{"id":623,"date":"2022-07-15T17:51:16","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T15:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/?p=623"},"modified":"2022-07-19T10:48:45","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T08:48:45","slug":"career-advice-with-michaela-krause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/2022\/07\/15\/career-advice-with-michaela-krause\/","title":{"rendered":"Career Advice With Michaela Krause"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An interview by Walter Kemp Bruce<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walking into Michaela Krause\u2019s offices in Mitte, Berlin, is quite impressive. A buzzer door leads off a beautiful archway, up four flights of stairs and into an open space where young professionals are busy working at Macbooks. Around the furniture you can see a collection of different products associated with Michaela’s public relations company, Laika Communications<\/a>. Among them are harnesses and other contraptions designed specifically for dogs. The fact Michaela\u2019s company chooses to work with these particular products is unsurprising given that Laika Communications is named after Laika the dog \u2013 the first animal to do an orbital spaceflight around Earth \u2013 and because you\u2019ll often find a cute dog trotting around the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Laika Communications is a very forward looking, modern PR company, and have worked with Snapchat, Twitch, Soundcloud and other huge names in the digital space. Michaela, as founder and CEO, has guided this company since it was created in 2018 and according to Linkedin, it already has 25 employees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019m here to discuss a particular subject with Michaela: I want to find out what guidance she might have for young people who, like me, are at the very beginning of their professional journey. Although she has already worked in different companies and in several industries, Michaela is a young person herself, and seems quite close to me in age (I do maintain a sense of British etiquette that prevents me from asking someone how old they are in exact terms). I hope this article might help to bridge the gap between my generation and our typical sources of career advice: people our parents\u2019 age. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right off the bat, Michaela responds to my questions with total clarity: \u201cYou need to go out and try different things.\u201d (I had asked her about the challenge of finding the right career, and how lost so many of us seem to be.) \u201cI was lucky enough to do internships in three different fields in the time I was studying, and it allowed me to try my hand at different responsibilities and different industries. That really helped me to figure out what I liked and what I was good at,\u201d Michaela explains. She is adamant that this is as relevant now as it has ever been. \u201cEven in the digital age, there is only so much you can learn from trying out and observing, or looking stuff up. At some point you have to go out and do,<\/em>\u201d she says. Her last comments on this topic really hit home: \u201cIf you\u2019re at the first stage, don\u2019t let yourself get caught up in the insecurity that you might choose the wrong path that defines your whole career. That could stop you from taking opportunities. The truth is you\u2019ve got so much time at this stage to explore, change and switch tack. People are often far too young when they start worrying about what\u2019s exactly THE right job for them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an employer of young people herself, I ask Michaela what stands out to her about a promising applicant. \u201cI like to see that someone has a firm idea of what they are curious to learn, as well as telling me what they bring to the table,\u201d she says. She takes a second to think about this before continuing. \u201cDon\u2019t get me wrong, it\u2019s important to have confidence in your skills, but I like to hire applicants I can help grow, and who want to gain new skills working with me, rather than people who consider themselves the full package already. Because I believe we never stop learning and that\u2019s the attitude I want to see in someone\u201d Michaela explains that the personal value of helping someone grow and develop as an employee is a great part of the work that she does. I\u2019m sure staff at Laika also appreciate that they\u2019re not expected to arrive as a finished product and will eventually leave with new skills and abilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about very talented people, who have a particularly well honed area of expertise? Well, according to Michaela this could be cause for concern. \u201cSometimes, people with special abilities can fall into a trap,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause they end up developing that ability beyond all their other responsibilities.\u201d For example, in her industry, Michaela explains that someone with an amazing knack for content creation could neglect their knowledge of brand strategy. More to the point, \u201cin any industry, everyone wants someone who is a really competent, well-rounded colleague, who can pitch in and help out where needs be. It\u2019s great to feel like you’re working with people who have that agility,\u201d Michaela says. But this point goes even further: \u201cSomething that people don\u2019t realise is that specific abilities can basically dip in and out of fashion. If you want true job security, it\u2019s great to become invaluable to your industry without getting trapped in a particular niche. Being open to change and learning new things is the real hidden talent,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, Michaela stresses the continuing relevance of the age-old principle of acuity: build good relationships. Michaela suggests this principle might even be grounds for going offline in the post-Covid world: \u201cY\u2019know it\u2019s always great if you can meet face to face. Even just because it\u2019s a gesture which shows your level of interest and commitment. But generally, it\u2019s just great to build lasting relationships with people, and put in effort to make it clear those relationships are important to you.\u201d She goes on to say that developing good relationships in your career is about genuinely caring about people for their sake, and not thinking about what you can get from them. Maintaining positivity and kindness is a huge advantage professionally, not a weakness, she explains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For such a drastically changing planet, it\u2019s surprising to me how much of Michaela\u2019s advice could relate to previous generations. It strikes me that, in a certain way, developing a great career runs parallel to growing as an individual. Many of the skills and strategies outlined by Michaela reflect deeper facts about our personalities \u2013 we often think about what we can add before what we can learn, we can overspecialize when we find our talents and tastes, and we can sometimes allow our relationships with others to suffer in service of ourselves. For this reason, I think Michaela\u2019s advice might be as helpful to developing personally as it is to developing yourself professionally. All the more reason to take her words seriously. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interview by Walter Kemp Bruce Walking into Michaela Krause\u2019s offices in Mitte, Berlin, is quite impressive. A buzzer door leads off a beautiful archway, up four flights of stairs and into an open space where young professionals are busy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[90,7],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2022\/07\/andrew-neel-cckf4TsHAuw-unsplash-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juk.hmkw.de\/hmkwdigitalstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}