My Day At Penguin Random House Jobhack

Hi guys! This week's blog post is a little different and is about my experience at Penguin Random House Jobhack day.

My Experience

If you don't know what Penguin's Jobhack is, it's a day full of workshops such as editorials, marketing and publicity and people who work in the industry tell everyone a bit about their job and how they got into publishing. It's a great way to network, meet other people and learn more about how to apply for a job at Penguin.

I applied for the Jobhack in Leicester and had to get up at half five in the morning to get there. Even though I ran a lot of the way and was a tad late because of the trains, they waited for me and got started. First of all, we played human bingo, a game to find out more about each other. As soon as I sat down, everyone said hello and they were all so welcoming.

After human bingo, we had a few people talk to us about their jobs and what they do in a day. My favourite was when Becky Miller, an editor for Penguin, talked about her experience getting into publishing and what she does in a day. She made sure she told us all that there's no one way to get into publishing and you absolutely do not need a degree. She told us about her usual day and helped us with a workshop in editorial to give us a taste of what it's like to be in her shoes.

We also had Isabel from Marketing and Publicity who gave us a task of marketing a book which I found really exciting. And after lunch we had a talk on CVs and how we can make our cover letters stand out better (needless to say I applied for a lot of jobs when I got home).

The most fun aspects of the day were meeting new people and asking questions. It was great to meet Rebecca, an audio editorial assistant who told us about her work and set us an audio task. Near the end of the day they gave us time to ask questions and they called this "speed networking" and we all got a chance to ask editors, producers and recruiters, questions about publishing.

Another fun part of the day was when we got to choose books we wanted to take home with us and some people won prizes. We also received a notebook, Penguin tote (yes I got red, I'm very lucky) and a bookmark.

I'm so thankful that I heard about this day and that I went because I met amazing people and I feel more inspired than ever that I'm going to break my way into publishing. Thank you to Penguin for this great day!

If you feel like you'll never get into publishing, then I think this day is perfect for you. It will help lift your spirits and you get to ask as many questions as you have about the industry. Don't give up!

Until next time, love, Vee x