When Degrees And Internships Don’t Lead To Jobs

Ella Gallego (left) and Molly Greenshields (right). Image credit: Ella Gallego and Molly Greenshields

Ella Gallego is almost overqualified for an entry level job in publishing. She has an undergraduate degree in Literature and Creative Writing, a masters degree in Publishing, two publishing internships under her belt, and she has worked in design, typesetting, outreach, and publicity in various creative writing magazines. And yet she can’t seem to land a job.

After more than 40 applications in two months, Gallego counts herself lucky that she’s received at least some rejections: “I say I’m lucky because a lot of times you’re lucky to even get a response if you’re rejected”.

Gallego’s former classmate at the University of Stirling and recent graduate, Molly Greenshields, is on the job hunt too. So far, she’s sent out over 20 applications with no luck. Throughout their course, they were both reminded how impossible it is to break into publishing by professors and industry professionals.

Gallego believes it is because “entry level doesn’t exist anymore, what they want is someone who probably has beyond entry level experience so that they don’t have to teach them anything, they can take up more roles, and they can pay them the meager wages of entry level”. Greenshields agrees: “There’s no entry level roles in publishing. It’s just internships, and then you’re expected to already have had a job to have the skills.”

The bookcareers Salary Survey 2021 found out that the average salary for entry level positions is £22,788. And as many of the jobs are located in London, the cost of housing, transport, and now electricity and gas, leaves little money for anything else. After taking into account publishing jobs of all levels, the average salary rises to £34,049, however, the barriers to get there are easier to climb over for people from wealthier backgrounds, who are already based in metropoles and can rely on their family wealth for support.

Internships present another barrier – the unpaid ones specifically. Interns in the UK have a right to be paid minimum wage, but only under certain conditions. If the internship is part of an education course or involves only work shadowing, they lose the right. Neither Gallego nor Greenshields were paid for their internships. For many students who need to work to support themselves alongside their studies, dedicating hours to unpaid work is impossible. It is no wonder that publishing is predominantly for middle-class people; almost a fifth of its staff have gone to private school and most of them are white. 

For those who can afford to do unpaid internships, they can often be just a dead-end alley without further job prospects. Greenshields interned for Tippermuir Books Limited last spring semester, helping them with proofreading, cover design, and publicity. Gallego interned for Kitchen Press and Luath Press. None of the internships led to a job. Gallego is skeptical it ever might: “Most people I know didn’t get their first entry level position in publishing until after three to four internships. One or two internships is not enough to make you stand out in publishing.”

“Unpaid work actually works against you,” said Gallego; she considers it a “cycle of poverty and unpaid exploitation”. The 2018 report from the Sutton Trust found that people who have completed three or more unpaid internships were more likely to be unemployed than people with paid internships or even no internships on their CV. 

For Greenshields, publishing has been a lifelong dream: “I’ve always been a huge reader, I read all the time, and I consume books, and I have consumed them since I got into high school and throughout high school. And I just remember one day, a family member saying wouldn’t you love to be part of creating those books, and from that point I was like okay publishing, and then I was 100% set on it.”

Gallego likewise chose publishing because of her love for books. However, unlike Greenshields, who is from England, Gallego is fighting another barrier – visa requirements. As an American citizen, she will have to leave the islands in January, unless she pays £2,000 to apply for a graduate visa, which would give her extra two years in the country.

The window for applying is slim though. She needs to send the application in after she gets her diploma in November, but before her current visa expires in January. With Christmas holidays in the way, it all depends on the university being prompt. Even if she got the visa, she’d have to find an employer who would extend her visa after two years. Currently, there is no such thing as a freelance visa in the UK; an employer needs to sponsor you.

Frustrated with the inability to break into publishing, Gallego is now mulling over going into communications instead. “My allegory for publishing is that it’s the Titanic, it’s going to hit an iceberg, and I’m like, is it worth saving the titanic, or should you be on the life raft, watching it go down?

“If I leave publishing, if I am not the person fighting for unionisation or creating my own publishing that is leading in the way of non-hierarchical, everybody has liveable salary, everybody has the same salary, we are part of a union, we are strong, we pay for internships – is that even feasible? Is it even possible with how the industry is set up to not allow for change? Do I even want to put in the energy to do that when I could flop and fail?”