Laura Hough, @LauraAnnHough works at Message Digital Design
I was nervous about moving back to Sussex after three amazing years in Cornwall. I knew that finding a job would be hard work, but I wanted to move down to Brighton eventually and work in the area. After gaining a few bits and pieces of work experience to put on my CV none of the positions seemed to come to fruition, and so I began to nose around on the Wired Sussex jobs board for something more suitable.
The trouble was I didn’t have enough relevant experience to fit into the positions that interested me. That is when I came across the Sussex Internship Programme (which has now sadly ended), run by the lovely people at Wired Sussex. I must have applied for so many different internships, as they all seemed to have something great to offer. I was determined to get one.
I went for three nerve racking interviews in the space of a week and Message Digital Design, down on the Brighton and Hove border, gave me a call back to let me know I had been successful. It was such a relief to know that I was going to gain some well structured experience, that would be of use. I had very little experience within web design, but have found a lot of my organisational skills were useful in my role as Production Assistant Intern.
It was perhaps a little luck and a little fate that Messages’ then Production Assistant was about to move on to a job else where and after a month of working within the team as an Intern, they felt my tea making skills and willingness to do any tasks no matter how odd or confusing would enable me to work well within the team permanently. I am just coming to the end of my third month here as an employee and I love it. (And I am moving down to Brighton in three weeks!) All my colleagues are amazing and I really enjoy the work. I’ve learnt so many new skills, like using Omnigraffle to create and edit wireframes.
You can find an employer in a variety of ways, and an internship just happened to be the right way for me, and I am so pleased that several of the other participants in the programme found employment at their placements too! There are other internship opportunities out there if you’re pro-active enough to approach businesses. You just have to the patient, doggedly determined and looking in all the right places.