Unless you're familiar with UMD, you're probably wondering what in the world is The Diamondback. The Diamondback is UMD's independent student newspaper. In my role as the Advertising Operations Manager, I'm responsible for maintaining the quality of the paper, as well as the website. This involves laying out the advertisements in the paper every week, sending our weekly print order to our printer in Fredericksburg, running reports on Google Double Click for Publishers as well as Google Analytics, managing a team of 4 salespeople, and cleaning up any loose ends when it comes to the paper. I'm the last person to proof the paper before we send it out, and I make sure we have all the correct advertisements running. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've loved being the Advertising Operations Manager at The Diamondback. It's been a very steep learning curve, with lots of late nights on Saturday and Sunday making sure the paper is ready to be printed. I've enjoyed the responsibility, and I love being able to check the paper every Monday and see my hard work paid off. My coworkers have also made this job incredibly satisfying. Everyone's friendly but hard-working, and our workplace culture reflects this. Our office is laid back only because everyone gets their work done, and understands their responsibilities. This is something I'll look for when exploring my options after school. 

 

I learned that being an effective leader is harder than it looks. It's often difficult to walk the line between being someone's boss and being their friend. This is something I've had to work on, but I've been able to grow and develop my leadership skills. Leadership is not one size fits all, you must adapt to the individual personalities of your employees. This is a skill that I believe I'll be able to use in any job, and something I'll carry with me the rest of my life. I've also improved my attention to detail, which is another skill that's easily translated to jobs in design. I have to make sure the correct advertisements are in the InDesign pages we send to the printer, and that the advertisements don't have any errors and meet the specifications our printer has. 

 

I've become proficient in Google Double Click for Publishers, Google Analytics and InDesign.