The ultimate aim of University is to get your degree and secure your dream career. While getting a good degree can help you land a job, in the competitive creative industry however it is often the extracurricular things you do that make you stand out on a job application.
Advertising, Journalism, Arts, Marketing, PR and Film/TV are just a few examples of a ‘creative career’ and even if you are not studying directly in these fields you can still engage in the careers during your time at Newcastle University by joining societies and attending exciting career days, as well as writing for our very own Her Campus at any point during your time at university.
Once a year the universities’ career service put together a ‘Creative Careers’ day in which speakers from across the industry come to the students’ hub to host panel talks and workshops with opportunities to network and make new contacts. People involved this year include BBC, Impress Books, The Chronicle and Northern Film and Media.
This year’s workshops included working as a journalist for an afternoon that gave experience working in a busy newsroom and The #ExPRience sessions in which students planned a PR campaign for a company. The experience provides a perfect anecdote for a job interview to show that you have been engaged with the industry and found a personal interest and niche within creative careers!
Beyond that, there are other opportunities across campus and the city to get involved. If you’re interested in a career as a journalist and want to build your collection of clippings to demonstrate your writing abilities then do some research on The Courier, our universities student newspaper where you can practice essential abilities like editing, writing and as a subeditor- InDesign and Photoshop.
It’s super easy to get involved as a writer if you’re active on Facebook- just search for the writer’s groups where articles are posted on a weekly basis, and if not there are weekly writers meetings you can attend to have the first pick of the articles for the week ahead paper. You can also do the same for our Her Campus article writing as we have a group on Facebook where article topics are posted each week.
Opportunities are often sent through emails from lecturers with chances to work with people in the industry, from the filming of television series to working with charities and other organizations for everything from shooting promotional videos to helping to organize awareness events so look towards the newsletters forwarded each week as well as notifications on Facebook from the careers service.
Societies are also a great chance to meet other people with similar career interests and goals, look out for Marketing societies and NUTV on the students union page to get involved, or if you are simply trying to improve your writing abilities- the English society does great events and workshops.