What do we do when we’ve finished studying and want to get a job?
I’m 21 and I graduated from university last year. I’m now doing a journalism course but this will finish soon and I have to think about the prospect of work in the big world.
Up until now I have almost lived in a bubble of student life – walking to lectures for three hours a week and wasting valuable time on Facebook while attempting to write essays. The only real first hand knowledge I have of life as a journalist is through work experience and it seems young, potential and budding journalists have to do a lot of this before they get noticed.
With journalism being such a competitive area to work in, it is difficult to stand out from the crowd. With the media becoming an increasingly popular career choice it will only get harder for the younger generation to get their names out there. You have to go that extra bit further in today’s world; it is no longer adequate to simply have a degree. Also, with more students applying to university each year the chances of getting a job are slimmer, and recent statistics in the news have supported this.
The current economic crisis is not helping as unemployment is rapidly rising but, we can use this to our advantage. Work experience is a vital way of making contacts and companies will need an extra pair of hands to help around the office at this time. This could then lead to published articles.
So, as I am about to embark on my journalistic career I predict more work experience in the very near future. In the meantime I will be filling out a significant number of application forms in the hope of hearing something in return. It is so cliché but it really is a ‘dog eat dog’ world out there. We should do as much as we possibly can that is related to our area of interest in order to land ourselves with the perfect job.
