The Sun has relaunched its trainee scheme and hired four new graduates.
The newspaper scrapped its graduate trainee scheme in 2006. It received more than 700 applications when it restarted the scheme earlier this year.
They were whittled down to 16 candidates who were invited to an assessment day which included group interviews and writing exercises.
They were judged by a panel of seven Sun journalists: managing editor Graham Dudman, digital product manager Sean Griffin and chief reporter John Kay, associate night editor Jim Holgate and former graduate trainees James Clench, the newspaper’s assistant news editor, Midlands football writer Dean Scoggins and news sub-editor Andrew Ewart. HR business partner for News Group Newspaper Siobhan Brett was also on the panel.
The four new recruits, who will join the paper in August, are Andy Snell and Andy Halls from the University of Central Lancashire’s newspaper journalism course, Luke Heighton from PA’s multimedia journalism training course and Emily Fairbairn from City University.
Halls said: ‘I’ve always dreamt of working for a national, going straight from university is a dream come true.
‘The Sun produces the world’s best journalists, so to work side-by-side with them is a fantastic moment for me.”
The graduates will now spend two years working across all areas of the paper including news, features, sport, digital and production, and will also spend stints at the newspaper’s offices in Scotland and Ireland and working in production.
Commenting on the arrival of Central Lancashire graduates Snell and Halls, The Sun’s managing editor Graham Dudman said (in a press release put out by Uclan): ‘We were very impressed with both students who stood out in a hugely competitive field of candidates.
‘They are both at the beginning of what we hope will be a long and successful career with Britain’s best-selling newspaper.
‘These appointments do great credit to the quality of training at Uclan which is clearly doing something right.”
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