So, Where Do You Fit? Understanding Creative Roles Beyond Your Qualification

Part 3 of the SEAM CCI Series

One of the hardest questions to answer when you’re studying in a creative field is also one of the most common: “What do I actually want to do?”

And the truth is, you might not know yet. You could be studying graphic design and discover that you’re more interested in art direction. You might study photography but realise that producing shoots excites you more than being behind the camera. You could start out wanting to work in social media and later realise that strategy is where you’re strongest.

Or you might study film, spend proper time editing for the first time and think, Actually, this is it. That doesn’t mean you chose the wrong qualification. It means you’re starting to understand where you fit.

Creative careers are rarely as neat as the qualification titles we study. A photographer can become a content creator. A designer can move into creative direction. A filmmaker can work in advertising, documentaries, branded content, social media or production. Someone studying digital marketing might eventually work in strategy, PR, partnerships or content planning. That crossover is part of what makes the Cultural and Creative Industries so interesting.

You don’t necessarily need to decide at 19 or 20 years old that you are going to be one thing for the rest of your career. Sometimes you actually need to experience the work before you know what feels right. This thinking is part of why we created Role Pods within the SEAM Creative Network WIL+ Programme.

The idea is simple: rather than only telling students what a particular creative role involves, we give them a structured opportunity to experience some of the work that happens inside it. Take video editing. Knowing how to use Premiere Pro is important, but working as an editor involves much more than knowing the software. You may receive a folder of footage, a brief and a deadline. You need to make sense of what you’ve been given, organise the material, make selects, build a story, think about pacing and audio, respond to feedback, manage different versions and prepare the final files properly.

That starts to feel much closer to the actual job. The same applies to our other Role Pods. A student exploring Content Creation starts thinking about concepts, hooks, scripts, short-form video and what makes content useful or interesting to an audience. Someone exploring Production starts looking at what happens before everyone arrives on set: schedules, call sheets, equipment, contacts, permissions and all the details that keep a production moving.

The Interview and Podcast work brings in research, preparing questions, recording conversations, identifying strong moments and thinking about how one piece of long-form content can become several different pieces of content. Then, within Digital Marketing and PR, the thinking moves beyond simply creating something. You start asking why the content exists, who it is for, where it should live and what success should look like.

What is interesting is that the more roles you explore, the more you start seeing how connected they are. The content creator needs the producer. The producer needs to understand what the editor will need afterwards. The editor needs to understand the brief. The strategist needs to understand why the entire piece of work exists in the first place. That is what working in the creative industries actually looks like. Very few people work completely on their own.

And to be clear, we are not trying to turn every student into an editor, producer, strategist, content creator and marketer. That isn’t the point. The point is discovery.

You might realise that you love organising a production more than shooting it. You might discover that you’re really good at interviewing people. Maybe the detail of editing suits the way your brain works. Maybe you prefer developing the idea and strategy rather than making the content yourself. You might also try something and realise you never want to do it again.

That is useful too. Sometimes knowing what you don’t want to do helps you get closer to what you do. This is also why we believe WIL should be about more than simply completing the required number of hours. Those hours should help you understand what a workplace actually asks of you. What happens when someone gives you a brief? How do you work with other people? What happens when the client doesn’t like the first version? How do you respond to feedback? How do approvals work? How do you manage deadlines? How do you hand over your work so that someone else can actually use it?

These might sound like small things when you’re studying. Once you start working, they matter a lot. Through WIL+, we want students to have space to learn some of these things before entering a workplace where everyone assumes they already know them.

So perhaps the question isn’t: “What job am I going to do?”

Maybe, while you’re still studying, the better question is: “What kind of work am I curious about?”

Try editing. Try production. Try strategy. Try content. Try interviewing. Pay attention to the part of the project you keep wanting to come back to. Your career might start there. And it might change again later. That’s okay too.

If you’re a student looking for WIL, practical creative experience or the opportunity to explore different roles within the creative industry, you can register for the SEAM Creative Network WIL & WIL+ Programme at www.seamco.app/seam-creative-network.

If you’re an institution looking for an industry partner to give your students more structured workplace exposure, you can also connect with us through the SEAM Creative Network.