Yesterday I managed to score my first bit of work experience for a national music magazine/online publication. I am pretty damn excited over it as I’m hoping it can be the launch pad to a career in music journalism and I couldn’t be more happy. As I began planning travel and calculating costs I was reminded of a blog post that fellow uni journo student, and very fine music writer, Mike Copus wrote a year and half ago as he had a similar placement at a different magazine. He had come across an article on The Guardian about whether or not work experience actually benefits people like us (students with debts to pay and all) and whether or not we need protecting. A sample paragraph:
At the centre of most of the discussion, however, is the fact that would-be journalists are now often required to do long stints of unpaid work experience,a fact that has been pointed out by Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the NUJ. This is fine if your family lives within striking distance of your chosen publication, or you are sufficiently well-off to support yourself while your pay packet hovers around zero, or you know someone who can get you into a newsroom – or indeed all three – but a bit trickier if they don’t. And by a bit trickier, I mean pretty much impossible, given the level of student debt many candidates are likely to be carrying and the competition for work experience placements.
It’s a really tricky dilemma. I can sympathise heavily with people looking for work experience after they graduate because they potentially have to find money for travel expenses that their temporary employer is unable to provide (and this could be for a variety of reasons before anyone starts bitching to me about how I’m bad-mouthing companies who won’t pay interns), although there are some who will. On the other hand, if journalism was what you really want to do, I cannot stress how important work experience is regardless of money. For one thing, it puts things on your CV that will look pretty damn good when searching for other placements and even potential jobs that will earn you actual money!
I’m in a very lucky (so I’m told) situation as my university degree requires me to find 12 days of work experience before the 4th May, so we have no alternative. You do it and pass or you don’t and fail. What I think would be a step in the right direction would be for more universities to adopt this kind of thing in their degrees, since it is clearly the most ideal time for students to start searching. I think that there is so much that you can learn at work experience that is very hard to teach at university, like involving yourself in a proper working environment and working as part of a proper team of journalists, that will add to the learning experience considerably. You might have experience of group projects in your studies but I am willing to wager a whopping 2p coin that it is nothing like the real deal.
Either way, I’ll have a much clearer idea of work experience a week from now. What I know right now is that I am determined to do the best I can possibly do and to take advantage of a fantastic opportunity, which I’m quite grateful for. Because that’s what work experience is – an opportunity.
