Thursday, November 09, 2006

Strange Goings On....

We managed to skip class today (with the lecturer's permission) to attend a uni journalism networking event.

Networking and event are two words that can inspire apathy in the best of us, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well things were done.

When I was at uni first time round, the careers service's main point of advice was that we should hand write the cover letter that went with our CVs. I'm sure this scuppered the job hunting efforts of many a poor soul who was daft enough to listen.

I don't really think that anyone else can tell you how to get a job, but the advice given was useful and more importantly interesting.

The speakers were all engaging and had unique stories about following their own paths to end up in the type of journalistic job you would want to tell everyone about. (See Sarah's excellent write up for more info, the post's called 'It's not what you know...')

It's good to know that working for small publications can lead onto bigger things. It's also good to know that industry professionals are willing to give up an afternoon to come and talk to a load of students now and again.

There was only one major down point. None of us got to sample any of the many bottles of free wine on offer. I should add this was because I had a class to get back to, rather than new found powers of self restraint. However, the speakers must have wondered what on earth was going on - students passing up a freeby, something odd's going on there!


2 comments:

Sarah said...

I liked the idea that we can start out small aswell. It seemed that there are some very kooky little magazines/newspapers that you can start with on your climb up the career path. What really excites me about that, is the random places in Britain that they might be. We could end up anywhere! :)

TommyH said...

yeah, I was really itching for a glass of red back then too.
I have to say, I did pick up a lot of tips from that event.
The Telegraph Journalist was particularly easy to identify with. I liked hearing how he just chipped away and percivered. I worry about failure.