Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a media operations technician and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Media Operations Technician is responsible for setting up and maintaining the audio-visual and computer media equipment in business and broadcasting stations.
Essential functions of this position include daily configuration, testing, and preparation of the screening room, routing of real time codecs as needed for remote dailies, operating polished, professional presentations to company clients and visitors, perform audits and inventory of the tape vault, collaborate with the engineering to maintain systems and minimize downtime, performing quality control of all media deliveries, performing media file operations including copying, encoding, transcoding and exporting as assigned, collaborating with stakeholders to determine the project specific media workflows.
Core Skills Required to be a Media Operations Technician
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A media operations technician should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Organized Workplace:
Organized Workplace is a vital characteristic that helps the business to thrive for long term due to the sense of structure and order which efficiently promotes the team spirit.
A Media Operations Technician must be organized in the general organizing, planning, communication, time management, scheduling, coordinating resources and meeting deadlines to support the staff in being well structured and run the company successfully.
Urgency:
Urgency is the speed that drives businesses fast in order to keep them from disconnecting from what they are aiming to achieve but pursue it with a sense of urgency.
A Media Operations Technician needs to create a sense of urgency in the business by helping the staff see the need for change by taking advantage of the presented opportunities or by dealing with any issue that is holding them back.
Teamwork Skills:
Teamwork is the process of collaboratively working with a group of people with an aim to achieve a set goal within a business ensuring that the staff and management cooperate using their skills and provide constructive feedback.
A Media Operations Technician needs to exercise effectiveness and understanding in creating teamwork using the right techniques in an environment of trust and cooperation with the aim of increasing productivity, higher morale, and a fulfilled workforce.
Facilitation:
Facilitation is making tasks or life easy for others while ensuring the daily running of successful meetings or workshops or business at large.
A Media Operations Technician must use facilitation to process and structure a system that meets the needs of either an individual or a team to help them achieve their goals as well as add value to their lives by making sure each participates.
Motivating others:
Motivating is using persuasion, incentives and mental or physical stimulants to influence the way people think or behave individually or in groups.
A Media Operations Technician ought to learn how to tap into the employee's enthusiasm as well as motivate the staff not just with money but with a motivation that comes through the daily relationship with each employee and creating an environment that fosters employee engagement and motivation.
Giving Feedback:
Giving Feedback is one of the most powerful tools to develop employees and improve performance through honest feedback of the work done best and areas that need improvement.
A Media Operations Technician should be skilled in giving out both praise and criticism in a wise way to occasionally show workers where they need to improve and providing them with an observer's insight into the progress of their performance.
Orientation to Work:
Orientation to Work is the introduction that is given to a new worker whereby he is introduced to coworkers and given relevant information like schedules, performance standards, benefits and facilities, names of the supervisors, etc.
A Media Operations Technician must ensure that all new employees go through an orientation process to assimilate into the workplace and become familiar with what is expected of them.
Personal Relationships:
Personal Relationships is the relationship between individuals who have or have had a continuing relationship of any nature either professional or informal.
A Media Operations Technician reserves the right to take prompt action if an actual or potential conflict of interest arises concerning individuals who engage in a personal relationship that may affect terms and conditions of employment and he should not also date a subordinate.
Resource Use:
Resource Use is the ability to utilize the office supplies effectively while avoiding any wastage and ensuring everything is used correctly.
A Media Operations Technician needs to educate his employees on the rising threat of global warming and the business's risk of high expenses to avoid wastage of any kind from copiers, computers, old filing processes and data backing disks that are sometimes misused by the employees.
Mechanical Skills:
Mechanical Skills are the abilities to solve problems that arise in the workplace, although it may vary from one company to another.
A Media Operations Technician must be well equipped with technical skills to handle any underlying mechanical problem that may arise from wrong scheduling to meeting unique customer needs, budget, legal constraints, environmental and social issues, technology changes and any other management requirements.
Hard Skills Required to be a Media Operations Technician
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A media operations technician should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.