What They Didn’t Teach You in School (Hayley McCool Smith – Princess Productions)

Hi, I’m Laura and these are my interviews with some of the best people working within digital and social media. I only finished school a few years ago and what I found out since leaving was the amount of opportunity within the digital communications world. I wrote a blog post addressing ‘how I wasn’t made aware of pursuing a career in digital and social media’, which is why I am on a mission to do these interviews. I want to make young people more knowledgeable about career options and hopefully these will leave them feeling inspired and excited by what can be achieved. Also, hopefully someone within the education sector will read these to help with career advice.

Name: Hayley McCool Smith

Company: Princess Productions

Job Role: Social Media Editor & Interactive Researcher on T4

Follow Hayley on Twitter: @hayleymccool

What is a usual day for you?

I get into work around 9.15am. The first thing I do is look at my emails and then look at Mashable and all the other tech digital websites to see if anything has maybe come out over night that could be of use to us. Generally Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday is dedicated to finding out what guests we have in that week, researching them and then coming up with items that we can do with them in the studio. Once we have done that we concentrate on looking at how we can make T4 a lot more interactive. At the moment I’m working on an interactive treasure hunt that will take place at ‘T4 stars of 2011’ (an event at Earls Court which we do every year) so I am working out how we can integrate Facebook into it, for example getting competitions and pages made, speaking to IT and then seeing how then can they facilitate what we need and generally finding new trends in digital- anything that’s emerging and,on the side ,writing scripts for studio items and things like that.

You said you look at sites like Mashable- if you do find a new trend or news what do you do with that and how does that effect a usual day?

At the moment there is a big trend in brand partnering. For example, a magazine partnering with an agency  and then launching a mini series on Facebook.  It’s really important for us to know what is going on in the digital industries. Often campaigns that are created for brands use really interesting platforms and their ideas are completely innovative. We are trying to do the same for television.

Tell me how you got your role?

I started as a runner about 5 or 6 years ago working for a film company in Liverpool and then I got work experience at BBC Radio Merseyside for about a year. From there I worked in radio and then I moved into to learning about multi platform producing.  I did a training  scheme worked quite closely with digital agencies. On the back of that I got a job at a digital agency and worked with them for just under a year before starting at  T4.  I have been working here for nearly 2 years now.

You have been voted  ‘Top 30 under 30 in Digital by The Drum Magazine’‘ – Why do you think you were placed in that category?

It’s a bit of an ambiguous area as I think there are a lot of women who work in agencies but not so many that work in television whose skills specifically lie in digital. The area I work in is so new, a couple of years it wouldn’t have even existed,  so there’s a distinct lack of women in digital television but not necessarily in digital agencies. I think a lot of it is down to making yourself really accessible and easy to find, so my advice for anyone getting into the industry is make sure you’re on Twitter, linkedIn and all the usual platforms. If you have a particular interest in a digital area, whether it be social media or branding, start a blog. It’s a creative way for future employers to see that you have a vested interest in the industry.

 
You said to me when I asked to participate in this interview  – ‘’I need to convince kids that working in digital is the future of TV’’ could you explain…

This industry is changing so much at the moment.  In 2012 there is going to be a massive increase in people who are buying connected TVs. These days people are watching ‘X Factor’ or ‘The Apprentice’ and taking to twitter at the same time. At the same time, a lot of people under the age of twenty are getting their TV purely on on demand services. I know working in TV that a lot of people still don’t really understand digital and don’t understand the massive changes that are going to take place in the next two years. This is for a variety of reasons, perhaps they are digital immigrants as apposed to digital natives. We need to cater for a generation that have been brought up with youTube and Facebook without alienating the rest of our viewing audience. From personal experience, it is often quite difficult  trying to recruit people for a digital role in TV. Many people assume that if you’re going to work in TV, you have got to know how cameras work and write scripts and to an extent you have. But there there is this whole area of television that is emerging for people who are purely interested in digital and technology.

To find out more about Hayley you can reach him on her linkedin page.

Last week I interviewed Ryan Dixon, the brand manager at Thorpe Park and he told me:

• How social media drives ticket sales
• Why understanding exactly what you want to do from the outset is so important

Ryan’s interview can be found here.

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