It seems pretty clear that the primary role of post high school education is to prepare you for a career in your chosen field of study. When the discussion turns to careers in the creative fields of media and arts, however, the role of the academic institution is less defined. Creative jobs get filled differently than most jobs. Take acting for instance: you show up for an audition (along with hundreds of other job candidates) and have less than five minutes to present your case. Your chances of success have everything to do with how well you fit the role that is being offered, and nothing to do with how book smart you are, or where you graduated in your class, and at the end of the day, only one person will be hired for the role. While maybe not as dramatic, other creative career opportunities follow a similar process—there are far more applicants than positions available and you need to nail your interview the first time out.

All of this is a prelude to determining what kind of career help is valuable, indeed vital, to your success in landing a job in the media/arts industries. There are two areas where ideally you would like your school to be able to help you reach your career goals.

The first is getting yourself situated so that you will be notified of job openings and opportunities. It’s pretty simple: if you don’t know about a job opening you can’t apply for it, and if you don’t apply for it you can’t be hired for it. Therefore you want a school that helps you locate job opportunities. You also want a school that helps you network with industry professionals so they can alert you if a job comes up.

The second is becoming a person who can ace the interview. It takes a blend of humility and confidence, ambition and willingness to pay your dues, competent but unafraid to ask questions, communicative but not verbose, smart but not smart ass. Therefore you want a school that can put you in situations so you can develop these traits.
There is another kind of career assistance offered by many arts and media schools. It’s called by many names but essentially it is nothing more than a yellow page listing of media/arts companies in your discipline in your area. The actual term for this kind of career help is cold calling.

If you’re serious about working in the media or arts, the career help a media/arts school offers is one of the more important criteria for choosing which school to attend. Questions you should be asking schools you are considering are these: What kind of networking with industry professionals will you receive? In what kind of setting will this networking take place—lectures, working on projects with them, etc? Remember, what you want is a chance to converse with these industry professionals, preferably in a one-on-one setting so you get their permission to periodically check in with them about any job openings they might know about. Many media and arts companies post job openings on an internal bulletin board. You want a contact inside these companies who will check the posting for you on a weekly basis.

Once you have your networking skills in place, you need to have the skills to ace the job interview. While some of the character traits are inbred and difficult to learn, others come easily with exposure to real-world media/arts job experiences. Every job is different, every client is different, every media/arts company is different. The more exposure you have to a variety of jobs, clients and companies, the better able you will be to handle the job interview. Therefore, schools that offer an intern or apprentice opportunity on real-world projects will undoubtedly better prepare you for acing the interview.

The one thing no school can do is guarantee you a job in the media/arts industries. However, schools that allow you to interact with working industry professionals in working situations and offer real-world apprenticeships and internships certainly increase the odds.

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