While your resume is of course quite important, even a great resume and some great clips probably won't cut it for you today. Finding a job can be very difficult and experience is definitely important to most employers that are offering jobs in journalism. So, if you are interested in actually landing a job in the journalism field, here are some top tips that can help you to land the job you want.
Start Out With an Internship First to Gain Experience
Since experience is so important when it comes to landing good journalism jobs, starting out with an internship first to gain experience is definitely a great idea. Many companies won't hire journalists without any experience, especially since they are competing with professionals with lot of experience. Even the smaller companies and news stations usually won't hire journalists for entry level journalism jobs if they have little or no experience. So, if you want to get your foot in the door in order to get a job in the field of journalism, one of the best things that you can do is to try to get an internship. In some cases there are paid internships, but in many cases the internships are not paid positions. Working as an intern will help you gain experience and many important skills that will be important in the business.
Do Some Work Without Pay
There are many news organizations out there that are small and that don't have a lot of money. So, often they go with a very small staff. Many magazines as well as newspapers are more than happy to have student journalists come on to volunteer for them. This gives you an opportunity to gain experience while you are in college or even after you have graduated.
Get Involved in Freelance Journalism
Yet another great option that can help, whether you are interested in landing a international journalism jobs or even sports journalism jobs, is getting involved in freelance journalism. Even though many companies may not have permanent jobs available for you, you can get involved with companies, working for them as a freelance journalist. This is an excellent way that you can begin to build up your experience while getting paid as well. You'll get great material, new clips, and will help you get more insight into the business as well so you will be better prepared to get the journalism jobs you really want.
Start Writing on the Internet
News writing skills are extremely important if you are going to land jobs in journalism. To build up these skills writing for the Internet is an excellent idea. There are many places online where you can write and brush up your skills. When you work on your skills as a writer and get your work out there, you have the ability to get noticed as a writer and you'll build up some great experience on the web as well.
Try Getting Jobs with Smaller Organizations First
Before you try getting journalism jobs with big companies, you may want to try getting entry level journalism jobs with smaller organizations first. Many new graduates make the mistake of automatically trying to get the jobs with large companies. These jobs are extremely competitive and usually a newbie in the business is not going to hire people who are young and inexperienced, even if you are very talented and a great writer. The best thing you can do is to try getting jobs with smaller organizations that are not quite as competitive. You will be more likely to get the job. Also, it will help you get experience and you can work on working your way up the ladder to bigger and better jobs.
Build and Show Strong Interpersonal and Communication Skills
Last of all, if you want to land a job in journalism, building and showing that you have both strong interpersonal skills and strong communication skills is extremely important. Even if you have great writing abilities, if you are not great with people, you are going to have a problem in the field. Journalism takes a lot more than just great skills in writing. So, make sure to work on interpersonal and communication skills as well if you want to land the top jobs in journalism.
