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Sound attractive? Well, each year thousands of young people battle fiercely with one another to try and get in to that industry… it’s called The Media.
“We advertised for runners about a year ago. It was for a runners pool, so it wasn’t even a specific job, it was just to create a small pool of people that we knew we had interviewed, found to be good, and so could call upon quickly when a real vacancy came up. We had nearly 600 applications. This was just for Scotland”.Jo Johnstone works in the Talent Division of BBC Scotland – that’s the Human Resources department to you and me. She’s been in the business for 30 years, working her way up from a production assistant on documentary programmes for schools and children’s TV. These days her job is to find staff for comedy and entertainment programmes; from lowly runners – who help carry equipment and do odd jobs during film shoots – right through to producers and directors. “You’ll come in as a runner [with a film crew] or researcher [with a production team], and then if you’re lucky and good you’ll progress up. But a career path into a media job starts long before that…” Sixty-five percent of people working in broadcasting have a degree; twenty-five percent have a post-graduate degree as well. But it doesn’t have to be a degree in film & television or media studies. Particularly if you enter through the researcher route, any degree that involves gathering information, assimilating it, and then presenting the facts or presenting a case may help; it could be anything from geography, to physics, to literature, a degree in politics or history, or a even a foreign language. Alisdair Smith is director of Skillset Scotland; the Scottish branch of a UK-wide organisation whose job it is to monitor the British media industry and its workforce. Anyone can email Skillset for advise about careers in the media. They even have a careers helpline you can phone (see: www.skillset.org/careers and www.skillset.org/careers/services/help_lines ) If you do plan to move into the media industry via an actual media studies or film & TV course, Skillset may be useful for helping you choose one. There are dozens of media courses out there – all out to make money from you media career wannabes – but which courses and qualifications are actually worthwhile? Alisdair: “We have set up a programme across the UK where we have brought industry accreditation – industry recognition – to certain [academic] institutions” – if Skillset have given a course the thumbs up, you know it’s not duff. In Scotland, at HND and HNC level, it’s called the Skillset “Creative Loop”; a consortium of six colleges – Aberdeen College, Dundee College, Perth College, Reid Kerr College in Paisley, Adam Smith College in Fife, and Cardonald College in Glasgow – they’ve all been Skillset approved. At post-graduate level, you have the Skillset-accredited ‘Screen Academy Scotland’: a partnership between Edinburgh College of Art and Napier University. But the recognised undergraduate courses at these universities have up to 17 times more applicants than places. So to beat the odds, a career path into a media job has to start even before that… Alisdair: “There are a number of things that youngsters can do at school level. Often schools will have their own radio stations these days. Get involved. Get involved in programme making in the school. Some schools have filmmaking clubs… There are video youth clubs. There are community radio stations all over Scotland like ‘Sunny Govan’ or ‘Radio Awaz’… On your CV, it’s important to build up a body of evidence which shows you’ve got experience, and so have a clear understanding of the demands of the media”. It’s all about experience. The more experience you have, the easier it is to get more experience. How did the BBC’s Jo Johnstone narrow down those 600 applicants to the 15 or so she needed for her runner pool? “You need a good ‘can do’ attitude; to be a good team player. But most of all we look for work experience. Nearly every one [of the runner applicants] had a media degree, so that in its self didn’t mark them out as special. In the end we asked for four examples of work experience based in the media… that got it down to 60, and we interviewed from there.” And what can those lucky new runners expect in the years ahead? Well, yes, the description would look like the one at the start of this article. But at the same time, it could also read like this… That’s why despite the odds so many chase the ambition, and why despite the drawbacks many stick at it once achieved. |