean, super fun stuff. You get to go travel different places and typically fun events you're putting on, things you might not have access to on your own budget, but you do to get in front of customers, to build relationships and that kind of stuff.</p><p>So I've gotten to go to several different countries, lots of different states, and yeah, I've really had some fun times, but you put in the work and that's important. And if you want to move up, you've got to keep learning, keep doing what needs to get done. People aren't gonna just see that you clocked in and clocked out. They want to see that you've got the job done. So you do what it takes to get the job done.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Key Marketing Skills</h2><p>In marketing, it's changing a lot. I mean, everybody hears about AI, generative AI. And so there's some roles and some things that are gonna change and get a lot easier to turn things around and create content, but you want to make sure that we're creating good content. And in marketing, you have to be really passionate about the customer and always thinking about from the customer's point of view.</p><p>So whether you're doing customer marketing and trying to cross-sell or upsell to other products or capabilities, or you're doing events marketing or product marketing or whatever, you really need to understand what is that customer thinking throughout that process. And so getting that information from your peers, working with your team to create that customer point of view and understanding how they feel across the customer journey is really key part.</p><p>And then figuring out how to use the latest tools, whether that's AI or different data that you can get and triangulate, that's kind of one of the key things in marketing, understanding your customer and knowing how to use data and using that data to track back and kind of inform what you're gonna do next and validate what you've been doing is actually working. So you can't be successful in marketing unless you know how to use data to validate for sure.</p><p>There's a lot of paths you can take when you're in one type of department within marketing. Doesn't mean you have to stay there. You can always go into other parts. So be curious, ask questions, work your network, and you'll have a fun, long career.</p><p><br></p>

A Practice Lead provides leadership, line management, and support to care managers and patch teams in order to improve outcomes for people.  Their role is to support managers and staff to identify issues and trends that may impact outcomes, quality, safety and issues of compliance, and support and advise service managers and key staff with policy implementation, development, and the use of internal self-assessment tools and care management processes.  Their responsibilities are to develop and implement effective care pathways in partnership with services, establish and maintain positive working relationships with all stakeholders, ensure that identified risks are managed appropriately, and provide, analyze, interpret and present complex data reports and information relating to the service.

practice lead

The Principal Consultant conducts meetings with clients and management to determine project scope, budget and timelines.  Their role is to implement product development initiatives to meet client needs, identify project risks and challenges, and develop resolution plans.  Their responsibilities are to build strong relationships with existing clients for repeat business, maintain frequent client communication, develop business proposals, negotiate project terms and conditions with clients, process client invoices and review engagement letters, provide project training to clients, report project status to clients on a regular basis, and provide support in developing functional and technical specifications.

A Risk Manager determines the financial, safety and security risks for a company or organization, and find ways to reduce those risks through planning and problem solving.  Their role is to identify financial, safety or security risks and prepare action plans to decrease risk factors.  Their responsibilities are to gather confidential financial information from clients such as income, assets and debts, perform risk evaluation, manage company insurance policies, prepare a risk management budget, and provide training and certification for organization staff to be aware of risks and how to avoid them.

A senior fellow is a member of an academy/learned society or a group of learned subjects (a fellowship) which works together in pursuing mutual knowledge or practice. There are many different kinds of fellowships which are awarded for different reasons in academia and industry. These often indicate a different level of scholarship.

A Technical Project Manager ensures that projects are finished on time and within budget.  Their role is to create project plans with relevant team members, supervise team members, and ensure that deadlines are met.  Their responsibilities are to maintain the project budget, enforce health and safety protocols, prepare progress reports for senior management, identify resources needed for the project, and oversee the implementation of project improvements.

Calling all organization lovers and friends who do all the planning. Have you considered project management? See what its like to be in project management and tips on how to get into this role.

<h2>What it's like as in Project Management</h2><p>One of my favorite pros with Project Management is you get to work with a bunch of different people. Average day or week is really busy as a project manager because you are not only planning meetings with clients, but you're also planning all the internal communication in order to make sure meetings are successful. I found a lot of my time was spent not only doing research for the clients to make sure the project was a success, but also spending a lot of time creating that communication as well as that project management plan in order to show where we are, where we would be, what risks that we have, and again making the remainder of the entire schedule in order to get to get final completion day.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Job Requirements</h2><p>The job requirements for a project manager is primarily just to be really organized and to also make sure that you are communicating really well, not only with the clients that you have, but also internally. Because really all we're doing is, I would say it's like event planning. We're making sure people are going, people are organized, and again at the end of the day we're having that fantastic wedding, but in this case it's completing the project. Things happen. Risks come up, issues come up, having a project that is 100% successful and goes according to schedule is honestly quite rare. So you have to be prepared to be aware of the unknown and know how to mitigate those risks in order to make sure that everyone's everyone, not only on the client side, but also for management, anyone else that you want to have working with the client.</p><p><br></p><h2>How to Become a Project Manager</h2><p>In order to become one is kind of just getting your foot in the door anywhere and showing that you're able to go see tasks as well as being demanded or asked from you and as long as you can show that organization and drive, that's a great way to continue to move your team up into the project manager. Having your project management professional certification isn't necessarily required for every job, but it definitely opens up a lot of doors so that you can start excelling faster.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

Practice Lead Career Path