Tell us about yourself.
I’m Francesca, before I joined Mastered, I was a Planning and Scheduling Executive in broadcasting, working on international TV channels – both in movies and factual content. My role mainly involved strategy, resource management, ratings analysis and coordination. I have previously worked in production and recruitment within TV too. My new role is an “Associate Development Manager” at Creative Assembly, which is a production role in gaming.
Why did you decide to join the bootcamp?
I decided to join Mastered as I had been teaching myself coding and wanted to learn programming in a structured environment and learn to develop games to get a better understanding of technical pipelines.
What did you like the most about your bootcamp experience?
The community! There are a lot of interesting people on the course with fantastic ideas and incredible abilities. As someone who enjoys making things happen, I loved being connected to other people, whereby I could help out on their projects too, and we could work together to create something bigger & better. I enjoyed seeing what other people were working on, and I have made connections that I hope will stay strong for many years.
Tell us about your job search process. What helped you keep up your motivation?
My job search process was to apply to lots of roles that I thought I would be suited to. I also reached out to people in the industry to discuss the types of roles available and what their day-to-day looked like. This helped me realise where my strengths from before the course could be utilised.
How important were networking and community building?
I would say very – in terms of building my confidence, talking to other people on the course helped me a lot. It was fun to learn together. Then talking with people in the industry and joining other mentorship schemes allowed me to discover different roles I hadn’t considered when I started the course.
What helped you most during the interview process? Did you do anything different from what you used to do before?
The role I went for had a similar interview structure to previous roles I’ve had – no technical or art tests were necessary. It’s much more about situational and behavioural questions and how you deal with people and scenarios in the workplace. I always make sure I go through my employment history before the interview and try to gather examples of things that might come up. This can help if you need to fall back on example answers - but in all the interviews I had, there were a lot of curveball questions to test how you think about a scenario and about agile processes.
The best advice I can give is to have fun with those. If my answers aren’t what they are looking for, then that’s good for me to know because I want to end up in a role where my skills match the needs of the team.
What would your tips be for creators looking for the same job/role as you?
I think there are many routes into production, so I really don’t think there’s a one size fits all approach.
Being good with people is the main skill that will help wherever you go, so networking can definitely help you build your confidence and also allow you to figure out where available roles may be opening up. That doesn’t mean you have to be the loudest or most confident person in the room, but working with others and being aware of the progress and needs of a team is useful.
It's also great to have an insight into how the product being created is made, so you understand the technical aspects and jargon. Making small prototypes (whether for games or TV) also helps you work out what you like about the process and helps you know if this is something you want to spend a lot of time working on in the future.
Passion projects really can lead you down interesting paths, so definitely work on things you enjoy.
To follow Francesca on LinkedIn, click here.