Digital Advertising Graduate Scheme

Applications for Ballpoint's annual graduate scheme are now open - this is an intensive three-month programme designed to kickstart your career in growth, advertising or marketing.

Our process - Ballpoint

We combine customer psychology, scientific experimentation, and social-first creative to acquire customers. Good growth people can specialise in one or two of these areas. Brilliant growth people sit across all three.

We are looking to develop the Brilliant Growth People of the future.

Job description - Digital Advertising Graduate Scheme

This is a three-month programme, with a role available at the end if you succeed. You will learn all of the fundamentals of what it takes to grow a business, including:

• Growth & Marketing 101 → the fundamentals of marketing and growth.
• Strategy → the skills needed to analyse marketing problems and build strategies to deliver results.
• Digital advertising → how to grow brands through digital advertising, specifically across Facebook and TikTok.
• Creativity → how to turn ideas into ad creatives for platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
• Customer psychology → how to interview and analyse customers to understand why they behave in the way they do.
• Marketing analytics → how to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Characteristics of people who will do well in the Ballpoint Graduate Scheme

• Can juggle a lot simultaneously – maybe you run a business in your spare time, or you ran the university newspaper, or you tour with a band, or maybe you've got a YouTube channel that's paid your way through university. Whatever it is, this requires a lot of context-switching and wearing multiple hats and are looking for people who can demonstrate this effectively.
• Both technical and creative – maybe you love writing, but also have coded your own website. Or maybe you've always been great at stats programming, but also love taking photographs.  
• Curiosity – this is one of the job's most important characteristics. You will never learn how to sell something to someone unless you are curious about what motivates them, what their life is like, and how we can help them.
• Decision-makers happy to get things wrong – growth relies on probabilistic over deterministic thinking. And so it suits those who are fast decision makers who are willing to get things wrong. Failing is learning sped up.
• Entrepreneurial and ambitious – Not everyone is destined to be an entrepreneur, but because of the highly broad range of skills you'll learn here, it mirrors the ideal checklist for a founder. If not a founder, then we're busy training the next leaders: CEOs, CMOs, and chief growth officers of the next decades.
• Hard-working – this job requires a lot of you. It's going to be really hard, and you'll be surrounded by a room of the smartest growth people we've ever worked with. Expectations are going to be high from day one.
• Problem solvers – creativity isn't just about writing smart copy or good design. Creativity is also about problem-solving. If you enjoy the intellectual challenges of fixing things or understanding how they work, then you'll go far
• You love the accountability, responsibility and pressure that comes along with doing work that has an impact – the work you'll be doing will have a direct impact on the growth of our clients. Their businesses are often in make-or-break stage, and so within the first year, you'll be actively contributing to their success or failure.

Your background

Some of the best growth people we’ve worked (inside or outside of our agency) held degrees in subjects like Psychology, Architecture, English Literature, Computer Science, Human Sciences, Maths, and Anthropology. But we don’t believe a degree holds all the answers, and if you hold a degree outside of these subjects but can demonstrate all of the criteria we’re looking for, you’ll do well.

In addition, we’re also big believers that side projects, extracurricular activities, the mini festival you organised at your local pub, and everything in between often does hold the answer. We do not ask for any prior experience in marketing, growth, or advertising – we’ll teach you all the skills you need if you’re willing to learn.

Who we are

We're nearly 2.5 years old and so are still a small, independent agency. But we are incredibly ambitious and want to become the country's most trusted and biggest growth agency out there.

Ballpoint was founded by Josh Lachkovic. Before he did this, he ran another startup called Wine List, and before that was the first employee and head of growth at Thriva, where he acquired their first 100,000 customers. His experience covers brands including Hims, Fy!, Yonder, Mother Root and many more.

The senior Ballpoint team count even more incredible experience amongst it: AG1, TALA, allplants, Finimize, Hostelworld and Farfetch.

Our current client roster includes: Chatsie, Glaize, Tuza, Sipgood, Thriva, Mother Root, and Tilly Sveaas.

The majority of work we do is digital advertising (creative and management), but we also help with retention, pricing, conversion rate optimisation, copywriting, and design.

Benefits of the job - Digital Advertising Graduate Scheme

We're a tiny company, but we're making conscious and deliberate efforts to build a culture we take pride in. We want you to see your years working at Ballpoint as some of the best of your life.

What we offer:

• £26,200 starting salary with promotions based on speed of learning (expect one-to-two in your first year)
• A highly creative office in Clerkenwell/Farringdon where you'll work with the rest of the team for four days of each week (fully flexible Mondays).
• Share options in the company – this grants you future options to benefit from the company's success in the future
• Dozens of challenger brand snacks, so we can taste the future clients we want to be working with
• 28 days holiday excluding bank holidays
• Summer Party for staff, clients, and close friends of the agency
• Monthly team socials – everything from pottery to go-karting, from Crystal Maze to lifesize Monopoly. We leave the choices here up to the team.
• Discounts for all client products – so you can get to benefit from working directly with them.
• 5% employer pension contribution – helping you build your long-term future
• 1x annual overnight offsite – to set company strategy, get to know each other better, and test out ideas we might not do day-to-day. This year we went to a chateau in the south of France
• 10 WFH days to use at your leisure – for when you feel like an extra day working away (can be used to work fully remotely for a week away if you like).
• 5% employer pension contribution – helping you build your long-term future

The application process

Please do not use AI for your application. Last year, we had over 400 applicants, and at least 300 of them stood out immediately (not in a good way) due to the use of AI.

• Apply with your CV - please also include a 60-90 second video explaining what you love about this role and a characteristic you possess that would mean you'll do well.
• Invitation to a graduate day for our top 20-30 applicants. This will be an all-day session in our Clerkenwell office, with lunch and reasonable travel expenses provided.
• Final stage 90-minute interview: split into two with different members of the team.

Applications close on 25th June 2025.