Placements – Naomi’s experience

Placements, whether they’re a few weeks or a few months, are crucial to beefing up your CV and are a great opportunity for you to put the skills that you learn on your course into practice. They’ll give you an edge over other graduates when you finish uni and in some cases, can even lead to a job.

Naomi is a graduate; she studied Broadcast Journalism at the Hastings campus graduating with a 2:1 in July 2014. She’s from Northern Ireland and moved back to her hometown, Armagh, after landing a job at Irish TV.

In my third year of uni, I did a professional work experience module during which my course mates and I had to find and organise our own placements totalling at least three working weeks. We were going to be marked on the work that we did during the placement, an essay about what we learnt and what the employer said about us so it was really important to find a placement that would give us lots of opportunities to impress.

I found out that the BBC offer placements to students on BJTC courses; the Broadcast Journalism course in Hastings is BJTC accredited so this meant I could apply.

But just because I was a BJTC student it didn’t mean that getting my placement with the BBC was any easier, with an in-depth application to fill out and phone interview before I got the confirmation email saying I secured a placement. Whilst it may seem like a lot to some for a placement, the application process was great at preparing me for applying to real graduate jobs.

Once chosen, I had to decide which department I wanted to work in, I was lucky enough to be placed with the current affairs development team – one of my choices. They generate the ideas for documentaries across the BBC’s three main channels.

I learnt a great deal from the team, including how they generate ideas through weekly meetings and how to pitch ideas and create treatments. All of these skills I was able to apply to my final university project which was a TV documentary.

What I liked most about the placement was that I was treated as one of the team; I was given real tasks and was always busy. My time at the BBC was one of the best experiences I had whilst at uni, I gained so much from doing a placement and can’t recommend them enough.

My advice to students going on placement would be to be as useful as possible, find something to do and be a problem solver. Showing your initiative will make an impression and show that you want to be there; you never know where a placement might take you.

Take a look at Stef’s blog post, she’s a current student and did a placement year at Disney.

Looking for more advice? We’ve got some handy placement tips for you, find them here.