My Week At Heat Magazine!

Since December, maybe even earlier, I started regularly writing to magazines and publishing houses applying for work experience. It was actually getting to the point where I wanted to give up, because it seemed like no-one was ever going to give me a chance. However, I saw an opportunity advertised on gothinkbig.co.uk, which provides amazing work experience opportunities for young people at magazines such as Heat, Empire, FHM and Grazia to name just a few. I applied, assuming nothing would come from it, but a few weeks later I got the call to say that Heat had chosen me and I was due to start the following Monday! To make things even better, I was going to be working specifically within the fashion and beauty department!

The Heat offices are based in central London, so it was easier for me to commute from my boyfriend's house, as he lives in London. So on Sunday, accompanied by about 38572847 bags full of clothes, I made the journey to his house. I was so nervous that night that I barely slept and when my alarm finally went off, after hours of tossing and turning, I was dreading it. However, within about ten minutes of arriving I realised I had literally nothing to be scared about! Everyone was so welcoming and relaxed and nothing at all like I had imagined in my "The Devil Wears Prada" style nightmares! 

I was shown to my desk and taught how to log into the system and the first task I was set was researching current fashion trends. As Heat is a weekly magazine, they focus heavily on what is relevant to the specific week, so keeping up to date with the ever-changing fashion and beauty trends is key. Next, I had to use Fashion Monitor to find contact emails and phone numbers of PR companies. I discovered that working in the beauty department of a magazine involves a lot of communication with PR reps of cosmetics, skincare and hair product companies, as they need to call in samples of products to use in features and to keep readers up to date with the newest product launches. I'm actually extremely shy when it comes to talking to strangers on the phone and I often get very flustered, so having to spend a large amount of time on the phone dramatically boosted my confidence and it became a lot easier as the days went by. It was also extremely exciting to be able to pick up the phone and say "Hello, this is Beth from Heat magazine..."!

Another of my roles was regularly going down to the courier room to collect post. The beauty junkie in me was amazed by the endless parcels coming in from MAC, YSL, Burberry, Giorgio Armani, Revlon, Maybelline, Lush, Butter London, Sleek, Eylure and so many more amazing brands. I also had to organise the beauty cupboard, which involved sorting all of these products into particular categories to make them easy to find when they're needed for photoshoots and features. I was practically drooling over the amount of products in there, it was a make-up addict's dream! 

Other tasks included searching through massive paparazzi photo databases to get recent photos of celebrities to support the magazine's fashion articles. For example, we were doing research for features on bright, colourful trainers, metallic effect clothing and plastic, PVC-esque pieces, so I had to search for examples of popular celebs wearing them, so that people can see their favourite stars rocking the trends and hopefully be inspired to try it out themselves.

I was really eager to write something for Heat, so the junior style writer showed me how to write an article for Heatworld. She said that some of the most popular posts are "Who wore it best?" articles, so I set to work on my piece. It only had to be 200 words, but I was determined to make it the best I could. If you'd like to read my post you can view it here! (It has my name on and everything haha!)

I forgot to take OOTD photos every day, but here are a few of the things I wore.

I am extremely grateful to Heat for making my week so great and contrary to popular belief my days did not revolve around making people cups of tea and coffee. I was treated like one of the team and I gained a valuable insight into the media industry and now have some great contacts. My time at Heat has definitely proven that this is a career path that I would love to follow and I am now focussed on doing well in my degree, getting even more work experience and adding to my CV, so that hopefully one day I will be able to work at somewhere like Heat!

I also received all of these products as a thank you gift from them for helping out, I literally can't believe how generous they were! 

Sorry this post was so long, but I had a lot to say! If you have any questions about my work experience i'd be happy to answer them! Have any of you had any work experience in the beauty/media industry? 

P.S. apologies for awful iPhone quality photos in this post, but I obviously couldn't take a massive DSLR to work with me!