13.07.2021 By Larissa von Detten, Senior Manager, Current Global Germany

How Following Your Interests, Despite the Doubters, Can Lead to Career Success

In honor of graduation season, and in light of the incredibly volatile entry level hiring market around the world, we wanted to share some personal stories from the Current Global team about how we landed with a career in PR.  Whether you are taking a traditional path or are still trying to figure out where you may fit in the working world, we hope our tales of trying to get a job can be of inspiration and we will be sharing them throughout the summer.   

Why do you even bother at university and with the internships? You are going to be unemployed anyway because of your study focus.”  That’s what a friend said to me during one of the internships I was doing during the semester break. Fortunately, I did not listen to them, but followed my interests during my studies, internships, and job search.

After school I knew: I love communications/languages and was very interested in biology/medicine and social/political science. At my home university I was able to combine communications and political sciences, so I started my bachelor’s degree in Literary, Cultural and Media Studies as a major, Spanish as an optional language and Social Science as minor. My parents always encouraged me to follow my study interests, even though they had not had the university experience themselves. During my bachelor’s degree, I worked as an intern in a local theatre and library, participated in the organization of a large festival, and worked in the idea management department for a global market leader in the steel industry. In my master’s degree, I focused on political sciences and communication science and enjoyed working, researching, and writing at a mechanical engineering institute, still wondering what I would do for a living afterwards.

After submitting my master’s thesis, I moved across Germany to Holzkirchen to join my husband who had come here a year earlier. I immediately started looking for jobs and, fortunately, my search ended with a job offer from Anne and Rosmarie (now managing directors of Current Global Germany) with their agency “commpartners”, which specialized in healthcare, pharmaceutical and medical communications. Communications and writing? Check. Medicine and biology? Check. Work that impacts society? Check.

I did not know much about the specific world of healthcare communications, but I was completely fascinated by it. The stakeholders, clinical terms, studies, medical publishers, and the communications around it – a whole new, interesting world opened. I started my traineeship, became a junior and senior PR manager, and joined Anne and Rosmarie as part of the Current Global/IPG-PR team in 2019 as a Senior Manager for Media Relations.

So, to that doubting friend I say, I’m not only successfully employed, but I work in an environment whose dynamics continue to fascinate me and of which I am glad to be a part.

Go to the Careers page of our website to discover job opportunities at Current Global around the world.