Is your work experience worth the effort?
Posted on 30. Jun, 2010 by helen in Uncategorized, all posts, blogs, featured
There’s nothing new about working for free, it’s how I started my career at the BBC. I don’t remember ever feeling abused or even that I ought to be given a break after working non stop during the night of the 1997 Labour victory fielding calls for the on air presenters. I just remember feeling lucky, privileged to be at the BBC, the epitomy of superior broadcast journalism and all around me were talented and creative people who generally ignored me!
I know now that luck had nothing to do with it and that they were in fact short staffed, busy and that I was just there at the right time when someone failed to turn up to take the circuit – a highly pressurised role involving a series of carts being shoved into a recording device and listening for some beeps to stop and an extremely posh bloke provide instructions from TV5 where ever that was! I managed to cock it up first time and caused an already poe faced news reader to shout loudly at me in front of the newsroom – that was abuse!
However none of the above were the reason for my continued ‘relationship’ albeit unpaid with the BBC during my final year at university. I simply put it down to tenacity, attitude and, I hope, a little bit of talent. I simply did not make the same mistake twice, listened to the elder members of the team, immersed myself in the medium and helped everyone. It is with this in mind that when I meet todays work-experience selection I am rarely impressed.
The media industry is one of the most competitive with students of various permeatations of this discipline spewing out of our unis and colleges every year. Which is why I cannot comprehend the attitude of many of them. Perhaps it is the law of averages that suggests the rarity of being able to display all three qualities of talent, tenacity and the right attitude inevitably seperates the wheat from the chaff? Which is why when, like buses, when 3 come along at once its pretty amazing.
This last month the small video production company and local TV channel I run has had a glut of impressive talent including an autistic writer, a schoolboy super editor and a job centre referred lad who is now returning to full time education. All of them came with bags of enthusiasm and the right attitude. We too are short staffed like most small companies but we are not so big that we have lost our connection to grass roots developing talent. We have reworked our edit stations to make room for the newbies, provided them with equipment, support and feedback and made them part of the team.They manage their time and there is no expectation for them to ‘work’ the same hours as the paid team, they simply leave when they want and most often this is when we do. We also encourage them to move on, support their search for work and pay them when we can for any freelance work we may need.
Giving these new entrants the opportunity to be part of a team in a real environment is invaluable. It can confirm or destroy their passion for media and if it is the latter it can often direct them onto the right pathway. But when you find a talent it’s the most exciting feeling not only because you know they will go on to achieve great things but that it reminds you of the people who helped you. And that is worth reflecting on.
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