Welcome to Glamour's new weekly column, How I Got My Job, featuring one woman with an amazing job, and the real route to get it. Looking for career inspo? For this week's instalment, Connected Car analyst Jessica Mattler shares her CV..
Who? Jessica Mattler, 25
What? Connected Car analyst in product marketing for Jaguar Land Rover.
The CV:
I was born in the States, but moved to the UK when I was seven. It was a culture shock, but I remember being excited about getting to wear a school uniform. I was an all-rounder, but my interests lay with languages, maths and music.
My family are all engineers (Mum worked for Boeing), and jokingly refer to me as the black sheep of the family for studying languages. During my third year I went to teach in France, but there wasnât much support and I felt more like a social worker than a teacher. I returned fluent and realised that my real strength
lay in communication.
After my GCSEs I did a three-week internship on the food desk at The Times Magazine. It was fun attending press days, but everything was so fast-paced, it didnât feel like the right fit.
I got a job on campus simply because it was convenient and they offered flexible working hours around my studies. As well as opening and cashing up at the end of the day, I worked on product development and invented a Creme Egg milkshake that rocked the world â Creme Egg, ice cream, chocolate milkshake powder and milk. It was the perfect cold, sweet hangover cure, too.
I approached a local translation company for a job to see if the work suited me. It didnât. I liked the academia part, but hated that the job was so solitary.
In the summer of my third year at uni, I went home to do a four-month
paid internship at a defence and marine energy company close by. It was quite dry stuff, but as the sole person responsible for marketing, it was really good experience. Organising events and liaising with journalists honed my communication skills, and I decided then that I wanted to pursue a career in marketing.
I stumbled across Jaguar Land Rover while researching consumer goods companies, and my interest was piqued. I applied for their graduate marketing scheme and was accepted. I had to keep customers engaged throughout their ownership period and do a lot of number-crunching, which I loved.
After 18 months on the scheme, I moved to Connected Car, the department responsible for technology (notably our three apps) inside the vehicles. Launching the Jaguar F-Pace (Jaguarâs first-ever SUV) earlier this year was definitely a career highlight.
