Halfpintdelight

Penguin Books placement

So my first week at Penguin has gone by so fast and it’s now Tuesday of the next week! It’s all going well, although the London commute is a slight shock to the system I have to say.

Anyway, thought I’d start with a bit about how I got the placement…

In Nov ‘11 I arrived at a careers fair a bit early by mistake and Penguin was one of the few stands that were actually set up. I got chatting to the ladies about how to get involved with the company, through work experience and internships etc., took away a few leaflets and the ‘Book of Penguin’ all about the history of the company and what it represents today. Who doesn’t love free books?!

I couldn’t stay that long at the fair as my dissertation deadline was lurking - even though I was preparing myself for the all important post-uni life! I did go back later in the day though to listen to a quick advice talk the ladies I had spoken to earlier were holding.

When they had finished I went over and asked a couple more questions and this is when opportunity ‘knocked’ as it were. The sales manager that I had been talking to recognised me from earlier on and clocked my enthusiasm. My eagerness to be at the event was slightly mixed with avoiding dissertation blues but still - I was passionate and had shown an interest. The fact they were giving mini books away had also made me appear overly excited!

It was all a bit of blur but the woman wrote down her email, shook my hand and said ‘send me your CV’. Now, being an excitable person naturally, I wanted to do a little jig or something but resisted the urge and smiled and thanked her! I got round the corner out of sight, called my my mum and squealed down the phone a bit about realising what ‘networking’ means. I chased up the request and by January 2012 time I had dates in place to join the Michael Joseph publicity department in June 2012. 

I’ll hopefully be drawing some lessons and tips together from the experience of securing the placement and the 3 weeks as a whole for a later guest blog post, (possibly for a bigger website yay), but you’ll have to wait and see. However this gives a bit of context to my experience!

The first week was all about settling in and learning the basics so that I could be of more help later to come. It’s really interesting seeing how the different divisions work within such a huge company and I love being part of contemporary publishing as it makes such a change from Uni! Although contemporary modules are available at Leeds, my study interests revolved around the classics. However, seeing what the novel and the book in general represent today is fascinating - something I will focus on in my post next week.

This post was just a bit of an intro really into why I’m currently at Penguin and hopefully I’ll be able to follow this through at the end with a much more detailed review of my time there :) I’ll also keep posting brief bits about what I’m reading/hobbies.

Bye for now!