The Careers Service, University of Oxford

Pauline Gumpel,St Peter’s College, Third Year Undergraduate,BA French and Italian, Remote Working

Work Projects

As publishing assistant at the Oxford Careers Service, I was responsible for the advert pages in the Oxford Guide to Careers 2021. I liaised with the advertisers to chase in their contributions and laid them up in InDesign to send back a copy of the advert page for approval while keeping track of the progress in a collaboratively used excel spreadsheet. I received great support from the Careers Service, for example in learning the basics of InDesign and expanding my communication skills by managing the Guide's mail inbox. Most of the time, I had one or more video calls per day with my supervisor and colleagues to discuss my own learning progress and clarify and questions.

Daily Life

In my daily routine as publishing assistant, I would start the day by checking the Guide inbox in the morning, replying to clients to answer questions and solving queries. I would use InDesign to lay up any new content in a design template and send out a copy for approval to the client. Towards the end of my internship, as all adverts were prepared, my tasks included selecting house ads and pictures for the draft of the 2021 Guide to Careers and proofreading the first draft together with the editor, making suggestions for improvements, and highlighting spelling or formatting mistakes.

Lasting Impressions

The Careers Service team is very friendly and welcoming, and I really felt like I became a part of the team, even though my internship was remote. My lovely supervisor, who also is the editor of the Guide, taught me very much and was always available and happy to answer my questions. I even got to be part of the social life, when I participated in a (remote) home/pub quiz that my colleagues organised. I feel like the internship has been an important opportunity for me to gain an insight into publishing - an industry that is known for being rather difficult to enter. I also feel like it complemented other internships which I did on my year abroad in communications and marketing very well, so that I now feel well prepared for applying for graduate opportunities. For me, the experience has confirmed that I enjoy editorial work and that I would like it to be (part of) my future job.

What advice would you give to future interns?

Do as much research as you can about the work you will be doing - I felt like this really made a big difference for me in the application process and I was excited to talk about the project in the interview.