General Tips – Helping you take the next step in radio

If you are contacting a radio station, either via letter or email, take time to make sure you can find the name of the person you wish to contact. Obviously if you are applying for an advertised job, then you will know the name of the person, but if you are “cold calling” and sending a letter /email they are not expecting, then do your homework. If this means that you need to call up the radio station and ask, then do so. It looks far more professional and shows you have done your research.

Don’t get down hearted, getting into radio is not easy, if it was, everyone would be doing it. But if you want it bad enough, you will get it. You may have heard that before and be fed up of hearing it, but it is true. You will get a lot of negative responses from your letters and emails and indeed, sometimes you wont get a response at all. Radio is all about opinions and opinions can be wrong. One good tip to remain upbeat and mentally strong is to add every person who has rejected your offer of help or employment to a list of people that you wish to prove wrong.

Be prepared to change your occupational goals to get a foot in the door. Lots of broadcasting professionals have started out doing something completely different to what they wanted to do, and ultimately ended up doing. A foot in the door is a foot in the door and once you have that, then you can start to try and achieve your broadcasting ambitions. Nothing beats working in and around the broadcasting industry. You will learn and experience so much more and you may learn of a job opportunity far sooner.

Volunteer to help. You cannot beat that extra bit of experience that you can add to your CV that may set you apart from somebody else. Getting experience onto your CV that a programme controller can see if you apply for a job is vital. It not only shows how determined and ambitious you are, but it also shows that you have some knowledge and experience which is far better than none at all. That’s why working at Hospital/Student/Community radio stations is considered to be the natural way into broadcasting. Its all about gaining experience.

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