It might not be the job of your dreams. But it can give you the foundation for a successful career.
An editor gives advice to two reporters. (Credit: Yuri Arcurs @peopleimages)
Journalism and activism can be powerful tools for change. Each week in our News Decoder Top Tips, we share advice from reporters, editors, writers and master storytellers on ways to better engage audiences and spur change. In this Top Tip, News Decoder correspondent Betty Wong and Educational News Director Marcy Burstiner explain how an entry level job can provide the foundation for achieving one’s goals.
Top Tips are part of our open access learning resources. You can find more of our learning resources here. And learn how you can incorporate our resources and services into your classroom or educational program or by forming a News Decoder Club in your school.
When it’s time for your first “real” job out of school, where do you go? Don’t expect that first job will be your dream job, advises News Decoder correspondent Betty Wong.
“It’s great when you’re studying at university and thinking ‘I want to write long form only and I want to tell a multimedia story. I want to be able to pick my assignments and travel to whichever country or city’,” she said in an interview with News Decoder Program & Communications Manager Cathal O’Luanaigh. Scroll down to see the complete interview.
The problem, Wong said, is that tends not happen to newly-minted journalists. Instead, think of that first job as an extension of your education, only instead of you paying tuition, the job pays you.
You might hate being a news assistant doing menial tasks, but you will learn a lot just by working with seasoned people around you, Wong said.
“I remember even my early years as a reporter sitting next to two people who were experts at interviewing and in between my calls, I would listen to how they would, what we call schmooze,” she said.
Wong learned from them that a good interviewer doesn’t just jump into a question right away. Instead, there is some back and forth as the reporter tries to lay a foundation for a relationship that goes both ways.
A job can be an education.
News Decoder Editorial News Director Marcy Burstiner said she had a similar experience.
“I went to a very respected journalism school but my first job out was at a small newspaper in the midwest of the United States,” Burstiner said.“I thought I was too good for the small paper. But much of the interviewing skills I now have came from watching and listening to the small town police reporter. He was so friendly when he’d call people. He spoke to sources like he was a neighbour. He didn’t interrogate people. And he got so much information that way.“
She said working at that small town paper for eight months was like getting a second master’s degree.
Wong said it is important to try to land your first job at a news organization you can trust and that will provide you with opportunities to learn and that will support you.
This is important in the field of journalism as good reporters will take on stories that might anger important people or people in the community where they report. You need to know that your editor will have your back, Wong said, when the people who sell advertisements for the news organization want the story you are working on killed. And if you end up traveling to a war zone or some other dangerous place you need to know that the organization will fight for your release, she said.
Finding that first job was important for Wong because her family hadn’t wanted her to go into journalism. “If you grow up in a traditional Chinese family your parents want tell you what they want you to do,” she said. “Since I had shown an early interest in science and math it was that I would become an engineer.”
She went to a high school in New York that specialized in the sciences but found herself on the school newspaper and fell in love with writing. She went to university to study engineering but decided that she hated it.
“And then I had a crying conversation with my mother asking to transfer schools,” Wong said. Her mother told her: “’Okay, if that’s what you want to do with your life. I will still support you financially. I will pay for your college tuition. But after you graduate you’re on your own,’ which is actually a great kick.”
Questions to consider:
- Why might a job where you do menial tasks still be worth taking?
- What is one thing to consider when considering opportunities for your first job out of school?
- What career do you want to go into, and how might you get a job in it?
Why might a job where you do menial tasks still be worth taking?
It could turn out your coworkers teach you unintentionally, but it’s always better be preparing itself at the same time.
What is one thing to consider when considering opportunities for your first job out of school?
One school that supports you when bad times comes.
What career do you want to go into and how might you get a job in it?
I would like to enter into the web developing. I would like to get portfolios on my own, and then build my CV having as my foundation these portfolios.