Elizabeth Ajibola

The best career advice I ever received came in two parts. First, I was speaking to someone who works for Con Edison, and she told me that when you're applying to these jobs, it's very important to remember that you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. What that means is you don't just want to join a company or work for someone just to say you work at this place or just because you want the job. It's very important that you find somewhere that is a good fit for you, as much as you are a good fit for them. You want to find a place where you could actually grow and be the best version of yourself there. That was really solid career advice that I received, and it is a piece of advice that I have been using, especially now since I just graduated. That is a piece of advice that I feel like is gonna follow me throughout my life and throughout everything. The second piece of career advice that I have received is that it's very important to stay on your path. Do not look at what other people are doing and think, maybe I could do that or maybe I could do this because this makes more money or this person is doing it. It's very important to stick on your path, do not deviate, do not stray from your path, because everybody has their own unique journey, and it's very important that you stay focused and stick to your path and don't do something because you think your path isn't solid or you think that you're on the wrong way. Obviously, if you think you're on the wrong way, then you can switch, but it's very important to just stick to what you know, stick to your path, and just be confident and trust your path.

For young women entering into the media industry, I actually think that the media industry is going to have a massive boom and a massive intake where we're gonna see a rebranding of the media industry, and I say that because of AI. There was a time where coding and programming was a majority woman field, I believe during either the Vietnam War or World War II, where women were working those computer techie jobs. Then later on, those jobs were rebranded to be more male-dominated. I could kind of see something similar happening to industries such as marketing, communication, and social media. I say that because with AI, right now coders are still needed, but they're not needed at least at the entry-level state. You could prompt a lot of codes and apps and websites now just using AI tools. I feel like right now for women entering into the media world and entering into this industry, I feel like it's very important for them to be confident and learn these AI tools, learn all of them as much as you possibly can. What's gonna start to happen, and I've already seen it within my job search as a new grad, a lot of these jobs, these marketing jobs, they're being rebranded. If you go on LinkedIn, you'll see GTM Growth Engineers, which is just marketing roles, but they're branding them to sound a little bit more techy. What happens is women applying for these jobs, when you see growth engineer, you might think engineer and you get scared and you pivot away, when in actuality a growth engineer is a marketing role and they're just being rebranded right now. So I think it's just very important that you just be confident and understand the tools. Understand that you know a lot more than your mind will let you know. You know what you're doing, just be confident. That would be my main advice.

The biggest challenge and opportunity comes down to just the integration of AI. I feel like for students and companies, everybody's kind of in a weird limbo phase where we're like, what's gonna happen next? What are the next 5 years gonna look like? Because AI tools are getting better and better every day, and for students right now and young graduates, it's very challenging because a lot of those entry-level roles are being filled by AI, and the job market is getting very, very intense right now. It's very just kind of scary, and a lot of people don't really know what's next with AI. That's definitely the biggest challenge that we're facing, and I could say that same answer for any industry, is just the integration of AI. That's actually why I'm currently working on a book that is going to be released later this month that discusses the integration of AI within media companies and how it's going to affect the media companies. There's even platforms like Higgsville and Nano Banana where companies and CEOs can use AI to create videos for their products, and some of these videos look so realistic where they even could look like actual influencers online and be selling their products, but how is that gonna affect their audiences? That's gonna mess with their trust. So that's one of the biggest challenges I feel like is going on right now with the media industry, and it's very important that transparency and clear communication is really, really, really super-duper important right now.

The values that are most important to me in my work and personal life are communication and transparency. I say communication because it's very important that people are able to speak to one another clearly so we could have a clear understanding of what's going on. Communication is the key for all relationships, including networking, because networking is building relationships, including personal relationships. Clear communication is so important, it's so fundamental. Transparency is very similar to communication, but transparency is just being honest, being authentic, and just showing up as you are and just being truthful with one another, because I feel like that's when real growth happens. Real growth doesn't happen with whispers. Real growth happens with clear and transparent communications.