Pros
- Holidays. 26 days a year plus the ability to buy 5 pro-rata. - Your parents and mates will love it. - When you come up with a great story or produce some content and look back on it, it feels really great! - When you pick up the phone to a contributor and tell them you're from the BBC they're generally like putty in your hands. - If you push for it, there's some great training schemes on offer. This is also a con, because they're rarely offered to you, you just have to organise it yourself then tell the editor!
Cons
- Management are pretty useless really. Lots of them have been sitting on permanent contracts from 'the good old days' for far too long. You will witness meeting after meeting, but will never hear the outcome or anything tangible from them. - Each of the 6 managers in my department would take around 3-8 'sick' days a year - unheard of in the public sector. - I was lucky enough to get a permanent contract, many aren't though. Goodbye mortgage and security, hello 2 month contract and all the paranoia that goes with it. - Station budgets are worked out on how many license fee payers there are in that area, not how many staff are needed. End result is that there's often not enough work to do - Facebook is really popular at the Beeb. One or two people will be rushed of their feet working 10-8 and the rest are left watching. - Unadventurous Editors. Take them a good controversial story that you've managed to stand up and they may turn it down for fear of losing their jobs. - Internal pay and progression is worked out based on how long you've sat on your backside, not how good you are. - Moving around the organisation is more difficult than you think. - Trying to become a multi-skilled journo is like trying to walk up Everest with a CO2 mask on. It's a horrible fact that each and every contributor would be interviewed by TV, Radio and Online separately in our station, at different times of day. If people were encouraged and trained to be multi-skilled, this could be one interview. - You will constantly be made to feel as if you're lucky to have your job. - 95% of the content my station produced wasn't original. Prepare yourself to stop investigating and start writing up press releases. - Junior staff are still expected to make tea for their managers - how archaic and ridiculous!