As you may or may not know, I have been floating around in the unemployed world for the past few months. It hasn’t been all bad, but unfortunately there aren’t many companies that want to employ an 18 year old that is aspiring to be a journalist/website developer without the required experience or qualifications.
During my time off, I somewhat selfishly refused to apply for job seeker’s allowance, and all of that. That was primarily because I really didn’t want to condemn myself to actually being unemployed. I’ve always seemed to find a way of worming my way out of tight situations, and things generally go my way, so that would have been the last nail in the somewhat repressing coffin.
At the end of last year I managed to land some freelance website development work, which I am working on now. I hope to get more of that throughout the year; but as a great start to the new year, I applied for a job at the Express and Echo (the Exeter newspaper company) through an agency called Spring. I first went for an interview with the agency, where I had to fill in plenty of forms and such things, and then got offered an interview for the position. About thirty minutes or so after the interview, I was offered the job.
The position involves working in the copy control department of the company, which is quite large, part-time (Monday – Wednesday, 10am – 6pm). During that time I have to extract text and images, amend them if necessary, and insert them into a database relevant to the newspaper they’re being published in. There is a lot of terminology and a lot of acronyms to learn, but I think it will be quite an experience. The majority of the day will just be data input from one source to another, which isn’t the most exciting thing in the world – but as one of my previous colleagues used to say every time I had to set about a mundane task, “it’s all character building”.
I’m still hoping to get into a journalism role at some point, but this at least gives me an income, and adds another line and another reference on my CV. Perhaps there will be a way of progressing through the company, all will be revealed on Monday when I start.
it’s so great that you got the job! your mum was saying how you could type 102 wpm and i was quite envious :) ‘character building’ i like that….and all great journalists/writers started somewhere, right?
Ah, the typing is just one hell of a lot of practice. I spent so much time talking to people online that it just comes naturally. It’s a little harder when you’re copying text, because often you’ll have to copy words that you don’t use often; so in doing that regularly, my typing should become more accurate.
This isn’t the best online typing test, but it’s one of the quickest ones to use. Take it and see how you do.
http://www.typeonline.co.uk/typingspeed.php
Your speed was: 101wpm.
Congratulations! You made no mistakes, practice does make perfect.
I’m glad I got the job, it will be an experience, and indeed they do have to start somewhere. Usually it’s the people that make the job anyway, so I’m looking forward to learning the names tomorrow.