Top 7 Event Organizer Skills for a Successful Career
If you work as an event organizer and want to be best and succeed in your career, then you need to develop certain skills and qualities.
This post guides you to having a great event organizer career by revealing important skills and qualities you need to have, but first let’s get to know about the profession.
Who is an Event Organizer?
Event organizers are people who plan and organize events of different categories. They select venues and prepare them for the event, set everything up, and manage staff.
They also hire volunteers and coordinate different suppliers to provide the event with sound equipment, stages, security, lighting, displays, parking, toilets, and foods and drinks. See detailed event organizer job description.
Event management companies mostly employ organizers to work with a variety of clients across the public, private, and third sector.
However, some event organizers may work in-house for large multinational corporations, while others work on freelance basis.
If you enter this profession, you’re likely to take on a huge range of responsibilities to make sure that the events you organize are the best they can possibly be.
Your intention might be to organize everything in the most effective way, ensuring that the event has all that people expect to see.
7 Skills and Qualities a Good Event Organizer Must Have
1. Organization
A good event organizer arranges the event processes and brings together all the components in a systematic and timely fashion, thereby making the event to be successful.
Organization skill is the backbone of any event as it involves organizing schedules and executing results to clients.
The event organizer has to coordinate activities regarding staff, venues, deadlines, food, menus, and other element of the event, and pay attention to every little detail.
2. Communication
Event organizers talk to clients, listen to their needs, and present ideas and solutions to their requirements.
They simultaneously work with employees, contractors, suppliers, wait staff, and many other parties.
A very practical skill that is used on a day-to-day basis by event organizers at all levels is being able to effectively communicate thoughts and ideas.
Event organizers should be able to explain the scope and purpose of an event and effectively communicate their ideas to a supervisor, client, or vendor; understand and process information that is provided, such as the concerns of a client or questions from a caterer.
They also write proposals for getting businesses from prospective clients; create marketing materials to effectively sell their service; draft contracts for clients and vendors to sign; and draft thank-you notes to guest speakers and VIPs.
3. Negotiation Skills
Event organizers need to have negotiation skills to work out mutually beneficial prices with clients and contractors.
Organizers must leverage social media and other forms of marketing opportunities, and consider how to bring suppliers into the event experience.
This approach focuses on adding value as well as working for the right fees and charges for venues, speakers, and other supplies.
As clients want to know they are getting the best price available for their events, they would like to maintain a good relationship in order to obtain discounts and special deals.
4. Problem-solving Skills
Event organizers help clients to execute their ideas into action, and should be able to think out-of-the box to provide better experience than their competitors and retain their clients.
They should be ready to solve all the problems or issues coming along the way.
No matter how well you organize events, something must go wrong. If you can find creative solutions to the challenges that arise, it will be a lot easier to address.
5. Attention to Detail
Many details such as bathroom access, speed of service, line times, ease of parking, etc. can make or break your event.
When you pay thorough attention to what you are doing, you will make the seats to be comfortable and make enough ice available for the drinks.
As an event organizer, you should have keen observation on details to ensure everything is properly organized and in place for the event.
You have to not only track all the details but know when they change, and know how one change in one area affects things in other areas of the event.
6. Flexibility
When organizing an event, many things don’t go according to plan, but when handled well they can make the event to happen as planned.
The event organizer should therefore be ready to face such situations and be able to solve them instantly.
If you are flexible enough you will be able to adapt to new situations as they come up.
Last minute cancellations and changes are common in the industry; however, if you are confused about a situation, then the whole event will be in jeopardy.
Event organizers face the major challenges of forming great experiences despite constant inconsistencies and uproar.
Being flexible allows you to always be on your toes and know when to make adjustments to events accordingly.
7. Tech Savvy
Learning how to get into event organization means learning how to handle different tasks at once.
Fortunately, available mobile apps and software solutions are available to event organizers that can help them to prioritize responsibilities and sort things out during the time of organizing an event.
A good event organizer will know how to use these resources optimally whether it is the standard Microsoft Office suite or more sophisticated event organization software and apps.
Moreover, event technology has tremendously impacted the industry by getting rid of difficult manual duties and introducing automated features.
These include software that handles ticket generation and total revenue accounting. This helps the event organizers to save time and work effectively.
Event Organizer Skills for Resume
If you are making a resume for an event organizer job, you can quickly complete the core competence section of your resume by using the skills presented above.
You can get the recruiter to be interested in your resume by showing them that you possess the right skills for the event organizer role.
Conclusion
By using the information in this post, you will be able to develop the skills and qualities you need to produce best performances in your work as an event organizer.