Sammy Andrews is the founder and CEO of UK-headquartered Deviate Digital.
I run a leading digital marketing and advertising agency in the music business and have been hiring and firing for over 20 years. We regularly get over 700 applicants per role we place with MBW. So here are four tips you won’t get from the usual career fluff merchants, but might actually help you get hired.
1. I Don’t Care Where You Studied
Academic degrees are fine. Some of them even teach you useful stuff. But let’s be honest: if you’re applying for anything remotely tech, ads or digital in music, what you learned beyond the fundamentals is probably already obsolete. The sector moves fast. That ‘Digital Media in 2021’ module? Outdated by the time you sat the final.
What matters is whether you’re across now. Show me you’ve read recent industry news. Tell me what Meta’s last big algorithm change means for artists. Explain why TikTok matters more than radio (or doesn’t, if you’ve got a solid argument). Be able to talk about problems and suggest solutions, even if the ideas are wrong. Show me you’ve considered new ways ahead. Be someone who thinks. That’s who I hire.
2. You Need to Be Able to Talk to Humans
Some people are nervous in interviews. That’s fine, we all get the fear (it’s a skill to ride the lightning). But if you’re applying for a role where you’ll be client facing, internal facing, or doing anything that involves talking to anyone, I need to know you can communicate.
So at the end of every interview, I ask something deliberately off topic. “Tell me something you’re passionate about outside of music, teach me about it in five minutes.” I’ve had explanations on the art of surveillance capitalism, the value of ancient Japanese woodblock prints, the history of the Chinese opium trade, why pop punk is brilliant, the great mayo to filling imbalance on sandwiches…
What matters is how you talk about it. Are you engaging? Clear? Can you explain something you love in a way that makes me care, even if I didn’t before?
3. Be a Doer, Not a Waffler
The music business is full of people who talk a lot of game and actually do fuck all. Don’t be one of them. I want to see that you’ve done things, not just stolen or come up with ideas in brainstorms and left them for someone else to execute and take all the glory.
Show me a project. Show me initiative. Doesn’t matter if it’s scrappy. Ran your own event, built a playlist brand, helped a mate release a track properly, set up a Bandcamp for someone and sorted their metadata. If you’ve done something and you can show me that, I’m listening.
Drive, follow through, and team spirit get noticed and are really important in an agency setting. You don’t have to be a lone genius. But you do have to know how to be a team player.
4. Apply Even If You Don’t Tick Every Box
This one’s especially for the women, non binary and underrepresented folks out there: apply even if you don’t meet 100 percent of the listed criteria. Studies show men tend to apply when they meet around 60 percent of the job description, while women often wait until they meet it all. Some research puts the gap closer, but the point still stands. Don’t self select out.
Job descriptions are wishlists, not commandments. If you think you can do the job, or grow into it fast, put your name in the ring. I’d rather meet someone with raw potential and the right instincts than someone who’s textbook qualified but offers nothing new.
Don’t wait for permission. Apply.
Bonus Tip: If You Use ChatGPT to Write Your Cover Letter
Fine. But for the love of god, delete the dashes and tidy it up. I can smell a template from 30 feet and it’s an instant no from me.
