How to pitch yourself into your dream role

We’ve spoken many times before on The Learner Platform about creative careers not being linear. Often, even the most celebrated creative practitioners and industry leaders didn’t start their careers in the sector they later found success in. That’s why we’re such advocates for getting your foot in the door – even if it’s not your forever role, being inside a creative workplace often reveals opportunities you couldn’t have planned for.

Part of the reason why so many creative careers tend to take the long way round is because, for many people, the job role they end up with wasn’t a possibility (or sometimes even known to them) when they started out. When I first started working at BRICKS as a volunteer, I had no idea there would be a paid Editor role for me several years down the line. You could chuck it all up to luck or manifestation (or delusional self-belief), but the reality was, I didn’t even know what I was manifesting, but I was committed to work I genuinely wanted to do and was open to where that could lead.

And this isn’t just the case for me – for lots of people working across creative and media industries, it isn’t just a case of putting the job on your vision board and hoping for the best, because many of the most interesting editorial jobs didn’t even exist five years ago.

For Capsule founder and editor Holly Beddingfield, she didn’t apply for her dream job, she created it. Having already worked as a reporter, a subeditor, and an editor, Holly pitched the platform she’d always wanted to build to her employer while working as a creative strategist. She identified an underserved audience, built a convincing business case, and convinced her employer to back it.

Since then, Capsule has grown a cult following on Instagram and Substack, providing thoughtful cultural critique to internet-native “zillennial” women & nonbinary people, with many of its posts reaching tens of thousands of readers across social accounts and sparking engaged conversations on celebrity culture, music, fashion, film, and much more.

Below, Holly shares how she pitched her dream career, built the platform from scratch, and the lessons she learned along the way.