Kamal Bhandal

Prioritize finding ways to get hands on experience - it’s invaluable. One way to make this feasible is to seek opportunities within your own team or organization to fill gaps that exist. Communicate to your leadership teams that you’d like to learn and create achievable goals each quarter to help you learn.

Be intentional in identifying a few events that have both content, thought leaders, and peers that you can learn from. There are plenty of events to choose from though with an intentional approach, you can begin to build your expertise in a specific area of marketing and also begin to develop relationships with other marketing professionals in that particular area. As you identify people that you want to get to know, consider including peers and not just sr. leaders as your peer group is the most important individuals to foster relationships with -- you'll travel through your marketing careers together and quickly they will become your go to set of advisors to help you navigate.

Approach the relationship as a partnership - for the long term. Invest the time to get to research creators, the type of content they create and how it aligns with your objectives. It’s critical to respect their style and creativity - thinking you can change that would be a mistake. Once you select the team you want to work with, invest the time in onboarding the creators to your brand and then continuously nurture the relationship.

During your internship, get to know your teammates - what are they working on and how it connects to the business. Show genuine interest in learning more about the project and the key customer issue that it solves. Finally, identify 2-3 tasks that you could help with and offer your help as a way to assist the business and your teammate.

Raise your hand often to take on new projects that span the various stages of a brands life cycle. Gaining the hands on experience is an invaluable way to not only learn new skills but also learn what areas of brand management you enjoy and thrive in.

Listen with intent and ask your mentee questions to hone in on a specific area of development. Often breaking down development areas into tangible bite size steps can help mentees take action. For example, once an area of development is identified, co-create two actions with your mentee that can be actioned and agree to a specific timeframe that is reasonable for your mentee.