By Mary Kate Brogan
I think at Elon, a lot of people assume you have to be a journalism major to work at The Pendulum. Not so. When I went to But I Don’t Want to Be a Journalist, I realized it was probably intended as a session specifically catering to people who were in student media and wanted to get out of it to do something else, but I viewed it as an opportunity to help us recruit outside majors to work for The Pendulum.
Adrianne Henderson, of Roger Williams University, created a session devoted to helping people rethink the skills they’ve gained from student media experience and tailor them to a different job. She handed participants a worksheet of skills, told them to underline the ones we thought we’d learned from student media, check off the ones we would need for the career we want, circle the ones in between and highlight those in our job search.
The Pendulum could make this work by marketing what skills can be learned from various positions to people who will most likely look for a career in a certain field. For example, someone who wants to be in publishing could benefit from copy editing or an editor can gain great leadership skills that could be applied to a management position.
The session wasn’t very in-depth, but people could personalize it to fit their needs. I hope this worksheet can be used to cater to future staffers’ needs.
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