Career Heroes - Lyndsey Hodgkinson

Tell us more about you

I’m a 25 year old Content Creator who lives in Belfast. I definitely prefer to be alone in my free time. Being such an introvert, I need to take a lot of time to myself to decompress from working as part of a team, and I do that a lot of the time through gaming. I’ve been playing games all my life and it’s something I’m still passionate about. Any free time I can get, I’ll be playing some sort of game, whether it’s on my PC (that I was able to buy thanks to my job at Excalibur Press) or on any other console or even my phone.

Basically, you can always find me in front of a screen, which is why getting a job at Excalibur Press was so exciting.

What kind of work do you do?

I’m a Content Creator and Assistant Producer at Excalibur Press, which means I can dip in and out of different types of content, whether it’s social media, editing, or filming. The job changes every single day. One day you might be scrambling to get some social posts written for a client who needs content for their social media platforms (like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc). The next day you could be researching content for articles to be written.

Mostly I work in the office, but sometimes I have the opportunity to work from client sites, filming and taking photos for clients.

How did you become a Content Creator ?

Growing up, I was always confused about what I wanted to do in the future. I had a lot of things I was enthusiastic about, and film production was a big thing that always captured my attention. I loved films and TV; you could always find me in front of a screen, so it makes sense that I love production and everything that you see on a screen.

I went to university to study Media Studies and Production. I spent three years at Ulster University to learn everything that I possibly could about TV production, radio, script writing - I even took a year out to study abroad in America and spent a year at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville where I got some work experience and learned even more about production.

I graduated in 2021 and was met with next to no work thanks to Covid. I eventually got onto a programme called “Job Start”, which helped unemployed 18-24 year olds find work so you could improve your skills and potentially get a job.

I spent six months with Excalibur Press through the scheme and then was offered a full-time job in February 2022 after it ended.

If you could do-over, What would you do differently?

I believe in everything happening for a reason in life. Things definitely didn’t go my way in terms of the transition from graduating from university and immediately going into full-time employment, but Covid isn’t something I could realistically change. If anything, it showed me how great life could be when the pandemic was over and how enriched I would feel when I did eventually get a full-time job.

I don’t think I would do anything differently. Life is a journey and it always has a funny way of working out in the end.