Lucy Richardson (English Literature, 2013, County) tells how a careers talk and experience working on the student paper together with a marketing internship helped her to discover her dream career.

"I didn’t have a clear career plan when I started my first year. Surprisingly, I didn’t even know publishing was a career until, in my second year at Lancaster, I attended a careers talk organised by the English Department about the publishing industry. At that point, I was starting to get into book blogging and my interest in the publishing industry really grew from there. From my third year onwards, I knew that publishing was my dream career, and the rest is history.

During my studies, I was a part of the student paper which helped to develop my writing skills. After graduating, I applied for a marketing internship at the University, where I worked on the ’50 Years, 50 Stories’ project. Without this opportunity, I can confidently say I wouldn’t have landed my first role in publishing.

Throughout my internship, I had access to the Careers Service who helped me to write strong job applications and perform well in interviews. Working with the careers team also helped me to get my CV into shape as well as build my LinkedIn profile. Straight after the three-month internship ended, I secured my first role as Publicity Assistant at Orion Publishing Group.

I’m currently the Acting Publicity Director at HQ, Mills & Boon and Pavilion, imprints of HarperCollins Publishers. As head of the Publicity Department, my role involves creating stand-out publicity campaigns for our fantastic books and authors, as well as leading and managing the team, heading up publicity strategy for the division and being the Publicity representative at company-wide forums.

My favourite thing about my work is watching my work reach readers – whether that’s from people seeing our authors on TV, reading an interview or review of their book in the newspaper, or attending a book event. For a lifelong reader and book lover, meeting your favourite authors and helping them reach their readers is an incredible feeling. One of my proudest moments was winning the Publicity Campaign of the Year in the Cookery category and Paperback Original category at the Publishers Publicity Circle awards in 2019 and 2021.

My advice for future Lancaster University students would be to remember that there’s no time limit on figuring out your future career path. It can be as unexpected as attending a talk on a career path that may suddenly inspire you to go into a certain industry, or it may take you a few tries until you realise what you want to do. There’s nothing wrong with trying a career path, and then realising it’s not for you and doing something different. Finally, in my experience, networking and building relationships are so key when it comes to your career. If you leave a good impression, you never know who may have a job for you further down the line!"