I Got Hired: Audience Reporter at the Mail Online

Posted on: 21 September 2023 by Richard Finch in Graduate stories

Zeenia Naqvee is a class of 2022 English graduate, now working as an Audience Reporter for the Mail Online.

I actually failed a competitive interview for a graduate scheme at the Mail. I was so gutted when I didn’t get in, but they offered me this role instead in a new team and I couldn’t have been happier.

After my degree I took a gamble and did a postgrad journalism course at Cardiff University. The thing that really helped me get a place was the work that I’d done with Liverpool Guild Student Media while I was doing my English degree. During this time I became an editor for two years in a row, and I also signed up to tons of free journalism events!

In my final year, I travelled to a Women in Journalism event as Liverpool alumni Victoria Derbyshire was headlining. I’m a chatty person so started conversation with her - but I was starstruck! I ended up bagging an interview with her for LGSM and it’s still live on the website somewhere.

LGSM finetuned the skills that I’d developed an English undergrad at Liverpool - and I have no doubt that it helped me bag a position as an editorial assistant at Liverpool University Press afterwards - I even edited a poetry book that is on sale in Waterstones!

The hardest thing about life after graduation is the constant failure when applying for jobs! I was getting rejecting constantly for journalism roles when I graduated from Liverpool because journalism is a very competitive field and not many people know how to break into it.

It was easy to get disheartened, and I had some health and other personal problems at the time. But I got into Cardiff, took my experience from Liverpool and had the best year of my life!

I volunteered for every opportunity I could and it paid off - say YES to everything. It’s cliché but go out your comfort zone - I was nervous to write my first piece for LGSM but if I haven’t, I never would have wanted to become a journalist or work at the Daily Mail!

I remember one guy from LGSM over lockdown posted on our Facebook about starting a podcast. I didn’t know him and felt really awkward speaking on camera as a panellist for his show, but it made me a confident speaker, and helped me when I was a youth panellist at BBC Radio Merseyside. This podcast experience may be responsible for me getting myself a freelance gig at Radio 4, which had just moved to BBC Wales while I was at Cardiff University.

So, try everything, even things you don’t like!