“Leaving the events industry did cross my mind.”

Rachael Kenny is an event specialist at GLG. She was a mentee on Fast Forward 15 in 2019-20 and has been a mentor on this year's EM Mentoring programme. She was also a winner on The Meetings Show’s Tomorrow’s Talent in 2020.

My work consists of virtual events. Everything’s online. We’re discussing live events at the moment; who knows what the guidelines will be. Not many people want to keep virtual longer than they have to, we’re all bored of it.

Virtual isn't what planners signed up to, it’s not what our love is. When it comes to events for connection, networking, bringing people together, celebrating; those are the events that can only be done properly in-person, because you need the atmosphere, the face to face contact. But it depends what the safety risks are.

No one wants to be the brand that makes the headlines because they hosted an event with a big outbreak of Covid. You want to be more reserved and see what other people are doing, but on the flipside you’re thinking, do we want to lead the way, do we want to be the first to offer our clients in-person events again?

It’s a balancing act of what the best thing is safety-wise and what clients want. Everyone’s been sharing what they’re up to to gauge what the best thing to do is, because no one knows.

I started at GLG in February. Before that I was the events lead at IIP. I was one of the casualties of redundancy in the pandemic. I was put on furlough initially, then as the furlough was ending they had to make redundancies at the end of August 2020.

If you’re not working it’s a bit of a panic. I wanted to keep my foot in digital, I helped out on multiple digital events, I got a couple of freelance jobs, I was doing lots of jobs on Zoom. When you looked at the job market back then there was nothing. Two jobs I applied for had 750 applicants in 48 hours, that’s how savage it was.

It’s so important to help each other. People shared job roles with me because they knew I was looking, and I was doing the same for other people as well if there were roles that would suit them better.

We’ve been torn apart in the events industry because we’ve had to stop. That’s slowed us down, but at the same time it’s kind of opened it up wider. In lockdown I’ve been able to make more connections because everyone moved online, and the barriers of being in the same event to meet in person, or the same city, were taken away.

Leaving the industry crossed my mind. Especially when I was thinking ‘Where’s my next income coming from?’, and then I decided no, I want to do events. Events is where my passion lies, it’s what I love doing. So I refocused.

When you’re applying for too many job roles it’s overwhelming and you don’t put enough into it. I decided to go for quality over quantity, and that’s when I started getting interviews, when I started applying for jobs that actually fit my skillset.

Fast Forward 15 was a massive boost to my career. I did it in my first year in the industry as a mentee, and this year I’m a mentor for EM Mentoring. I wanted to do the mentoring as I know how beneficial it can be having that person to keep you accountable and guide you through.

The access to the industry that Fay Sharpe is able to give is amazing. She was the first person that gave me the opportunity to speak on stage in a panel discussion. The connections that you make, it’s like a steamroller effect, the confidence bubble that it creates, it boosts you up.

There are so many things that I wish I knew when I came into the industry. I want to share those things, so the next generation don’t have to go out there and find it for themselves. If there’s a quicker way to educate the next generation it’s only going to benefit the industry as a whole, because they’re getting those skills, where to network, how to network, learning that earlier than they would have done otherwise.

I love being part of different networks, because you’ve got a little black book of support all around you. If I wasn’t part of those I wouldn’t know as much as I do, as quickly as I have. I’m part of Eventprofslive, an in-house corporate event network, you can come together and share issues that might be different to agency planners. We’ve got WhatsApp groups if you need recommendations everyone chats about it, if you need a boost, or a chat they’re there.

There are big differences between working at an agency and in-house. On the in-house side you’re working on event programmes specifically for your company, so you can get more in-depth connecting it to marketing and business development and the wider goals of the company. I’m creating the vision and then hiring agencies to help create it, if it’s too large for us to be able to do. It’s a partnership.

There is a big community of corporate event professionals and in-house planners out there, sometimes it’s just difficult finding them. Looking for a job as an in-house planner, you don’t necessarily know if companies have an in-house events team, or if they do external, or if they don’t do events. It’s harder to target them if you’re looking for work.

I always imagined working in an agency. At university that’s the first thing you’re made aware of, that’s the industry. I wasn’t aware you could work in-house as an event manager. I was imagining working on big glamorous conferences with massive keynote speakers like Michelle Obama and travelling over the world, and it’s not like that! But I never imagined it being how it has been in the last 18 months.