Why I am glad I am not starting out in the Internet industry….

Some people ask me what it is like working in the Internet industry (or the Internet end of the travel industry….. depending how you look at where the edges are). Would I suggest that they (who are say early twenties) start out in the travel web industry and what advice do I have?

Its a tricky question - when I started out there was a great deal of opportunity. We, in our mid-twenties, would pretty much (with little experience) jump straight into senior jobs - perhaps creating an entire website for a company - then doing the online marketing etc. As new staff joined web teams in larger companies - these new staff tended to join in more junior positions.

So you have ended up with today most of the senior level roles at travel companies been filled by people in the mid to late thirties. Compare this to comparable senior roles in other industries (such as medicine, law, architecture etc) - where they tend to be in their fifties or sixties.

People like me joined the travel web industry at the just the right time (late 1990s). New entrants though are having to join at junior levels and then work their way up the career ladder. This is slightly unfortunate for a couple of reasons:

• Often when companies are looking to fill a senior position they are looking for more experience than available internally - so can tend to recruit from external sources. This is pretty bad if you are in a junior role in a large company as it limits opportunities above you. If you see roles being advertised that are above your current rank - think for a while why your company hasn’t created an environment where you could have picked up the experience yourself so you could have applied.
• If you start as a junior role you tend to become quite specialist - you may just be doing online marketing or just be doing product image manipulation in the content management system (CMS). Us lot who started 10 years ago did a bit of everything - so became “jack of all trades” - which is something new entrants to our industry get little experience of. You need to be a “jack of all trades” to become an effective ecommerce manager or director.
• We are not retiring - if you look at medicine and your boss is in his fifties or sixties - you can pretty much guess (hope) that he or she may retire in the next few years. However if your boss is in his mid thirties or forties - and he has no where above him to get promoted to (or has no desire to be promoted) - then you are not going to move upwards either. The initial web generation are not retiring. (They don’t need to get promoted either - because their pay is increasing year on year - without having to change role….. which is quite a satisfactory situation if you happen to have one of those jobs!)

In summary therefore - yes - the Internet industry is a wonderful industry to be in (or the Internet end of the travel industry) - but make sure you don’t get stuck in a junior role in a large company. There is no way up! (unless the company you are working for understands the impact of this problem on staff morale and retention - and has created an appropriate environment where people can develop skills and experience outside of their specialist roles - perhaps through job rotation or internal training)

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