“Grunt work is a right of passage”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question: 

“Why do I always get stuck with the most boring tasks at work?

For four years, I’ve been the most junior designer on an eight-person team at an agency. I’m genuinely grateful for how much my colleagues have taught me, and I don’t want to sound entitled, but I’m secretly bored to tears most days.

While the designers just a few years ahead of me are art directing campaigns, joining shoots and tackling bigger creative project scopes, I still spend most of my week touching up presentations and designing the occasional report. I’ve repeatedly told my manager I want to branch out, and I’ve been praised for the work I do, so I assume I can’t be that bad at my job. Is this just a thing every early career person has to tough out or is there a reason I’m still being treated with kid gloves?”

Katie Cadwell, co-founder of branding studio Lucky Dip and The NDA Podcast:

Grunt work is a right of passage. As you’ve pointed out, it’s valuable to learn the nuts and bolts of being a designer. But four years is a long time in that role. I’m assuming you’re still the most junior member of the team, so perhaps this work goes to you by default – but it’s not fair to make you wait for a new hire in order to progress.

Telling your manager that you ‘want to do more’ might not be enough. Don’t be vague. Don’t wait for your monthly review. Put your hand up any time you see something you want to be involved in. Ask to be a second designer on a specific project, or to assist on the shoot happening next week. Force them into giving you a yes or no answer. If you ask enough, they will have to give you a better explanation for why you’re being held back.

Take initiative. It seems they’re not going to trust you until you prove what else you have to offer. If you overhear a creative review, ask if you can join in. Use that opportunity to add to the conversation. If you see project work on someone’s screen, contribute your opinion. Add some fun merch mockups to a presentation. You don’t need to be invited to have ideas. You just need to say them aloud so they can speak for themselves.

At the moment, you’ve got a very important role to play in the studio. To them, you’re invaluable. But you are at risk of getting pigeonholed in that space. Maybe it’s time to ask the blunt question. “Why don’t you trust me to do more than this – or to show you what I’m capable of?” Perhaps they think you’re happy because you continue to deliver. So it might be time to let them know you’re reaching your limit.

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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