We are always keen to hear from talented people who can contribute to our work. Our paid internship programme runs most years and accepts applications from undergraduates and graduates at the beginning of their publishing careers – including people looking for a change of career. We also advertise for more experienced staff when needed. Even when we’re not actively recruiting, we are more than happy to receive speculative applications for employment or freelance work.
We like to see job applications that are well thought out, where it’s clear that the candidate has put time and effort into learning about us and is genuinely interested in our work. We also like it when applications have all the information we need to make a decision, presented clearly and succinctly.
Here are some things you can do to show us what we need to know about you.
1. Do your research and ask questions if you need to
Our adverts tell you what sort of qualifications, skills and experience we are looking for. The rest of our site tells you a lot about us, so you will be able to see if we are the sort of people you want to work for and get an idea of the sort of publishing work you can expect to do with us.
If you have a specific question that isn’t already answered in the FAQs or elsewhere on our website, then feel free to ask us using our contact form before you submit your application. We are happy to answer! If it’s a particularly good question, we will add it (and our answer) to the FAQs, so that all the other applicants can see the answer.
Bear in mind though that one of the skills we are looking for is the ability to take in information from different sources. So if you have a question, start by checking our website to make sure the answer isn’t already easy to find!
2. Make your cover letter count
Your cover letter is the most important part of your application – we read it first, before your CV. Use it to sell yourself. Tell us things we might not be able to discover from your CV, tailored to our requirements and interests. Why are you the right person for this job specifically?
As well as reading what your cover letter says about your achievements and why you think you’d be a good fit for us, we also use it to assess your ability to make text readable, engaging, and appropriate for the target audience – a key skill for any role at Prepress Projects. Write it with our company and our requirements in mind. Address it to the person named in the ‘How to apply’ section of the job advert. Make sure it’s well formatted and structured, use a professional tone of voice, and avoid repetition and filler text.
We don’t mind how long or short the letter is, as long as it is well-written and centred around what we are asking for and what you would bring to the company. But if you have written a lot of text, check that you aren’t including irrelevant information – and if it’s very brief, check that it contains everything it needs to have to tell us why we should hire you.
3. Focus on our field
When you’re listing your skills and achievements, keep in mind our areas of work. We provide publishing services – we’re not a publisher ourselves. We work in non-fiction: primarily policy reports, research articles, annual reports, and the like.
Tell us about any writing or editing experience you have in any of the subject fields mentioned in our job listings or elsewhere on our website. We will also appreciate hearing about your skills in technical writing (writing instructions, guides and manuals), copy-writing (writing to persuade) or rewriting (particularly improving the work of non-native English speakers).
A lot of our clients value specialist subject knowledge in their fields of expertise, so if you have studied or worked in an area other than English and publishing, that’s worth highlighting to us as well.
4. Show commitment
Commitment is part of being a good employee. It can take months for even someone with previous experience to learn everything they need to become truly productive in our workflows. How can we know that you plan to stay with us in the long term?
Tell us about your goals and plans for the future, so we can see how Prepress Projects can help you reach them while you keep working with us. You will be expected to work in our office for a considerable proportion of your working time, so if you currently live a long way from Perth, address that in your cover letter – make sure we know your intentions.
This goes for the internships as well. We use our internship programme as one means of identifying potential long-term employees, so if you are hoping to make a career in our sort of publishing, or with us in particular, make that clear in your application.
5. Provide evidence and examples
It’s important to back up what you say about yourself in your CV. Show your dedication to the career path we offer in publishing by describing what you have done to teach yourself appropriate skills, obtain additional training, or gain experience.
Prove that you have the skills and attributes you say you have by telling us how you have put them to use in your work or personal life, and what you achieved with them. Specific examples are gold: tell us about what you have edited, the team you led or the project you turned from disaster to success. Include examples from things you’ve done in other fields than publishing, too – evidence of, for example, organisational skills or client handling can come from any job or even a hobby.
6. Let your personality shine through
We don’t run your application through any automated scanners. Every application is looked at by a real person. So, although you definitely need to show that you have the skills we’re looking for, you don’t need to worry about hitting the exact right keyword phrases to show us that you tick our boxes.
In the same vein, don’t be tempted to get an AI service to write your cover letter for you. Show us who you are, through your writing style, your interests, and your career goals. Your values are important, and your individual approach may be just what we’re looking for.
7. Double-check everything
One of the most important things we look for in our candidates is attention to detail. Check everything in your application for spelling and grammar errors, poor formatting and missing information – exactly the work you would be doing for us as an editor. An error-free application tells us that you can do that well.
Even if you are applying for a design or layout role, we still want to see the same sort of attention to the text. We need people who are flexible enough to help out in other areas of the business, and typesetters who know when to overrule a change that’s been marked by mistake.
If you’re thinking of applying to work with us and you’ve made it through this list, you’re already off to a great start. When we receive your application, we will email you an acknowledgement, and we will contact you again if we decide to invite you for an interview. Even if we don’t decide to take your application further, we wish you every success in your career.