Internship at Emerald Publishing

by Katrina Bath

I chose Oxford Brookes simply because it was the best university for Publishing and student testimonies also praised Brookes for offering great student support. It was the last summer of my 3rd year at the University of Bradford and I had just handed in my final year dissertation for my bachelor’s degree in Media Studies. It’s safe to say that I was in a complete state of panic, I was done with university, had quit my part-time job to focus on my dissertation and now that all of that was done, a gaping black hole had opened in my mental place titled ‘future’. It was time for me to evaluate my life and what kind of career would make me happy so the first thing I did was make a list of all the things I loved doing. Books were at the top of that list and that’s how I began to wonder what career you could have around books and that is how I stumbled into the world of Publishing.

After some twists and turns, I became a distant learning student at Brookes and it’s been an interesting (and at times challenging) journey. My degree taught me the ins and outs of the publishing industry, its history, its present as well as how it could develop in the future. My assignments pushed me to apply what I had learned in my modules into practice, for example the editorial module required me to ‘commission’ a book from start to finish whilst the marketing module required me to create a marketing plan including costing, schedules etc. These skills were essential for applying for my internship at Emerald Group Publishing.

What students might underestimate is the applications process for jobs or internships. It’s not a case of just sending a generic CV out to whoever is hiring. I applied for a variety of graduate jobs, junior roles and internships and I tailored my CV for each role and my application to Emerald was no different. As I had no ‘real-word’ work experience, I opted to create a skills-based CV and consciously included the skills that the job description mentioned to make my application relevant. I initially applied for a senior UX designer role which I knew that I wasn’t going to get due to my lack of experience but my tutor, Helena Markou, assured me that it would put me on Emerald’s radar as an ambitious graduate and I would at least get some interview experience. I passed the phone interview and was invited for a second interview which required me to create a 10-minute presentation on a topic they provided. I didn’t get the job, but they offered me a junior UX designer position as they were impressed by my ambition, determination and drive to succeed. After some soul-searching and introspection, I turned this role down as I knew nothing of UX designing and had never done any graphic designing. Instead I applied for one of the Emerald internships and after my first week here, I knew I had made the right choice of turning down that junior position.

My first week was a whirlwind of meeting people, getting to know my fellow interns and settling into the R&D department. My fellow team mates were welcoming, and I was left to learn about Open Access Publishing. It became clear that Emerald was passionate about supporting career development for its employees and interns as we were told that each of us would oversee a project that would be used as part of the business and we would be responsible of that project from a-z, we were also scheduled to have weekly learning and development sessions with our L&D mentor. We are not seen as temporary interns but as part of the team and our line managers encourage us to shadow other departments and individuals and to make the most of these 3 months as possible.

Edited by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 15 Aug 2019 around 7am

Last edited: 15 08 2019