See your career at Specsavers: Creative apprentice to radio recordings with famous actors

This article was originally published on the Specsavers Website

Meet Lucy, who joined Specsavers as a creative apprentice seven years ago. Now she’s a copywriter in their creative in-house agency.

Before I joined Specsavers, my age still ended in ‘teen’, I was fresh out of Sixth form and ready(ish) to be thrown into the world of working. I was pretty nervous to leave school forever and go straight into a life of work – who isn’t? I had all these false perceptions and expectations: Was it going to be boring? Was my life now going to involve trying not to fall asleep at a computer while inputting numbers? Was I going to resemble Chandler Bing in his boring job no one knew the name of… because it was that boring? I was desperate to avoid working in finance.

I always knew that my dream job was something creative. Before I even knew what a Copywriter or Art Director was (they’re people who come up with ideas for adverts and create them) I knew I wanted to come up with ideas for adverts and create them. I had plans to go to university to study creative advertising but student loads are non-existent in Guernsey – so, uni wasn’t really an option. I ended up taking a temporary job in…dun dun dun…finance. My unrealistic expectations of work life were starting to become reality. Finance just wasn’t my thing. No offence to the finance folk, someone’s got to do it.

Luckily, for the first time ever, Specsavers was looking for a ‘Creative Apprentice’. The role would consist of working in every team inside the well-known in-house Specsavers agency, and eventually being offered a full-time job offer in the role most suited. 18-year-old me felt like she’d just found a winning lottery ticket, but unfortunately so had about 100 other people and we were all running to cash it in. With such a high interest in the job, my CV was overlooked, and I wasn’t invited for an interview. Long story short, I persevered (just like I did that same year with my driving tests – 9 times baby) and I got seen for an interview. And then I only went and got the job. I’ve never won the lottery but I imagine the feeling to be quite similar.

I am so grateful for my apprenticeship. I worked on real jobs and briefs for a huge brand, creating ideas for ads alongside the award-winning concept team, and also helping produce the award-winning ads in the TV services department. Being thrown into the deep end and working with people who hold such a high-level standard to their work helped me to learn so much in such a short period of time. Real experience in the job rather than in a classroom was definitely a lot more beneficial to me. Being able to work in all departments of a creative agency earned me a great understanding of everything that goes into the creative process of advertising.

I’ve now been at Specsavers for nearly 7 years. I’ve gone from Creative Apprentice, to Junior Art Director, to Art Director, to Copywriter. And my days at the office definitely don’t resemble the Chandler Bing-inputting-numbers life I imagined work to be. My work days can consist of radio recordings with famous actors, TV sets and photography shoots. I get to work on an incredibly famous advertising strapline (Should’ve gone to Specsavers) and a brand with such a warm, funny TOV, which is a creative dream.

All in all, they say you ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers’, and I guess that also applies to job applications. I feel very confident that I made the right choice to work here rather than going to uni. And if you’re debating whether or not to start your creative career here, you know what my answer would be.