前Clarion Gaming董事总经理Kate Chambers分享会展人简历构建三要点

Kate Chambers, former MD of Clarion Gaming, tells lists the three key points in order to write an impressive CV in events: what still needs to be there, what is fast fading away, and what is going to be crucial 5 years from now.

Early in my career, I applied to run a bigger show. It was the same company, just a larger event. I didn’t get it.

Once I pushed, the reason was straightforward. I had never managed people, and I had never carried a P&L. I had never been responsible for a team or a number in the way that bigger role actually needed.

There’s a problem here. Nobody sits you down early in your events career and tells you what’s missing from your CV. Most of us get only a knockback, and most people hear a knockback as a verdict on who they are – rather than a list of things they’re missing.

I heard it as a verdict for about a week. Then I got annoyed enough to turn it into a list instead, and I built each piece on purpose: a move here, a promotion there, a project nobody else wanted because it happened to carry exactly what the list said I needed.

“One cycle teaches you what went wrong. The second is where you prove you fixed it”

That took longer than it should have, because almost everything in this industry runs on a twelve-month show cycle, and you need something close to two years in a role before it properly counts. One cycle teaches you what went wrong. The second is where you prove you fixed it.

It worked, eventually, and looking back I think I aimed too close. I was closing the gap to the next rung rather than the rung after that.

Here is the list I wish someone had handed me – updated for where the industry is now, rather than where it was at the time when I was building mine. It’s structured in three parts: what still has to be on your CV today, what used to matter and is fading, and what is coming in the next five years that almost nobody is building towards yet.

1. What still has to be there

Geo-cloning. Co-locating a show with another, sharing registration and branding, used to be a side project. It is now one of the clearest ways a smaller show earns a bigger footprint without the organiser taking on a second event from scratch, and running one properly, rather than just allowing two shows to share a hall, is its own skill.

Launch. Taking something from nothing to a running show in a market where you have no price comparator, no audience history and no existing floor plan to copy. It is the fastest way to find out what you actually know, because there is nothing to fall back on.

Medium-sized and market-leading. A medium-sized show where growth is still the job, but the margin for error is tighter than at launch, and mistakes cost more. At some point, it becomes a market-leading show, the number one in its sector, where the job stops being about growth and starts being about protecting a position other people are trying to take from you. Those are two different jobs under the same title, and most CVs show only one.

International and domestic. Running the same kind of show inside your own market and outside it isn’t the same experience twice; it’s two different educations. Domestic tells you how a market behaves when you already understand the customer. International quickly tells you what you were taking for granted.

Boutique and curated. A smaller show built around a community rather than a sector or a sales territory. It is a different commercial model, closer to membership than to a hall full of stands, and it teaches you to think about an audience as people who show up for each other, not just for the exhibitor list.

“A manager who only manages, who cannot also do the research, sales, operations or marketing of a show, is becoming a liability rather than a promotion”

2. What is fading away

Just being a manager. For a long time, moving up meant managing people who did the actual work, and that was the job. Teams are now getting smaller across the industry – a manager who only manages, who cannot also do the research, sales, operations or marketing of a show, is becoming a liability rather than a promotion. The CV that stands out now belongs to someone who can still do the job they used to oversee, not just direct it.

“The CV that stands out now belongs to someone who can still do the job they used to oversee, not just direct it”

3. What is coming in the next five years that almost nobody is building for

AI fluency. Whether you can actually use AI in your work (in an advanced way). Not whether you have sat through a session on it. This is turning into the same kind of gap that international experience or a P&L used to be. Most people building their CV right now are not putting it on the list. That is exactly where every other item on this list was before anyone thought to ask for it, which means closing that gap early is still a choice rather than a catch-up.

Smaller, leaner delivery. Travel is expensive, and teams are leaner, which means organisers cannot send a full team out of the office the way they once did. Knowing how to run or support a show without the staffing levels of the last generation is becoming its own competency rather than a compromise.

“Plenty of people can build an engaging show floor. Far fewer can do that and also own the margin and the growth target attached to it”

Experience design that also hits a number. Plenty of people can build an engaging show floor. Far fewer can do that and also own the margin and the growth target attached to it. That combination, designing something people want to be at and being accountable for what it earns, is one of the real differentiators I am seeing now, rare enough to build on purpose rather than hope it happens.

A year-round relationship with the audience. Building the community and engagement that runs between editions, not just promoting the next one, is becoming part of the job rather than a nice extra. Almost nobody’s CV shows it yet, because it is still new enough that most organisers have not started asking for it.

If I were doing this again, I would not just fill the gaps on today’s list. I would look at the five-year list and start closing those gaps now, while almost nobody else has started, because that is exactly the advantage the rest of this list used to be, before everyone caught up. Nobody is going to tell you which gap matters most before you need to know. You can wait to find out from a rejection, the way I did, or you can build the list yourself and go first.

The post I got turned down for a job I wanted. Here’s the CV I’d build if I were starting today appeared first on Exhibition News | The trade for shows..