In the job world, having strong digital skills is becoming more and more necessary, useful and sought after. As technology further cements itself, companies want employees who are able to understand the digital requirements of the job.

An example of how digital skills can benefit a career is Ludovica Di Luzio, a Senior Associate Brand Manager at Procter and Gamble (P&G). She cites her experiences doing digital communications for her family’s business as one of the key reasons she was chosen for a traineeship with P&G that ultimately took her to where she is today.

While studying for her Master’s degree, Ludovica was required to undertake an internship abroad, so she applied for a job in marketing and brand management at P&G, a role that had a significant digital component to it.

In Italy, Ludovica’s family run a small business which produces high quality olive oil: Azienda Agricola Santabarbara (Chieti, Abruzzo). In the summer between her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, she realised she didn’t have enough time to do an internship so decided to gain experience in digital marketing by working for the family’s business communication. She re-designed the website, improved their online presence, and managed communication with clients.

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I was taking care of customers’ emails, and communication on social media: I created a Facebook page where creating posts and running some campaigns. I invested some money in order to have some posts targeted to the right consumers and make them viral, going around Facebook.

Ludovica cites the digital skills attained and developed at her family’s business represented a clear strength during the selection process at P&G which brought her to a job offer in digital marketing.

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I really believe it was something they valued very much and then it happened that actually the job they offered me was in digital. [This way] I could leverage both what I learnt in school about marketing and brand management in general and what I learnt from my small experience in my family business.

Following the successful internship, Ludovica worked her way to Associate Brand Manager at P&G, which covers all sides of marketing – TV and digital communication, product innovation strategy and more. All of her work is linked to digital in some way. She believes that nowadays it is fundamental to have these digital skills and be able to leverage them more and more as opposed to traditional marketing strategies.

Ludovica believes that they should play with the digital tools available to them and learn as much as possible outside traineeships. For example, if someone is interested in photography, learning how to master photo editing softwares and how to successfully post pictures online can give them a competitive advantage with companies when applying for traineeships or jobs. Master similar mediums will enable potential trainees to be more confident when learning more specific work-related digital skills.

She concludes, “these tools are shaping the new world” and training students on how to leverage them to grow any business is “definitely an investment that would pay off”.