This week at uni: a week of lectures. It’s the Media School Festival this week, which means the university’s media department has organised lots of guest lectures from industry speakers.
The week started for me and one or two other radio students with mock interviews for an imaginary BBC Broadcast Assistant job: we were interviewed in the radio studio at uni, with the mics switched on, so that we could be heard by a small audience in the Radio Production ‘classroom’.
I have to admit that I was quite scared about this: not because of who was interviewing me – but because I knew that those watching outside would be analysing every word. However, once I got in to it I think I managed to give some quite good answers: but there is still a lot of room for improvement!
What you must bear in mind is that, apart from being part of Deer Park School’s Tech Team, I’ve never had a paid job. Everything else I have done – including Corinium Radio and Tone Radio – has been voluntary, and unpaid. That is to say, that while I am confident I have the skills needed to do an entry level Broadcast Assistant job, I have never had any formal job interview.
I was interviewed by Cirencester College before I was offered a place there…I was interviewed twice (on two different courses) at uni before I was given a place here…and I’ve had one or two Work Experience interviews. But that’s basically it.
So given that, I don’t think I performed too badly. There were things I didn’t do so well at: one or two questions threw me, at the beginning particularly I was extremely nervous… and my issue with eye contact was picked up on (for me, keeping eye contact with someone is something which for me is difficult – almost painful – to do).
But having had the feedback, I’ve taken a few notes – and I hope that I should be able to perform better in a real job interview than I would have done without having been one of the ‘guinea pigs’ for today’s session.
Tomorrow: My Tone Radio show is on 12-2. This week’s theme between 12:30 and 13:30 is “Up & Down” (so you can expect songs like ‘Stairway to Heaven’, ‘Jump’ and ‘Moving On Up’).
On Wednesday & Thursday – we have a couple of guest lectures, and BBC Introducing coming to uni on Thursday… and the Media School Festival will finish on Friday with our trip to BBC New Broadcasting House.
Now though…With the time approaching 23:50, I’m getting tired. I nearly fell asleep during the BBC News at 10. So I’m off to bed.
Good night.
FH.
