1. Dream and Scheme
Spend a little time thinking about what your dream job would be and identify the area of journalism in which you want to work, print, broadcast, magazines or public relations. Jobs in journalism build on one another. It's rare than anyone shoots to the top without paying their dues. Often you need to plan to start working at your hometown paper or news station your first summer and then aim for a bigger internship the next summer. Sign up to be on the careers list-serve. Also visit the reference room in Farley 121. We have many directories that list contacts for almost any media outlet. Watch your e-mail for internships and check the bulletin board in the front hall of Farley.
2. Research
Once you have targeted a few places you would like to work, do research. Look up the companies on the web. Do they have an internship program? What kind of jobs do they offer? Make a few calls. Try to talk to someone who has the kind of job that you would like to do someday. Find out how they got there. What advice do they have? What kind of people does that company hire? What kind of experience and class work are they looking for? Make contact and collect names and addresses.
3. Get Some Campus Experience
Employers want to see that you’re serious about developing your craft. They will wonder why you passed up the chance to work at the Student Media Center. The experience there is invaluable, and it won’t take as much time as you think. If you graduate with great grades and no experience, that’s not going to impress employers. If you graduate with terrible grades and lots of experience, they’ll be a little more inclined to look at you, but the best routes is to keep your grades up AND get experience. Employers will take a 3.0 GPA with experience over a 4.0 with no experience every time. That’s what they are looking for. Experience at the Media Center will help you get internships too. No one in journalism wants to train you on the job. First and foremost, they want to know if you write well and can get published or on the air. Do you understand deadlines? Do you know how to work well with others? Make sure your resume shows them that you know how to do these things.
3. Prepare a Resume
Get a rough draft of your resume together. There are sample resumes in the journalism career center as well as the University's career center. Make sure you focus on relevant experience. Keep the resume to one page (two counting references). If you find that you are weak in a particular area, get busy getting more experience, such as working at Student Media, finding a local internship or volunteering to help a local group with public relations.
4. Show Off Your Work
Start collecting your best work samples. Get some newspaper or video clippings or yearbook stories or design samples. You need 5-10 print clippings. Photographs and graphic design samples are good too.
When Applying by Email
1. Attach a PDF containing a formal cover letter, resume and selection of clips.
2. Insert a link into the body of the e-mail (in an appropriate context) that sends the reader to a blog showcasing the student's work.
However, some magazine editors, for example, refuse to read emails containing attachments, unless they have specifically requested the attachment. If the internship guidelines instruct applicants to include clips as attachments, by all means do so; but, if not, you may be safer writing the formal cover letter as the body of the email, and including links to online clips at the
bottom.
