The Skills I Hope to Use in My Next Role
Photo by kulinetto via Pixabay
Over my college, career, and freelance years, I’m fortunate to have acquired an excellent range of digital and media experience. If it captures the attention of audiences, I'm always eager to learn and apply it.
Here are a few of the skills I’d love to utilize in my next big career role.
Design
My first website in the nineties was about Boba Fett. Sadly, it never found its way into that great Geocities cache in the sky. From then on, I was hooked on learning how to tie graphic design into site structures, and my love of design snowballed from there.
Instead of focusing on a certain avenue or granularity of design, I learned to appreciate the overall appearance and story of brands. This lead me to design logos, sites, and eventually entire digital brand and advertising packages for small businesses under my personal brand agency, Wolffs & Amans.
Copywriting
I was a precocious wordsmith, which got me in quite a bit of trouble in elementary school. Now it’s a boon. I love assembling words into powerful statements and pieces. Or word salads.
Whether seven words or seven hundred, the challenge of communicating a message to a targeted audience is one of my favorite exercises. I’ve developed content strategies, and personally wrote email and digital marketing campaigns for small businesses. I am a ruthless self-editor, and love editing in content management roles. Likely a carryover from editing hundreds of Journ 1 papers, back when I bled ink.
Digital Advertising
I love working with the most powerful advertising platforms ever to exist. From audience building, to designing and writing advertising creative, it hits on my fascination with demographics and consumer psychology.
I have years of experience working within Facebook Ad Manager, which is my favorite advertising playground. I continue to consult small businesses and nonprofits on digital advertising strategy, inside and out of the Facebook ecosystem.
Data Analysis
I’m not a classically trained business analyst or data scientist, but give me a raw data set and I’ll extrapolate my ass off. In my operational role at Squarespace, their business intelligence team was kind enough to teach me critical methodologies and the importance of data-backed decisions.
Peter Drucker’s “What isn’t measured isn’t managed…” is bandied about, but it forms a basis of how I now operate professionally. If there are goals, it’s helpful to monitor what works and doesn’t, and adjust accordingly to make sure that goal is reached. Data is about stories, and I love telling one that’s successful.
Broadcasting
Broadcast was one of my emphases in college, and my career for many years. I’m excited to see the new DIY direction it’s taken. The strength of platforms like Twitch and Facebook Live, and crossover programs like The Joe Rogan Experience, have given rise to a new era of hyper-niche broadcasting.
I’m eager to revisit show producer opportunities. Since podcasts have made a dominant resurgence since my radio days, it would be a thrill to lend my talents to a podcast network. Toying with visual broadcast software solutions like OBS, green screens, and developing quality video content is also a direction I’m continuing to explore.
Audio Production
Every morning for five years, I chopped audio into hilarious nuggets for our morning radio slot, often turning them around with a minute to air. Once out of radio, I kept sharp by producing bits of music and a personal favorite venture, the Postcards Project.
I had the honor of contributing my production and voice to one of the first sponsored podcasts in the world, The Creepy Sleepy Show, in 2005. In fact, I may have been one of the first podcasters ever to parlay that medium into a radio career. I appreciate the “theater of the mind” concept from the days of early radio dramas. Audio retains a mystique that isn’t easily replicated in visual media.
Video Editing
In the days before YouTube was a twinkle in the internet’s eye, I was making funny videos. Despite growing up in a modest Midwest school system, we were provided cameras and early video production software to mess with. My favorite project was a Lord of the Flies / 1984 mashup, appropriately titled 1984: Year of the Flies. It still exists on VHS somewhere.
These days I fire up Adobe’s Premiere Pro, or iMovie in a pinch, to product content for personal projects and small brands I work with, like Beyond Broth and 57hours. I love chopping up video, setting the story’s pace, and adding audio elements to lend energy or ambience. In the end, like most of my talents, it all comes down to a love of storytelling.
Is your Organization Looking for a Great Employee?
While my resumé boasts a velvety operational exterior, it’s wrapped around a decadent, caramel-filled creative center. As an employer, if that doesn't entice you to bite, I can always fall back on a career as a candy bar.
If you'd like to add to your network, know someone looking for one of those sought after, hard-working Midwest transplants, or have a direct connection to a fantastic role, I'd love to hear from you at hello@joshwolff.com.