By Taryn Champion

The essential thing that they need is guidance. With that in mind, here are three things to remember if you want to build a career in journalism.

Education

In order to be acknowledged as a journalist and grow in this field, it is highly recommended to study journalism. However, don’t think that stopping at a Journalism degree will get you far. After all, study journalism doesn’t make you a journalist. It may push you in the right direction but competition will definitely get in the way. Most journalists today have journalism degrees and you want to give the recruiter a reason to hire you over them.

Add diversity by studying something further which will guide you in a particular journalistic direction. Whatever you do, make sure that you are one ahead.

Director of Human Resources at the Canadian Press, Paul Woods confirms this: “First of all, you need to understand that this is an extremely competitive business. Hundreds of students graduate with journalism degrees and diplomas each year; many never work as journalists, and many others never achieve their career goals.”

Have passion

“How do you know you love it? I can’t answer that for you. But if you choose to pursue this field, you’ll need to have talent and passion to ride out the hard times,” writes Business Insider senior editor, Jenna Goudreau.

As with every job, if you don’t have a passion for it, you most likely won’t enjoy it, which will result in you not doing your job to the best of your ability. Make sure that journalism, whether it is writing, videography, TV or anything else falls under you list of passions.

Michael Hastings, a contributor to Rolling Stone and to Buzzfeed agrees. However, at the same time, you have to go beyond the normal. He wrote in a post before his death: “You basically have to be willing to devote your life to journalism if you want to break in. Treat it like it's medical school or law school.”

Study others work

Rob Mansfield notes on his website, “Probably the most obvious one to start with, but actually putting pen to paper (or rather key to screen) and forming coherent sentences is something that many people overlook. Getting used to writing and discovering your own style and voice is crucial early on.

In order to find your own writing style, make use of reading. Read all types of journalistic pieces, such as blogs, magazine columns and so on. It always helps to see how others construct their sentences and make sense of words. This could contribute and add value to your writing in future.

What are your thoughts? Do you know of anything else that one needs to remember when building a journalism career? Tell us below.