How To Be an Event Planner Since you were in grade school your school assignments were finished weeks ahead of time. In high school you were on every social committee from the Prom to Homecoming. When you graduated from college you made lists of organizations and companies that matched your qualifications and where you’d send your resume. When your parents celebrated their 25th anniversary, you planned a party that everyone is still talking about. And now that you are employed in what you purposefully planned as your dream job, now you are kicking yourself because it’s like a light went off; you were meant to be an event planner! It’s what the Scottish writer James M. Barrie meant when he said “nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.” Never has it been clearer to you that your talents, skills and passion all add up to becoming an event planner and not your current career path. Is it possible to transition and what makes up an event planner anyway? An event planner is someone who organizes meetings, conferences, festivals, parties, trades shows, well, anything that needs planning. And yes, it is quite possible to transition into the 500-billion dollar industry.
If you are someone who delights in planning every single detail involved in an event, you indeed are the stuff that makes a successful event planner. And while some event planners have a bachelor’s degree in business administration, marketing, tourism, or hospitality administration, there are lots of other viable routes to gain entry into the growing profession of more than 90,000 event planners with even more in demand as far into the future as 2014.
How to become an event planner:
1) Take an online course. There are good ones just waiting to help you. Check with your local college or university for any continuing education courses that apply to event planning. Check out any and all books and research everything you can on event planning.
2) Join a fundraising committee. There are countless charities with hundreds of committee members sitting on them. Check your workplace to see if there are any committees available for you to join. If not, seek out committees in your community. This is a two-fold opportunity: first, you’ll be giving vital energy to a great service and secondly, you’ll be gaining enormous event planning experience which involves making crucial contacts, networking, meeting friends and colleagues, and getting your foot in the event planning door.
3) Join a professional group. Once you’ve sat on a fundraising committee, now you should join a group of event planners where you will meet other planners, make future business arrangements, trade tips and secrets, and collaborate on more projects.
4) Don’t take no for an answer! If nothing seems to be working, seek out event-planning firms, call them and offer yourself as an intern and tell them you want to learn from the best. If there aren’t any internships available, volunteer. Make coffee, empty the trash, walk the boss’s dog. Become part of the firm and soon you may find yourself in an internship, hired or able to seek out a position with a competitor. And the rest, will be gravy. Once you have made the transition and find that indeed you are an event planner, you will find that many options available to carve out a specialty niche in event planning that may include: corporate events, firm outings, holiday events, launch parties, movie premieres, store openings, wedding planning, and more. No longer will you be wishing from afar; you will be right on schedule with your dreams and plans. And you will not have missed a beat.
For more information on event planning, contact Mario Stewart at EMRG Media NYC, New York's Premiere Event Planning Company at www.emergmedia.com or call at 212-254-3700.
| Live chat by AliveChat |