Real World Employability competition entry: Harriet Brace (S1108608) Interview with Naomi Mills, 3-week placement at Sky News.

“ Why haven’t you said hello?” asks Eamonn Holmes of Glasgow Caledonian

University’s very own Naomi Mills via Twitter. Having been warned about near misses with well-meaning colleagues’ heads popping up on live television, her reply is characteristically professional: “I don’t want my first TV appearance to be a blip.”

Working next door to a star television presenter is hardly a regular placement experience, but it is one Naomi could see herself getting used to after three weeks at

Sky News.

When nearly three months had passed with no word on her application to news giant

Sky, MA Multimedia Journalism student Naomi Mills had assumed she had been unsuccessful. So she was understandably overjoyed when she received an e-mail from Sky’s Head of Development only last month, inviting her to London for three weeks’ placement at their online news desk.

At only the beginning of her second week, Naomi has already had a number of articles published – one of her biggest highlights so far. “It’s been quite overwhelming to go onto the Sky News homepage and see my stories sitting in the top ten,” she says. “That was a great achievement because I check Sky News every day; it’s my homepage on my laptop.”

She says she is extremely proud of what she has achieved so far. “I’m impressed with myself that people actually want to put the stories that I’m sourcing and I’m writing up for a global audience,” she enthuses.

1 Real World Employability competition entry: Harriet Brace (S1108608) Interview with Naomi Mills, 3-week placement at Sky News. In a typical day Naomi might find herself at meetings with some of Sky’s top executives - and invited to contribute ideas. This was initially ‘quite terrifying’, but has been an invaluable experience and a great confidence boost, she says.

“You just have to think, ‘I am a clever person, and we do this every week in uni. It’s just that in a practical environment,” she says determinedly. “It’s just having the confidence to think, ‘you know what, I have some good ideas, let’s put these forward and see what happens’. It’s better to speak up and be noticed than not to be noticed at all.”

Being a postgraduate student, Naomi had become somewhat jaded about placements after going through what she terms a ‘disheartening’ graduate application process after her undergraduate degree.

Sky is the only one of over 30 applications that has paid off, and following previous experiences in less structured schemes, Naomi had her doubts before making the journey south to Sky HQ. “There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re working for free and giving it your all and not really get much in return,” she says. But her time at

Sky has so far exceeded her expectations.

She says: “I thought I would just be shadowing or doing routine tasks, just being a bit of a background person, but I feel I’ve been integrated really well. The amount that

I’ve learnt and the amount of responsibility I’ve been given has been fantastic, and everyone’s been so welcoming.”

Naomi is under no illusions about the value of work experience at its best, and recommends it to any student who is serious about getting ahead in their chosen

2 Real World Employability competition entry: Harriet Brace (S1108608) Interview with Naomi Mills, 3-week placement at Sky News. career. “Ultimately placements are what give you an advantage in the working world,” she says.

From her own experience, she believes even placements to which applications are unsuccessful teach valuable skills. “They’re really good for you as a character because you learn a lot about yourself, and at the end of the day the more you do things the better you get,” she says. “Ultimately when you go to an employer with a job that you really want, you want to be able to sell yourself as best you can and know what they’re looking for.”

Being one of 18 trainee journalists at Caledonian, and one of hundreds of contemporaries across the UK, Naomi feels sure her experience at Sky will set her apart come job-hunting season this summer.

“Whether or not I’m lucky enough to get a job out of it, it will definitely put me in really good stead for what the future holds,” she says. And one gets the feeling she’s probably right.

3