So, I get this question a lot. Like a lot, a lot, and I’ve finally decided to take the time to share how I personally received a role at WarnerMedia (formerly Turner Broadcasting).
I’ll go in-depth on my entire two-year journey and walk you through how I’ve navigated the corporate space as a recent graduate. Buckle up, because this is going to be a journey.
My WarnerMedia Application Fails
I’m not going to lie. When you’re getting ready to apply to WarnerMedia, you need to be ready to hunker down. Don’t even think about crying either. This company has been around for a long time, and even more so now, everybody wants in, and they’ll do whatever they can to get in.
It would be very fake of me if I didn’t mention my journey before I applied and received my role as the Turner Sports Marketing & Ad Operations T3 (trainee). So here is the truth!
I had so many close calls before I received my permanent role:
- An interview with CNN as a rising Freshman in college for a Summer Internship (WarnerMedia has internships for High Schoolers by the way if you’re looking for that)
- An interview with Adult Swim as a Senior in college for a Fall Internship (but I botched this one on my own. Ask me about it 🙄)
Nonetheless, my failed interviews, missed shots, and “we regret to inform you” emails didn’t affect my final attempt. The application that landed me an interview, and eventually a role at WarnerMedia was for the WarnerMedia T3 (trainee) program.
What To Do Before You Apply to WarnerMedia
Here are my must-do tips/life experiences that I did and would encourage anyone to do before you apply to any major media conglomerate.
1. Develop Your Soft and Hard Skills
In college, I did what I had to do. I won’t regurgitate my resume or list all the organizations that I got involved in, but just know that I always had my eyes on the prize. That prize, was a spot in somebody’s media company, working on something related to scripted television.
Please remember to HAVE FUN while you’re doing it! I only joined activities that I would absolutely enjoy, and if I hated something I bowed out.
Through dipping and dabbling in everything from PR, event planning, film producing, graphic design, radio hosting/producing, and web design, I found a nice little niche that would propel my future. While I’m still absolutely obsessed with the inner workings of a well-scripted TV show, I didn’t quite end up there. But, by doing a lot of different things, I figured out other things that I loved doing, and that allowed me to dream bigger! Plus, I also have a bunch of new skills that I added to my skills bank!
2. Get Real-World Experiences
Not much of a surprise here. There’s not much to say, but, get this done! Volunteer, consult, do freelance work, join campus student orgs, become a brand ambassador, do extra credit projects, do an on-campus jobs, take extra classes, start a certificate programs, do job shadowing, etc. When you’re on a college campus, the possibilities are literally endless. Plus, people LOVE helping students, especially if you find someone who also went to your school.
It’s rare that you’ll find yourself at a huge media company with a blank resume. If you’re developing your skills bank, then you’re most likely getting some sort of real-world experience.
I’ll also mention that you should make sure that whatever you’re doing will help you with your future career goals. Personally, I didn’t have much off-campus experience going into my professional career, but the things that I did participate in allowed me to generate tangible evidence that I could survive and thrive at a media company outside of school.
That goes to show that it doesn’t matter what type of experience you have, just that you have experience and tangible projects that you can speak about when asked during interviews.
Related Read: 3 ways to land your “Dream Job” after graduation
3. Get Out of Your Bubble
For me, my bubble was Atlanta, Georgia. You read right. Home of Coca-Cola, Turner Broadcasting, Delta Airlines, The Atlanta Braves, and Home Depot. I wanted out because it was all I knew. I needed to see and experience something completely different. SO I DID! Not only did this give me something to talk about and explore during my interview, but it also allowed me to learn more new skills!
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So, what did this look like? For me, it was moving to San Francisco, which also happens to be where I got my first real “big girl” internship. There, I interned with Uber, and had a blast! I will say that Uber did spoil your girl, making things like work perks and company culture a HUGE part of my work values.
Besides the perks and awesome teams and people that surrounded me, I had the ability to spread my wings and work on a variety of projects that served as a good foundation for my full-time role at WarnerMedia (Turner Broadcasting). I sought these projects out, and if you have that type of power wherever you are, you should do that too.
WarnerMedia Application Process
So fast forward to about a month and a half after the conclusion of my Uber internship. I was back home in Atlanta (guys SF is expensive AF), and vigorously applying for jobs. I tried to use some of the same job hunting strategies I used to land that Uber Internship, but this was a different beast. I was officially a part of the unemployment club.
I can’t even tell you how many days I spent binge-watching “Being Erica” while stressing over the whopping pile of applications that were stacking up, with ZERO responses (recruitment ghosting is REAL!). Being Erica honestly kept me SO grounded. If you need a little motivation, no matter where you are in life, try watching it (Dr. TOM is the GOAT for real! And he was my unofficial therapist during my unemployment. ha!)
Related Activity: Have you experienced recruitment ghosting? Tell me about it HERE
I asked myself, “What was I doing wrong?” I mean I had just finished a successful stretch in San Francisco at one of the leading mid-level tech startups. I admit that I might have gotten more feedback if I was actively tracking the roles I applied to, as well as attempted to follow up on those roles. If I can give any piece of advice about applying to roles, it would be to do both of those things frequently!
Anyway, I digress. I applied and received a few hits from other companies, but those didn’t really pan out. At the same time, I continued to apply to WarnerMedia (Turner Broadcasting) roles that I felt best fit my abilities at the time. I received an invite for a video interview about two weeks after applying to the Turner Sports Ad & Marketing T3 role. By the time I’d received that invitation, I’d been unemployed for about a month and a half. I was extremely lucky in that I didn’t experience unemployment life for too long, but this is rare.
It normally takes, students 3-6 months to get a job after college, so think about alternative ways to make money using your skills/degree, while you search for a full-time job. Also, tap back into your college career centers! A lot of colleges offer free career resources and job portals/job boards for recent graduates and alumni. (UGA students & alum, you’re in luck, here’s the link to career services).
WarnerMedia Application Tips
A HUGE tip that I give to people when applying to WarnerMedia, is to go for roles that require that extra UMPH. If you catch my drift.
For example, anyone can apply to that entry-level Content Producing/Editor role, but how many people know how to manage a whole website, develop digital strategies, make noticeable edits using HTML/CSS, and bust out a whole article?
A lot of people who are entering the workforce nowadays take the easy way out, so if you apply to roles that are a bit more complicated and require an extra set of skills then you’re one step closer to infiltrating the magical WarnerMedia gates.
Also! Be very strategic about adding these skills to your resume. The job description is your key to success. It is the blueprint for the role that you’re applying to. It includes all the keywords and phrases that you need to be successful, so add as much from it as you can to your resume.
Related Read: 5 Reasons Why You’re Not Landing Job Interviews
WarnerMedia Interview Process
WarnerMedia HireVue Video Interview
Many companies have adopted the format of sending potential candidates video interview links to pre-record their answers to popular interview questions before they meet the recruiter or the team members. With this format, normally the HR team combs through thousands of resumes, and then sends out these invitations based on what the hiring managers say they’re looking for.
I did the video interview, which consisted of me recording my answers to a set of questions. These questions are set by the hiring managers to really see if you’re a match for their teams. They normally cover things like past work experience, situational questions, and sometimes a brief written assignment.
Sample WarnerMedia Hirevue Interview Questions:
- Tell me about yourself.
- Describe a time when you ran into a problem, and then solved it.
- What are some trade publications that you are reading?
- What are three words that your coworkers would use to describe you?
- Describe a project that you are most proud of.
Chat with WarnerMedia’s Recruiters
Once again, this isn’t specific to WarnerMedia, and this happens at most companies. Once my video interview was complete, I had a brief chat with the recruiter a few days later. He relayed the good news that I was moving further in the process. I’d been asked to come in for an in-person interview. He’d taken the time to help me set up my in-person interview time slot and then gave me a little more information about the team.
This didn’t happen with WarnerMedia but this chat could also come before the video interview round. This is typically set up as a brief recruiter phone screen. It’s important to treat the HR phone screen like a real interview. They’ll ask about your future career goals, ask you how much you know about the team/company, ask about your salary expectations, and ask you to give a brief summary of your background and professional experiences. They then send notes from your conversation to the team or hiring manager. Based on the notes and chat that HR has with the manager, you’re either moved forward in the process or not.
WarnerMedia In-Person Interview Panels
The in-person interview was about 2 hours long, which in my opinion was a bit lengthy for an entry-level position. I interviewed in rounds. This particular role worked with about 4 different teams, so I interviewed with my core team, and then did 3 more rounds with 2-3 key people from the other teams in each round. These interviews included the team director, team managers, and even the person who had the role before me.
After that process, I heard back within a couple of days from my future manager, asking me for references. Thank goodness I had previous supervisors who could speak to my work ethic (which is very important!). This was the first time that I’d been asked to provide such a list, but it had to be a good sign right?
Related Read: Ask these questions during your interview!
After a few more days, the HR recruiter reached back out with an offer and I accepted. I started soon after. One thing to note here, make sure you’re getting paid a fair market salary. I took the first offer without even negotiating or looking into what other people were making! Use websites like Glassdoor and Salary.com, or other tools to do your due diligence.
This is not a definite process for every position at WarnerMedia, but it’s what mine looked like. I found out later on that I was in the last batch of candidates, and the team was actually about to shut down the application. Applications at WarnerMedia for full-time roles are normally open for months at a time (~3 months). SO, once again I could call this luck, or being at the right place at the right time. Who knows! All in all, this process took a little over a month. I suspect that it moved very fast for me because the team was looking to quickly fill this role.
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It will focus on how I navigated Turner/WarnerMedia as a T3, my promotion, and more!
FAQs About the WarnerMedia Application Process
Do you have any tips for getting your application noticed by WarnerMedia Recruiters?
I think the most important thing you can do is get face time with the decision-makers. There are a few things you can do:
- Figure out who the hiring manager is for the role, find the recruiter, find a member of the team, or find the person who had the role in the past. Once you identify at least one person, reach out to them on LinkedIn to express interest and request a non-formal informational chat. You can mention briefly that you’re interested in the role and you have applied to it.
- Follow and engage with WarnerMedia Recruiters who recruit for the brand and roles that you’re interested in on Linkedin or Twitter. Recruiters are always actively posting positions, talking about upcoming recruiting events, etc. If they post a role that you’re interested in, let them know by reaching out to them. Also interact with them via comments when you can.
- Participate in any creative resume challenges that WarnerMedia might have. There’s been a rise in WarnerMedia accepting social media applications. So far I’ve only seen this for their internship program. If you’re in college be on the lookout for when they open up TikTok resume submissions.
- Join the recruitment events that WarnerMedia hosts. They’ve ramped up their virtual recruitment events and panel talks. Join the events live, and ask questions in the event. Also, connect with the recruiters from the event on LinkedIn after the event ends. Also! If you’re not following the main WarnerMedia page on LinkedIn… What Are You Doing!!? They post application tips all the time.
What’s the best way to find out who the hiring managers are for a particular WarnerMedia role?
- The easiest way: If you know someone who works at the company, ask them if they can look it up for you. Make it easy on them by picking 1 job that you are interested in, and sending them the job requisition number. If you know your WarnerMedia contact well, ask them if they can submit an internal referral as well.
- The next best thing: You’re just going to have to do some old fashion digging. You can start by copying the job title directly from the WarnerMedia website!
After you do that, go to Google search and type this in the search bar:
WarnerMedia + Job Title + LinkedIn
You’ll start to either see people who currently work on that team, people who have worked on the team in the past, or the actual person who had that job in the past. Click on the LinkedIn results first. If other results pop up (i.e. a blog article, someone’s portfolio website, etc.) you could click on those as well to learn more about what they do inside and outside of the office. From there, you know what to do. - If you can’t do the first two things, do this: Find a recruiter who might know what’s going on. Some recruiters list the type of roles and brands they recruit for, others don’t. You’re just going to have to dig and then start following recruiters. You can totally unfollow the recruiters who don’t post the type of roles you’re interested in.
Type this into the LinkedIn search bar to kick off your search:
WarnerMedia + Recruiter + [Brand Name] + [Role Name]
*Note: if you don’t see any immediate results, try different things like removing the role name, or the brand name. Play around with it, and use this method with multiple roles until you get your desired result!
Any final advice for someone who is having trouble landing a job at WarnerMedia or getting an interview?
Please, please, please use the strategies I listed above. Job searching, especially for a big media company is very time consuming and it takes a lot of work. As I mentioned earlier on, it took me years of applying before I even got 1 interview with WarnerMedia.
These are the things that really matter during your job search:
- beefing up your resume (because the details on it matter!)
- doing a side project (to prove that you got what it takes)
- networking (to build out your network)
- practicing your interviewing skills (because ultimately this is how you land a job)!
Also, learn how to use the tools that are out there. They really are making it easier to find people. Seriously, LinkedIn was not popping like it is now, when I first applied to WarnerMedia. So, use LinkedIn to your advantage please!
Check out the following articles if you have no clue how to effectively use LinkedIn during your job search:
10 Ways to Tailor Your LinkedIn Feed
20 Full-Time Post-Grad Internships & Rotational Programs You Should Apply to Right Now
If you have any other questions about how to stand out/land an interview, please check out these articles below.
All the advice that I give in these articles will work for WarnerMedia as well as any other company you might be interested in. In the end, companies just want to make sure they’re hiring great talent who can get the job done. Your job as a candidate is to prove that you’re the right person for the job!! Good luck. 🙂
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How to Answer “Tell Me About Yourself” in an Interview
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I applied for a job at WarnerMedia in late June and haven’t heard back or received any type of update. I recently saw an employee at WarnerMedia view my LinkedIn profile. Do you think I should reach out to this employee to show interest or be patient and hope to hear an update soon?
Turn the LinkedIn Lurkers into your fans! haha Yes, reach out! But also keep networking and expanding your network. I really do think getting face time with decision makers is the best way to speed up your process.