Work Experience at Random House
Hello, I’m Laura and for the past few weeks I’ve been doing work experience at Random House.
For the first 2 weeks I was with the lovely people in CCV Publicity and this week I’ve been working with more lovely people at Cornerstone Publicity. My first impressions of Random House Towers (as I’ve aptly named it...) were that a) it was HUGE and b) that the offices were really nice and c) they have a coffee shop! There are books everywhere, which just happens to be my idea of heaven and everybody is kind and willing to help you if you don’t understand.
With work experience, you usually get a mixture of administrative tasks like mailing, filing and photocopying but you do also get to do fun things! For example, sorry for name-dropping...but on my first day at CCV, I was asked to help Nigella sign 1000 copies of her new book...obviously I wasn’t signing her name for her, but we had a production line-esque system with someone giving her the books and someone else (me actually!) then taking them from her once they were signed. It was great to do something a little different and Nigella was absolutely lovely! However, when it came to mailing just over 100 of the books...which doesn’t sound that many but let me tell you, they weigh a ton! I was absolutely shattered, although on the plus side, I definitely burnt my calories that day!
Working in Publicity is non-stop. There is always something to do, books to mail, show cards to make and it’s really exciting not knowing what you’ve got to do next! What I love most about it is the variety, I love being busy and juggling various tasks because it makes the day go much faster! What I would say is that when you do work experience, ask as many questions as possible and try and get involved with as much as possible. Go to meetings, help at signings, offer to help everyone and just squeeze as much experience out of it as possible!
Work experience is a fantastic way of ‘trying out’ the industry. I’ve actually done work experience in Editorial and Marketing too so I now feel like I have a really good idea about how the departments work but also, I’ve gained a lot of perspective on the industry as a whole. Although it’s not ideal working for free, if you can afford to do it – DO IT! A lot of companies pay you a small amount, some pay your expenses (travel and sometimes lunch) but some don’t pay anything at all. But it’s definitely worth doing because you make great contacts, great friends and if you are on the job hunt, it’s a fantastic way of distracting yourself from CV’s, covering letters and rejections...
I’ve absolutely loved my time at Random House and would love to work here in the future. Everyone I’ve met has been really nice and I’ve gained invaluable advice from various people about finding a job, which has actually just worked! I have a temporary marketing job at a Publishers starting on Monday!
Thank you for having me Random House, thank you all for being so lovely and also thank you for the books!
Laura Skerritt, future Random House employee (fingers crossed!)