Rebecca Parkinson: Intern at Carnegie Publishing Summer 2016
Rebecca’s blog post gives us a great insight into her experience of the recruitment process, as well as her experience during the first two weeks of her placement at Carnegie Publishing.
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-parkinson-ba468a97
I’ve just finished week two of my placement at Carnegie and I feel I’ve got used to the commute from Lancaster to Preston and have been warmly welcomed by everyone in the office. I’ve been doing three days a week thus far so here’s a little bit about my initial experience of getting the placement and working at Carnegie.
Recruitment Process
Coming up to the end of my degree, I knew that over the summer I needed to get some relevant experience in publishing in order to secure a graduate job. I applied for a number of the FASS placements. I hadn’t had a job interview since I was 16 and so I was admittedly nervous. I resolved to try to be myself, let my personality shine through and not appear to be too nervous or clueless if they asked me difficult questions. I had a preparatory proof reading task to do beforehand which I tried my best to be thorough completing and also did some research about the company (which I advise doing for any interview!)
I actually really enjoyed my interview for the Carnegie placement. Anna and Lucy were both friendly, we discussed a number of things including my publishing experience thus far, my future goals, what I thought made a good employee and how I thought the publishing process was carried out from start to finish. I made sure to ask at least one question at the end. I felt happy with how I answered their questions and left knowing there wasn’t much more I could’ve done.
When I got the email to say I had got the placement I was over the moon and excited to start.
My First Impressions
Day one of any new job is daunting I think. After setting off far too early for fear of the commute being late, I arrived and was taken round the office and introduced to the team. The first thing I did was have a meeting with Anna about general office rules, admin etc and I met the office dog! I was very excited to be given ‘proper’ work first day including going through a proof copy and checking that all the author’s edits had been inserted into his book, and highlighting any areas that were incorrect or were the text didn’t flow right.
Much of my time so far has entailed two things. Firstly, going around the office and sitting with different people in the office to learn about their various roles, what they do day to day and how they do it, I’ve been shown how to use InDesign and had a go at some basic bits myself, and also been shown how the social media is run. I was also shown some of the work Carnegie does for Lancaster University Press and the process from manuscript to the pdf that is sent to LUP. Secondly I’ve been doing some research into self-publishing, in terms of how it’s defined, how it’s viewed online my writers and bloggers, and how Carnegie should market their self-publishing imprint, Scotforth Books, to writers aspiring to publish their own book.
In the next couple weeks I will be learning more about how to use InDesign and Photoshop, doing a copy-editing test and compiling a database of contacts we could use to bring in new titles for Scotforth. So far I’ve really enjoyed my time at Carnegie, that they’ve put me straight to work and I feel encouraged to learn from my co-workers but also take my own initiative when completing tasks.
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