Jess Chan's Blog

So I am currently sitting in my parents house, about to host a small drinks party before I, and a group old school friends, venture up to London.

What has changed this year? Well, I am still working for a fantastic company and was promoted last month! I’ve travelled the world a bit more – Vegas, Croatia and Paris have all been conquered this year.

I often look back at my time on the Pearson internship with fond memories. It has moulded and built up my tenacity and confidence – two attributes that I think define my 2011.

I would be interested to find out how my fellow interns, and the batch after us, are getting on; what key attributes were honed on the internship, and how they have helped in the last year!

Enjoy the remaining few hours left of 2011. 2012 is ours for the taking!

So, current Pearson interns – congratulations!

One of you has already reached out to me now that you have been successful in being accepted onto the Pearson Diversity Summer Internship Programme. Where are the rest of you?

I will happily host vlog and blog guest features, so if you’re in Pearson HQ at the Strand, at a networking opportunity, a Pearson lunch, a training session or just sitting there enjoying a normal day in the office and you have a spare few minutes, exercise your creative juices and get those typing fingers and beaming smiles out.

I’m sure that the diversity managers have encouraged you to engage with social media over the programme, so don’t be shy. Top tips for engaging social content:

- have a creative idea or a strong argument and run with it – just like when you were writing those final essays all those weeks (!!!) ago. You need to believe in your idea from beginning to end. Have a vision!

- keep it snappy. I know that I have fallen victim on occasions to rambling blog posts and video entries, but keep it short and sweet when you can.

- questions. You may have a lot of challenging thoughts. Don’t be afraid if you don’t know the answers!

- self promotion across lots of medium. Facebook groups, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, YouTube. The more channels, the higher the chance that someone is likely to engage. But don’t go spamming!

- interaction. Get other interns, colleagues and/or management involved. It’s a lot more enjoyable that way.

That’s all from me this Saturday evening. Apologies for the formatting of this post, the new iPad does have it’s downfalls (where is rich text? And why can’t I use bullet points in quick press?) If you have any questions, don’t hesitate in dropping me a tweet or Facebook/LinkedIn message.

I hope all of your projects are going well so far.

Hi all,

It’s my understanding that CV’s are in the process of being analysed and interviews are being held around this time.

I’m around for interview advice. Whether you’re going for a face-to-face interview or a phone interview, let me know if you need any help, as I’ve done my share of those!

I didn’t actually have a face-to-face interview for my internship with Pearson. However, I did have a telephone interview, for which, I was evidently successful!

I think there are a few tips I am able to give, that relate to both forms of interview:

• Show your enthusiasm, but do it intelligently
• Relate your answer to different parts of your experience – be it academic, voluntary, extra-curricular or based on sport or music.
• First impressions and non-verbal communication – I cannot stress how important this is. Even if you are on a phone interview, sit up straight!
• Have a question ready at the end of the interview
• Prepare for those questions that regularly come up: ‘what qualities do you have that would make you a good candidate for this job?’ ‘what are your weaknesses?’ ‘tell me a time when you have demonstrated that you faced a challenge/met a deadline/worked in a group’

This should be your main port of call if you still have your application left to write

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Good luck!

Jessica Chan, Pearson Diversity Summer Internship Alumni, Marketing from PDSIPthink's on Vimeo.

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A one-minute short of some Pearson Diversity Summer Internship Programme Promo Filming from last year.

I can’t believe it’s been 7 months since the internship finished. And here we are, full circle, as I am told that the closing date for applications is this Thursday, 31st March.

Around this time last year, I was holed up in my room at university, writing essays, fretting about my post-university plans. A week and a half after finishing the internship, I was very fortunate in starting a full-time job in London, where I still work today. I have still kept in touch with quite a few of the internship alumni and have gone back to the Strand on the number of occasions, mostly to help with raising the awareness of the programme.

A few prospective candidates have already reached out to me via Facebook and LinkedIn to ask questions or get some advice and it’s not too late – I’m still here and still contactable! If you are a tweeter, I am @jesschan89.

So in the run up to the closing date for the next batch of lucky interns, I will be posting a few videos and links (that’s if you’ve not seen them already!) over the course of the next hour.

As with anything else in life with a deadline, impending doom frequented and consumed my whole being during the last week of my internship. That’s not to say that I had too much work and too little time, on the contrary; I had done quite a lot of work and wasn’t sure if it was up to scratch. As my fellow colleagues in the Marketing department flew off to Amsterdam for a fair, I put in the extra hours at Pearson Education HQ, often with the slight fear that I would be locked in after several lights were turned off and all I could hear was the dull hum of a vacuum cleaner several floors below.

I attended a brilliant workshop with Stuart ‘market research guru’ Hay called Introduction to Market Research. In some ways, I wish I had known everything he was telling us at the beginning of the internship, but instead, it was a chance to look retrospectively over the course of the project and see where I could have improved. The participants were from all over Pearson Education, from editors to commissioners, giving yet another opportunity to meet new people from other divisions. It was inspiring to watch someone who is so passionate about their work. Stuart knew all of the intricacies of the industry and it was great to hear them communicated so eloquently and concisely.

For the majority of this week, I was frantically trying to play around with the structure of my project and spent a lot of my time proof-reading. When the team came back from Amsterdam, I had a meeting with Leo, my manager. I was nervous as I knew that eight weeks of work culminated to this point, this opinion, this moment! Leo was firstly surprised at how large the project was (at 101 pages, it rivalled the size of the research projects that normally take 12 months to put together) and then began to look through the content. Leo was really happy with the work that I had produced and gave encouraging and hugely positive comments. Leo and I were both leaving Pearson Education on the same day (Leo took the position of Head of Marketing at Hodder) so he would not be responsible for implementing any of the strategies, however he assured me that there would be no doubt that his Marketing team and even some of the Editorial team would dissect the project and take on board all of the advice and feedback.

With my project handed in, there was little else for me to do apart from say my goodbyes and have a final tea break with the Pearson Education interns (oh, and receive a bottle of bubbly and a card from the Marketing team!) The Diversity team had organised leaving drinks for those interns who were due to finish after eight weeks so we popped over (in the rain, if I remember correctly!) to the Strand. It was nice to catch up with the other interns again, to find out what they had planned post-internship and also a chance to talk about our overall experiences and learning curves. A few gifts were awarded during the leaving drinks and all fingers pointed to me when Dele began to speak about a certain individual who had done a great job in promoting awareness of the internship using social media…

So not only are you reading an award-winning blog (of sorts – let’s not get too ahead of ourselves) but also the final week-by-week dissection blog post about the Pearson internship! I hope that whoever is reading this – a wandering browser, someone with an interest in diversity in publishing, a prospective candidate, a fellow Pearson intern, a Pearson employee, an employer – has taken what they wanted from the blog, whether that be an understanding, an insight or an opinion. The internship has been a fantastic experience to work, develop and connect in and with one of the most forward-thinking media companies in the world.

For the first two days of this week, I carried on with my project, however from the Wednesday to the Friday, I took the remainder of my days off. I left the hectic suburbia of Essex and travelled 150 miles west to a field in Shepton Mallet in Somerset. I had signed up to volunteer at Soul Survivor, the UK’s largest gathering of young Christians. The event runs for five days and though the culture is relatively laidback, there is still a huge focus on worship and faith. For me, the period spent here was not only a time for reflection but a time of reassessment, reconnection and rekindling. It felt liberating and empowering to gain some introspection, even though volunteers were kept busy for most of the event.

Faith was clearly something that I was thinking about a lot over this period and millions of others were doing the same as Ramadan commenced this week. One of the truly great and humbling things I am consistently reminded of every year is the discipline that is demonstrated over this time. Two of my fellow Pearson Education interns began to fast during the time that I was away, however I knew that when I returned, they would have another few weeks remaining. Both the time away and the time spent around them resonated with me quite strongly. I was prompted to reengage with some key pillars in my faith which translates (rather neatly and not at all tenuously) into my existing work ethic.

Of utmost importance is attitude; it’s the ‘why’, not the ‘what’. I had the sort of upbringing where I was taught to instil motivation within myself regardless of the task at hand. At university, I knew that if I had a challenging essay to write (which was the majority of the time), I had to allocate enough time to prepare by reading the relevant critical material before starting to piece together a coherent argument. The motivation behind the academic and career-related work that I carry out is generated purely through my desire to be successful. I am inspired by those individuals around me who strive for excellence and I receive a particular energy from it, just by knowing that things can be achieved through some of the key pillars I was writing about earlier: clarity of thought and expression, perseverance, informed intelligence, patience and integrity.

Through the worst of times – when I’m staring at a laptop screen at 2am, wondering where the next 1,000 words are going to come from – and the best of times – when all the hard work has paid off and I can celebrate with my friends and family, the energy is always churning and is a constant reminder that I need to renew and found my work on these key pillars.

True diversity, the kind that Pearson’s internship is keen to promote, is significant to our understandings of work. From one another, we learn discipline and respect. If one keeps within a homogeneous group, it’s a comfort zone, an excuse for conformity, narrow thinking and closed-minded ideas and ideals. As much as the word ‘diversity’ is bandied around, one needs to consistently reiterate the huge importance that young people have in embracing, understanding and being in active conversation with our growing multi-cultural society.

It is all well and good to say, ‘oh yes, I enjoy eating Thai food,’ or, ‘oh yes, I really enjoyed my holiday to Nepal’, but it is actually a (well intentioned but misguided) attempt to engage with different cultures. There is a large disconnect between verbalising these issues and actioning them, there lies a disparity between surface and depth of meaning and conversation. Yes, I can talk to a person of a different religion or race about the weather or some other mundane topic, but why talk about that when I can develop myself (and vice versa because engaging with people should of course be reciprocal) by asking about the political situation where many of their relatives may be living, by understanding what their fears are, for whom and why, to recognise the traditions that they participate in and the background behind it and to ask to attend them.

Certainly, as a British Born Chinese growing up in a relatively sheltered environment, identity confusion was a key issue and there were often no immediate methods for unlocking it. Instead, I tried my hardest to understand others and their backgrounds, using them as a yardstick to measure their experiences in relation to my own. It was the long way around it but I didn’t know anything else.

Over the course of the internship with Pearson, it was clear that many of the offices were largely dominated by Caucasians (that is obviously not to say that they don’t deserve the job and don’t have the relevant skills because everyone is clearly very good at their jobs – don’t sue me please Pearson!) The core of the internship relies on the premise that ethnic minorities are under-represented in the media and publishing industry. The onus rests perhaps with two parties: ethnic minorities having preconceptions about the media/publishing industry being predominantly white and also the publishing industry acknowledging this preconception but doing nothing about it.

Of course, I am speaking in fairly large generalisations, with the full understanding that large companies are attempting to bridge this gap (Oona King being employed as head of diversity at Channel 4 springs to mind first). However, after looking across (and working in) the offices of various media outlets, my opinion is that a more concerted effort needs to be made on both parts in order to integrate the best skills from the widest scope of people possible. It is certainly encouraging that Pearson are making this effort; I hope it continues for the years and decades to come as it is only from diversity that we can truly celebrate and progress British publishing and broadcasting.

I turned the big two-one over the weekend and after a crazy (and I mean getting home at 8am after sleeping in Liverpool Street station for three hours, that kind of crazy) few days, I came back to the relative calm of Pearson Education. My fellow interns were very sweet and decorated my desk with cards and a ‘balloon’ (thanks Krina) and Helen bought me some chocolate cake which kept me considerably happy whilst I was finishing the write ups.

In hindsight, making friends during the internship seemed like second nature to me and often I found myself interacting with others as if I had known them for a long time. This week, Saeed, Krina and I met up with Khalida, one of the interns at Pearson Education Oxford. Although Khalida and I went to the same university, we didn’t know one another and there was an extremely strange mutual moment of recognition at the induction day. I think that creating friendships during the internship has made me more confident as I am used to making friends in completely different environments (for example, at university or at school).

I have always endeavoured to strike the correct balance between friendship and working relationship in any job I have had and I feel that my method involves offering a lot of my own personality into the working culture (which is why, I think, myself and Pearson get along just fine, see ‘people-centric’ post). There has been no company or working situation in which I have compromised the quality of my work because of my work ethic. Partly, I think this is down to the fact that a boring old company wouldn’t hire me but also because I wouldn’t apply to it in the first place. Being able to have fun in your place of work is more than half of the reason why one should wake up happy in the morning, the rest of the reason would most probably constitute to being able to do your work better than anyone else can in that environment. Again, even in this example of what I deem to be the perfect atmosphere for work, there is allusion to the harmony between work and play.

This week, the Pearson Education interns had lunch with Abu, the UK Diversity manager at Pearson Plc. Abu adopts the role of a friend rather than an employer (which is always nice!) and looks out for the welfare of the interns. He asked if we had any problems and how applications for jobs (internal as well as external) were going. I think the visit was important considering the distance that Pearson Education’s office is compared to where the majority of the interns are based. The 30 minute train journey from Liverpool Street to Harlow may not seem like a lot but we often felt out in the sticks, especially with the number of green fields and sheep we passed!

Over the course of this week, I started to analyse the research notes that I had accumulated. In the past six weeks, I had gotten to grips with marketing but I was very new to the more technical aspects of marketing. I had no idea how to structure my research project, what content needed to be included or what writing style to use. Krina, one of the Pearson Education interns who graduated in Marketing and Advertising, helped me a lot with the structure of the report and Helen (Senior Marketing Executive who sits next to me) advised me on how to organise the data so that it would provide useful results. Leo gave me examples of past research projects as well as some Pearson textbooks such as Research Methods: A Practical Guide for the Social Sciences so I had some models to base my project on.

After finding out that my social style is ‘expressive’ at our Development Day (something that I often quote now if someone suggests that I’m being rather verbose), it was something I had to keep in mind when it came to writing the project. Market research reports (as well as ‘drivers’) thrive on bullet points, quick facts and concise interpretations of data. As an arts graduate, I found this a particularly difficult task especially given the time frame in which I had to readjust my method of communication. I struggled slightly with having to slow down my pace of work in order to learn how to appropriately structure my project, however I knew that this would be a vital stage in my learning as well a critical junction in my project.

I found myself extremely exhausted this week and although I probably shouldn’t admit this to any future employers that might be reading this (or Pearson for that matter), I found myself having 10 minute power naps during my lunch break. Pearson Education are fortunate enough to have a library with large sofas, but after a thoroughly tiring week, I vowed to myself that I would never get to the point where I would nap at work (albeit on my own time) again.