October Apprentice of the Month - Jadene Squires
We are happy to announce that the winner of the LDN Apprentice of the Month is Jadene @ Bloomsbury!
Jadene is currently working towards her Level 3 Publishing Assistant qualification and is also one of our LDN Class Reps!
As a Class Rep, Jadene is a representative for our Publishing Apprentices and is able to provide valuable feedback and new ideas between apprentices and the LDN Team, making sure we're providing the best possible learning environment and experience possible at LDN.
We received some incredible feedback from Jadene’s line manager Hannah Sandford, as well as five other brilliant nominees, which you can read below!
Jadene’s Skills Coach:
Jadene has been a hardworking and committed member of the cohort from the outset. She actively engages in each Live Session, often acting as spokesperson for group activities, and this propensity to take action was also demonstrated when Jadene volunteered to act as Class Rep for her cohort.
Jadene has been consistently up to date with her learner journal throughout the entire 6 months that she has so far been on programme, and her entries are always well-considered and reflective - as are her responses to the online training tasks.
She has recently submitted an impressive and meticulously presented first project that reflects the care and commitment that she has shown throughout her apprenticeship. On-the-job, Jadene has received excellent feedback from her manager, particularly regarding her enthusiasm, proactivity and attention to detail.
Jadene’s diligence and dedication, as well as her ability not to take herself (and - thankfully - me) too seriously, make her a pleasure to work with, and provide a wonderful example to other apprentices!
Jadene’s Line Manager
Energy:
Jadene is full of energy, and this comes across particularly clearly in how she has been juggling a workload that is generated across 5 different lists at Bloomsbury Children’s – fiction, picture books, Harry Potter, non-fiction and education – so effectively and in a way that makes it appear effortless, when I know it’s anything but.
She is very efficient, too, and uses her energy wisely. She shows a brilliant instinct for when to work autonomously and when to raise questions with key stakeholders and other members of the editorial department. As a result, when she took over responsibility for complex minute taking for our most business critical weekly meeting (CPM – our acquisitions meeting across editorial, sales, marketing and publicity) it happened seamlessly.
Enthusiasm:
Jadene established herself as a valued and vital member of the team right from day one – she’s been a breath of fresh air when it comes to providing second reads on fiction manuscripts in particular, and her enthusiasm for all types of narrative shines through.
She will read submissions whenever she can, writes a cracking reader report and is a really enthusiastic contributor to our editorial meetings, at which we discuss exciting or fast-moving submissions. It’s such a boon to have someone who has such a broad palette for different genres of children’s and YA fiction on our team, and we really value Jadene’s proactivity in rounding out her personal knowledge in a way that helps the department as well as her own wider industry understanding.
For example, when she first started here she had less experience with reading middle grade fiction and found that she was less sure of her own instincts in this area – and she has gone about rectifying that in a really enthusiastic way, looking out for MG submissions as they come in, reading and commenting on them, seeking out MG titles on the Bloomsbury list and visiting bookshops in her own time to suss out the competition and what makes an irresistible concept, hook or voice for 8+ readers. Basically she’s just generally a bit of a joy to have around.
Willingness To Learn:
Jadene is already such a safe pair of hands across all of our lists – I know that she will take any task that she is given and run with it, including tasks more complex than you would normally expect of an editorial assistant. Particularly notable has been her research work for non-fiction, her canon research for the Harry Potter team and her brilliant eagle-eyed spots for our managing editor when reviewing interior proofs.
Jadene is always so keen to be able to build on her experience, will always ask for feedback and is intent on stretching her knowledge, which has led us to discussing major structural edits together after Jadene asked to see some examples of my structural edit notes for previous projects.
Ability To Take Feedback:
Jadene takes feedback very positively and is superb at building on it to make her work even better. She’s worked with me to develop back adverts and back cover copy for several books, and she has really honed her understanding of different copy for different purposes as a result. Every time she tackles new copy it gets voicier, more appropriate for the readership and more concise. It’s a rare skill, especially with more creative tasks, when it’s common for lots of editors to struggle to take on board this kind of feedback! (Editors are the worst at being edited…) It bodes really well for her future career.
Propensity To Take Action:
Jadene is proactive in exactly the right kind of ways – she’s able to distinguish between tasks that need prioritising and those that can wait, and she’s also great at knowing when a question or task should be escalated. She’s recently been supporting our editorial director with a very complex permissions project that has meant keeping on top of multiple stakeholders, chasing up invoices, liaising with the Bloomsbury finance team and getting to grips with some really quite complex and specific invoicing and permissions procedures. Direct quotes from our editorial director about Jadene’s involvement: ‘She’s a lifesaver’; ‘I couldn’t have done it without her’; ‘Jadene’s chasing up everything – it’s amazing!’.
Example of an outstanding piece of work:
Particularly brilliant has been her work on our metadata – she completed an update and refresh project of all of our fiction, picture book and non-fiction titles to maximise their SEO and find-ability. This involved a lot of autonomy on Jadene’s part, as well as liaising with other teams, including being in touch with our systems team to develop a report in Biblio to find all relevant recent backlist, front list and upcoming titles (always really complex and confusing!).
Her work with refreshing BIC and BISAC codes and adding THEMA codes has had a tangible effect on our key frontlist titles – we have seen really strong improvements in bestseller flag status across multiple categories, which has a direct effect on sales through Amazon and online. It was a mammoth task and Jadene did it remarkably promptly, accurately and thoughtfully for someone who has only had insider knowledge of the Bloomsbury lists for less than six months! Seriously impressive stuff.
Our runner-up for this month is Level 3 Business Administrator apprentice Noelle Wu! Noelle was nominated by LDN Skills Coach, Mati, with feedback provided by line manager, Lucy Cox.
Noelle’s Skills Coach:
Noelle, has consistently had a good attitude towards her apprenticeship. Noelle has encouraged her peers along the way and has grown in confidence. At work Noelle's running the social media department and making a difference!
She's taken on the challenge of Instagram with so much enthusiasm and it's great to see her becoming more analytical of all her designs and captions. It can be hard not to get disheartened when a design doesn't get the interactions you hoped for, but she's done really well to learn from all of the posts she produces. Noelle’s apprenticeship work is 10/10 and she's been a buddy to some newer apprentices on program too!
Noelle’s line manager:
Noelle always brings the energy to any task or meeting she is in, the entire company loves working with Noelle. She comes prepped and ready for any task or meeting that comes her way, with great ideas and well thought out processes to not only improve her work but the work of others on the team too. Every team meeting she always comes with great ideas and always leaves us with a good laugh as well. Her energy has never stopped even when she has a lot of tasks on her plate, she has been a fantastic addition to our Content Team.
Noelle has always been 10 steps ahead of everyone on the team. No matter what comes her way, she has always had a plan of action ready. If I had to give a word to describe Noelle it would be 'prepared'. But during her time with us, she has been able to show that she knows the priorities of the organisation and the Content Team. She knows when someone needs support and she needs to step in and take action.
Noelle has always thrived in any challenges that come her way and she continues to want to up-skill herself and is always looking for an opportunity to learn more about her role. The entire company has been so impressed with Noelle's enthusiasm, we don't know what we would do without Noelle!
Here’s what was said about the other nominations:
Kiran Manan @ Taylor & Francis:
Kiran has shown independence and initiative with learning so much about her daily job with us, her apprenticeship work and the wider publishing industry at T&F. Kiran has shown an absolute enthusiasm for working in the Online Submission team and learning about everything that we do day-to-day. She is always happy to support other team members with their work and projects which has been so very appreciated throughout the last 10 months.
Iain Bhagwandin @ Wacoal:
Iain has been with us since June and during the intervening time, he has put in a lot of effort to get up to speed quickly with all the general support tasks we cover. Iain is always willing and eager to experience and learn new tasks and jobs that present themselves – whatever they are. When the workload increases Iain has what it takes to keep on top of things.
Arinse Uade @ Joskos:
Over the course of his apprenticeship Arinse has shown interest in other parts of the business and has recently taken it upon himself to sit exams outside of his role, and we’re delighted with his ability to learn new aspects of both his job and the wider business.
Lisa Fulcher @ Future Science Group:
Lisa has been an invaluable asset to the team; she asks the right questions to the right people, she has kept each of her projects running timely, she is able to self-manage and prioritise to achieve tasks quickly and efficiently. Lisa is a great communicator, both internally with team members and externally with clients, anyone that has worked with Lisa has commented on her wonderful way of speaking to our clients. She's really developed her own voice, each email is so enthusiastic and positive, clients are really responding well.