Yasmin Evans : Success Story

by Vlad Mares

Yasmin Evans is a former Coventry University student that now is publications and press officer for a charity based near Cambridge called Fledglings. This company help source and supply products for disabled children in the UK.

“They have over 14,000 customers but wish to branch out more so needed someone to help with their PR and marketing, so took me on!”

Yasmin graduated with a 2:1 BA hons in Journalism and Media studies, in June 2011. She job searched for 4 months and had plenty of rejections from huge corporate PR companies in London,so she decided to try Cambridge instead.

“The role was listed on a jobs website and I was interviewed along with 8 others. I was first in and was very nervous as I thought by the end of the day they would have forgotten me – however that night, I got a call and was offered the job on the spot.”

She’s been working there for 7 months now and she launched their social media websites -Facebook and Twitter. She maintains and designs the company’s website (“and have had to teach myself a lot about HTML code”) . She also designs monthly email campaigns.

“I submit weekly press releases and liaise with both local and national journalists, trying to get them to publish my stories – to this day I have had over 100 published all over the country in local newspapers. I also have to ‘meet and greet’ journalists (buy them coffee and pretty much beg them to take my stories!)”

As well as this, Yasmin also answers the Charity’s phone helpline and chats to customers regularly gaining feedback on ways in which she can market the company better.

“I am more than satisfied with my job, it is brilliant – I have a lot of responsibility and am extremely busy daily, which is great. I get to network with so many different people and have learnt an extraordinary amount in such a short time.”

Originally she intended to become a journalist, that’s why she began studying Journalism and Media in the first place, but after a work placement in her second year has changed her mind. In that year, Yasmin had to take a 4 week placement, so she worked for IPC Media at Now magazine in London (celebrity weekly magazine.) It was in this time that she realised that although she enjoyed writing, Yasmin much preferred working on e-marketing campaigns and overall design of web-pages and as a confident person, she thrived on chatting to others and networking.

“At Coventry, we had a web journalism module and this was by far my favourite – the lecturers were great and the resources were brilliant – I would always get a buzz walking into the newsroom in Ellen Terry. Studying journalism and media at Coventry gave me the confidence, as well as the choice, to experience all areas of the media world – and the support from both lecturers and classmates was fantastic. I would recommend this course to anyone looking to make that first step into the media world – this course was a brilliant head start.”

In terms of advice, she recommends that students never give up. ” The job market is so hard at the moment, I sent over 150 job applications and out of those I only had about 20 responses – then out of those I only had 3 interviews – and got my job on the 3rd. It wont come quickly, you have to be patient. Also the big names aren’t always the best to work for, if you go for smaller companies, you may get bigger responsibilities, with more room to grow.”

In the near future she aims to continue her work at Fledglings, she wants to grow with the charity, and then when the time is right and she feels like she achieved all she can, she will move on. ” I will definitely stay in the media industry, it’s brutal, but its exciting – I love having a job where I know it’s going to be a challenge everyday.”