Key Takeaways
- Seven West Media (ASX: SWM) is one of Australia's three largest commercial media groups, controlled by the Stokes family through Seven Group Holdings, chaired by Kerry Stokes AC, and led by CEO Jeff Howard since mid-2023. Verify the current leadership line-up before interviews because Australian commercial media leadership moves quickly.
- The portfolio spans the Seven Network free-to-air channels (7, 7mate, 7two, 7flix), the 7plus BVOD streaming service, The West Australian and The Sunday Times in Perth, national sport production, and corporate functions. Pacific Magazines was sold to Are Media in 2020 and is no longer part of the group.
- Tailor every application to a specific division and masthead — Seven Network Sydney, 7plus engineering, The West Australian Perth, and Seven News state bureaux are functionally different employers with different recruiter pools, craft standards, and cultural defaults.
- The canonical application route is sevenwestmedia.com.au/careers, a custom Australian recruitment portal rather than a generic cloud ATS. Build out the full structured profile, not just the attached resume, and join division-specific talent pools for future requisitions.
- Editorial roles require a portfolio, news judgement, and Australian media law literacy; broadcast roles require a current showreel; 7plus technology roles run like product and engineering interviews with take-homes and system design; The West Australian roles require genuine WA context.
- Compensation sits below Australian big tech but is competitive for Australian commercial media, with mandatory superannuation, parental leave, and MEAA Enterprise Agreement coverage for many editorial and production roles. The post-2024 redundancy round has sharpened cost discipline across the business.
- Australian work rights are decisive — state your visa status explicitly. Sponsorship is possible for specialist technology, journalism, and production roles at 7plus and Seven News but is not the default, and generic editorial or sales roles are filled domestically.
- Demonstrating commercial awareness around the structural pressures on commercial free-to-air television, the BVOD monetisation story at 7plus, premium sport rights economics, the News Media Bargaining Code, and AI content licensing will meaningfully differentiate senior candidates in interviews.
About Seven West Media
Seven West Media Limited (ASX: SWM) is one of Australia's three largest commercial media companies, operating alongside Nine Entertainment and News Corp Australia in what the local industry calls the 'big three' of domestic publishing and broadcast. The group is controlled by the Stokes family through Seven Group Holdings (ASX: SVW), which holds roughly 40 percent of SWM and whose founder and executive chairman Kerry Stokes AC has shaped Australian media, mining services, and industrial equipment for more than four decades. Seven West Media is headquartered in Sydney at the South Eveleigh precinct in the inner south, with the other structurally significant centre in Perth, Western Australia, where the company runs The West Australian — the dominant metropolitan newspaper for the state and the single most influential news masthead west of Adelaide. The group employs approximately 3,000 people across television, digital, and publishing operations, with additional headcount in state newsrooms in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, the Gold Coast, and regional Queensland. The portfolio spans four principal surfaces. The Seven Network is the commercial free-to-air television business, comprising the primary Channel 7 service along with multichannels 7mate, 7two, and 7flix; it competes head-to-head with Nine's channels and Network 10, and has for long periods alternated with Nine for the title of number-one or number-two rated commercial broadcaster. 7plus is the group's broadcast video on demand (BVOD) streaming service, carrying Seven's linear programming on catch-up, a growing library of FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels, and exclusive digital-first content; in a cord-cutting market, 7plus sits at the centre of Seven's future revenue story. The West Australian and its Sunday stablemate The Sunday Times anchor a newspaper and digital publishing business that remains genuinely dominant in Perth and regional WA — a distinctive asset among metro Australian publishers because of the effective single-paper market in Western Australia. The Seven radio footprint is smaller after years of rationalisation and centres on AFL radio rights and related sports audio. Pacific Magazines, the magazine business that once sat inside Seven West Media, was sold to Are Media (formerly Bauer Media Australia) in 2020 and is no longer part of the group; candidates should not target SWM for magazine publishing roles. The industry context that matters: Australian commercial free-to-air television is in a structural squeeze — linear audiences are ageing, advertising dollars are migrating to global digital platforms, and the economics of premium sports rights have become genuinely challenging. Seven has historically been a major sports rights holder, with the AFL broadcast rights, Test and Big Bash cricket, the Australian Open tennis, the Melbourne Cup, and the Olympics at various points across the past decade, and the sport schedule is the backbone of the Seven Network's ratings strategy. The company went through a significant round of redundancies in 2024 as part of a wider cost programme that touched newsrooms, production, and corporate functions, mirroring reductions at Nine Entertainment and News Corp Australia during the same cycle. Jeff Howard took on the chief executive role in mid-2023 after a period of interim leadership, moving into the CEO seat from a finance background inside the group; candidates preparing for senior interviews should verify the current executive line-up on sevenwestmedia.com.au and the latest ASX announcements because the commercial media leadership landscape has moved quickly. Kerry Stokes remains chairman and the long-tenured executive Bruce McWilliam has been commercial director and a central figure in the company's legal, regulatory, and sports rights work for many years. The honest framing for candidates: Seven West Media is an iconic Australian commercial broadcaster and the custodian of the most important newspaper in Western Australia, owned and governed through the Stokes family's media legacy, operating in a structurally pressured industry that is in the middle of a multi-year reset. The culture that produces great stand-up broadcast news, sharp Perth print journalism, and national sport production lives inside a business that is also managing margin discipline, AI disruption, and the ongoing negotiation of the News Media Bargaining Code with Google and Meta.
ATS System: Custom Seven West Media Careers Portal
Seven West Media operates a custom-branded recruitment portal at sevenwestmedia.com.au/careers rather than a generic cloud ATS such as Workday, Greenhouse, SuccessFactors, or Ashby. The portal supports profile-based applications, division-specific filtering (Seven Network, 7plus, The West Australian, Seven Studios, corporate functions), and separate cadet, intern, and graduate pathways. Under the hood, parts of the platform have historically used PageUp People — the Australian-headquartered talent management system that also underpins Nine Entertainment and many ASX-listed employers — but the candidate-facing experience is branded and customised for SWM. The parser handles PDF and Word uploads but performs more reliably with text-based PDF, and applications are screened for keyword alignment to the job description before human recruiter review. Editorial, broadcast, and sport requisitions are routed to specialist recruiters with sector-specific vocabulary expectations, so mirroring the exact phrasing of must-have requirements in the resume and structured profile fields meaningfully affects shortlist placement.
- Build out every structured profile field — work history, education, qualifications, right-to-work status, referees, software and platform skills — rather than relying on the attached resume alone. Recruiters search the structured data for passive candidate pools.
- Mirror the exact phrasing of must-have requirements from the job description in your resume and profile, including software names, platforms, frameworks, mastheads, programmes, and sport codes. Generic synonyms underperform exact keyword matches.
- Upload a text-based PDF rather than a .docx; the parser handles both but PDFs render more consistently for human reviewers during panel shortlist reviews. Avoid multi-column layouts, text boxes, tables, and graphical elements that the parser may strip.
- Opt in to talent communities and division-specific pools (Editorial, Broadcast Production, Sport, 7plus Engineering, Commercial and Sales, Cadetships) so your profile surfaces for future requisitions even when your current application closes.
- Set up email job alerts for the divisions, mastheads, and cities you care about. New roles often close within 7 to 14 days of posting and alerts arrive faster than passive browsing of the careers page.
- Do not create duplicate accounts. If you have applied to Seven Network, 7plus, The West Australian, or Seven Studios previously, reuse your existing profile — duplicates are detected at recruiter triage and resolved by merging or deleting, which can lose your most recent application history.
- If referred by a current Seven West Media employee, confirm with your referrer that they have logged the referral through the internal programme before you submit the external application, so attribution is recorded correctly.
- Check email spam filters during active applications. Seven recruiter communication commonly happens through email rather than in-portal messaging, and genuinely competitive candidates have lost momentum on missed recruiter replies.
Interview Culture
Seven West Media interviews reflect the company's hybrid identity as a commercial broadcaster, a dominant WA publisher, a growing streaming platform, and a Stokes family-controlled ASX business.
In Seven Network newsrooms and broadcast production, expect fast-paced, conversational interviews with senior journalists, chiefs of staff, news directors, or executive producers who will probe news judgement, ethics, speed under pressure, and your ability to deliver a bulletin, a package, or a breaking story on a live daily clock. Be ready to discuss specific stories you have broken, the source work behind them, how you would have handled them differently, and your understanding of Australian media law — defamation, contempt of court, suppression orders, and the operational realities of publishing or broadcasting sensitive material in a litigious media market. Interviews at The West Australian and The Sunday Times in Perth carry a distinctive WA sensibility: reporters, sub-editors, and editors assess not only craft but genuine familiarity with Western Australian politics, business, mining, sport, and community context. The West is the dominant metropolitan paper in WA and its senior editors take that responsibility seriously; candidates who treat Perth as a secondary market rather than a first-class assignment rarely advance. 7plus interviews feel closer to a tech and product company — structured loops, take-home assessments for engineers and data roles, competency rubrics, and clear product metric conversations. Expect questions about BVOD product performance, FAST channel strategy, personalisation and recommendations, advertising technology, and the Australian streaming competitive set against 9Now, 10 Play, ABC iview, SBS On Demand, Foxtel, and the global SVOD players. Sales interviews across Seven are highly relationship-driven and often include a mock pitch, a strategic territory plan, or a case study on how you would grow revenue with a specific agency holding company (GroupM, Publicis, IPG Mediabrands, Omnicom, Dentsu, the large independents) or with direct clients in retail, automotive, finance, or FMCG. For senior roles across any division, commercial awareness is genuinely assessed: Seven is an ASX-listed business navigating advertising cycles, the rising cost of premium sports rights, BVOD monetisation, the News Media Bargaining Code, and the ongoing conversation about AI content licensing with Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Candidates who can speak credibly to those pressures without overclaiming stand out. The Stokes family and Seven Group ownership context is part of the institutional reality — candidates do not need to lecture interviewers on the shareholder structure, but ignorance of it reads as lack of preparation. Dress code skews business casual in Sydney and slightly more formal in Perth corporate contexts, with smart casual standard in 7plus engineering and product. Hybrid working is standard, with most teams in the office two to three days per week, though live broadcast production, newsroom operations, and studio-facing roles are substantively on-site. Decisions arrive on a measured timeline: a one to three week gap between final interview and offer is normal, with sport, editorial, and executive searches running on longer timelines during non-urgent cycles. The post-2024 redundancy round has sharpened the cost consciousness across the company, and interviewers openly assess whether a candidate's contribution would be commercially justifiable inside a leaner business.
What Seven West Media Looks For
- Demonstrated craft in your discipline — published work for journalists and reporters, shipped programmes for producers and broadcast crew, on-air tape for presenters and reporters, shipped product for 7plus engineers, closed revenue for sales, measurable campaign outcomes for marketing.
- Genuine knowledge of Seven's portfolio: the difference between 7plus and 9Now, where The West Australian sits versus other metro Australian papers, what Sunrise competes against, how Seven News bulletins are produced across cities, and which sport rights Seven currently holds versus competitors.
- Australian media literacy — comfort with the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, the Australian Press Council, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), defamation law including the uniform defamation reforms, the News Media Bargaining Code, and the accelerating regulatory conversation around AI and content.
- Commercial pragmatism — the ability to hold editorial, craft, or product ambition alongside the realities of an ad-funded, BVOD-monetised, ASX-listed business operating in a structurally pressured commercial television market, especially in the post-2024 redundancy environment.
- Resilience and delivery under pressure, particularly in broadcast, breaking news, election and federal budget coverage, royal commissions, and major sport events including AFL finals, Test cricket, the Australian Open, and Olympic cycles.
- Cross-format collaboration — modern Seven West Media roles span broadcast, digital, social, audio, and streaming, and siloed single-format thinking is a liability even for traditionally linear roles in news and sport.
- Audience and data fluency — comfort with OzTAM and VOZ television audience measurement, Adobe Analytics, Chartbeat and Parse.ly for digital, BVOD subscriber and engagement metrics on 7plus, Nielsen digital data, and content performance reviews.
- WA context for Perth roles — genuine familiarity with Western Australian politics, the mining and resources sector, AFL via the West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers, Perth business and property, and regional WA. This is non-negotiable for substantive roles at The West Australian and The Sunday Times.
- Alignment with the Stokes family ownership context without treating it as taboo or as a defining feature — the Stokes family has controlled Seven for decades through Seven Group Holdings and Kerry Stokes's media legacy is part of the cultural fabric, particularly for senior roles where board and chairman visibility is real.
- Long-term curiosity about Australian media and the specific Seven West Media business rather than treating the company as a stepping stone to Nine, News Corp, or offshore roles. Hiring managers screen for candidates who plausibly stay two to five years and grow inside the institution.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does pay at Seven West Media compare to Nine Entertainment and News Corp Australia?
Seven sits inside the same commercial media band as Nine Entertainment and News Corp Australia, with broadly similar ranges by discipline. A mid-career journalist across the big three typically earns around A$80,000 to A$120,000 plus 11.5 percent superannuation, with senior reporters and specialist correspondents at major mastheads reaching A$120,000 to A$180,000, and masthead leadership above that. Broadcast journalist, producer, and EP bands at Seven and Nine sit close together, with News Corp running slightly leaner base and higher performance weighting in some cases. 7plus engineering and product pays below the Australian tech leaders such as Atlassian, Canva, and the major banks — mid-level software engineers typically sit A$110,000 to A$160,000 plus super, with senior engineers at A$160,000 to A$220,000 — but compete on subject matter, streaming platform scale, and brand. Sales at Seven is competitive with Nine and the major publishers, with meaningful commission components for direct and agency-facing roles. The post-2024 redundancy cycle has compressed senior editorial and production bands slightly across all three groups.
Does Seven West Media sponsor international candidates for Australian visas?
Yes, but selectively. Sponsorship through the Subclass 482 Temporary Skill Shortage visa is available for hard-to-fill specialist roles, particularly in 7plus engineering, data, and cybersecurity, in specialist technology and production roles, and for certain specialist journalism beats where the skill set is genuinely scarce in the Australian market. Generic editorial, production, sales, and broadcast roles are filled domestically and rarely sponsored. The Skilled Migration occupation lists move regularly, so confirm eligibility on the Department of Home Affairs site before applying. Working holiday visa (417 or 462) holders can apply for short contracts at Seven but should be transparent about visa expiry on the application.
How do Seven's cadetship and internship programs work for journalism and production?
Seven West Media runs annual cadetship and graduate intakes across editorial, broadcast, and production, typically targeting final-year journalism, communications, and production students or recent graduates. Cadets and interns rotate across desks, receive structured mentoring from senior journalists and producers, and are expected to file daily content or contribute to live production. The West Australian cadetship in Perth is a long-running programme with a distinctive WA focus, and Seven News cadetships rotate through state bureaux. Applications typically open mid-year for the following calendar year intake — monitor sevenwestmedia.com.au/careers, Seven's social channels, and university careers offices directly because the programme timing is not perfectly consistent year to year.
What is the difference between working in Eveleigh Sydney and Perth?
South Eveleigh Sydney is the corporate and broadcast centre of gravity — Seven Network executive offices, Seven News Sydney, the national sport production team, 7plus product and engineering, and most central corporate functions including commercial, marketing, technology, and legal. Perth, based around the Osborne Park campus, is home to The West Australian and The Sunday Times, Seven News Perth, and a significant regional operation covering WA. The two cultures are genuinely different: Sydney operates as a commercial broadcast and national media centre with the fast tempo, agency relationships, and ASX-listed corporate rhythms that implies. Perth is an integrated newsroom and commercial operation for a single-paper market with a distinctive WA identity and the responsibility that comes with being the dominant metro masthead in a state. Additional operations exist in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, the Gold Coast, and regional Queensland, each with local newsroom character.
What is it like to work on Seven's major sport rights — AFL, cricket, the Australian Open, the Olympics?
Seven is one of Australia's premier sports broadcasters and its sport schedule is the backbone of the Seven Network ratings strategy. Working on AFL is a year-round commitment because the sport is a core audience pillar, with home and away season coverage, finals, the Grand Final, the Brownlow Medal, and the off-season calendar. Cricket coverage anchors the summer schedule across Test, ODI, and the Big Bash League, with meaningful outside broadcast and production operations. The Australian Open tennis delivers the most concentrated two-week sport production cycle of the year. Olympic and Commonwealth Games cycles produce periodic large-scale operations, though the Olympic rights position has moved across broadcasters over the years, so verify the current rights cycle before assuming long-term planning. Sport careers at Seven span on-air talent, producers, EPs, outside broadcast, editors, camera operators, digital sport journalism at 7NEWS.com.au, and 7plus sport product roles, and the community is tightly knit with long tenures.
What is the career path inside The West Australian in Perth?
The West Australian is the dominant metropolitan newspaper in Western Australia and the most important news masthead west of Adelaide, with The Sunday Times as its weekend stablemate. The newsroom is organised around state politics, WA business and mining, Perth news, sport (dominated by AFL and WA sporting institutions), lifestyle, opinion, and digital-first content at thewest.com.au. Career paths include entering through the cadetship, moving up through rounds and beats (state politics at Harvest Terrace, mining and resources, business, sport, court reporting), progressing to senior reporter and beat leadership, chief of staff and news editor roles, and ultimately senior editorial leadership. The West is one of the few remaining Australian newsrooms where a journalist can spend a full career inside a single masthead with genuine progression, and for candidates who love Perth and WA, that depth of opportunity is distinctive. The print edition continues to carry meaningful advertising revenue in a way that has compressed faster at most east coast metro papers, which supports newsroom size.
How is 7plus growing as a streaming product and what is it like to work there?
7plus is Seven's broadcast video on demand (BVOD) streaming service and sits at the centre of the group's future revenue story in a cord-cutting market. The product carries Seven's linear schedule on catch-up, a growing library of FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels, and exclusive digital-first content. The competitive set in Australian BVOD is 9Now, 10 Play, ABC iview, SBS On Demand, and Foxtel Go; the adjacent SVOD competitive set includes Stan, Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Paramount+, and Binge. Working at 7plus is closer to a tech and product company than a broadcaster in day-to-day feel — engineering teams own streaming infrastructure, personalisation, FAST channel delivery, advertising technology (SSAI), and mobile and connected TV applications, while product managers work on audience growth, engagement, and monetisation. The platform has meaningful scale among Australian BVOD services and the work is measurable against clear platform metrics.
How should I think about the Stokes family ownership and Kerry Stokes's role at Seven?
Seven West Media is controlled by the Stokes family through Seven Group Holdings (ASX: SVW), which holds approximately 40 percent of SWM, and Kerry Stokes AC is chairman of Seven West Media and founder and executive chairman of Seven Group Holdings. Kerry Stokes has shaped Australian commercial media, mining services, and industrial equipment for more than four decades and is one of the most recognisable figures in Australian business. The practical meaning for candidates: the company has long-tenured institutional memory, a clear ownership anchor rather than dispersed shareholder pressure, and strategic continuity that differs from companies run under pure ASX governance. Candidates do not need to lecture interviewers on the shareholder structure, but ignorance of the Stokes ownership reads as lack of preparation, particularly for senior editorial, corporate, and executive roles where board and chairman visibility is real. The Stokes commercial director Bruce McWilliam has been a long-tenured Seven executive central to legal, regulatory, and sports rights work for many years.
What happened with the 2024 redundancies and how does that shape hiring now?
Seven West Media went through a significant round of redundancies in 2024 as part of a wider cost programme that touched newsrooms, production, and corporate functions. The cycle mirrored similar reductions at Nine Entertainment and News Corp Australia during the same period, reflecting the structural pressure on Australian commercial television and publishing from declining linear audiences, advertising migration to global digital platforms, and the rising cost of premium sports rights. The practical meaning for candidates in 2025 and beyond: hiring is more selective than in prior cycles, commercial justification for new headcount is more explicit, and interviewers openly assess whether a candidate's contribution would be commercially justifiable inside a leaner business. This is not unique to Seven — the whole Australian commercial media sector is in the same reset — but candidates preparing for interviews should be able to speak candidly about the environment without being alarmist or dismissive.
How does Seven's culture compare to Nine Entertainment and News Corp Australia?
Seven sits between Nine Entertainment's post-Fairfax mix of broadcast and quality publishing culture and News Corp Australia's tabloid-led, opinion-forward identity (Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, Courier Mail, The Australian, Sky News Australia). The Seven Network side is recognisably a commercial broadcaster with the fast tempo, ratings orientation, and sales culture that implies, and competes head-to-head with Nine for audiences and revenue. The West Australian side is a quality metro publisher with a distinctive WA identity that has no direct analogue at Nine or News Corp — Nine has no Perth metro daily, and News Corp's PerthNow digital operation is a different product class. 7plus is a streaming and product organisation with its own culture. Internally, Seven staff often describe a culture with strong ownership continuity through the Stokes family, particularly for senior roles, and a production-heavy identity anchored by sport. The post-2024 redundancy cycle has compressed costs across all three groups, so current cultural differences around hiring sit more in craft standards, masthead identity, and ownership model than in pay or perks.
How does MEAA membership and the Enterprise Agreement framework affect editorial roles at Seven?
The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance is the relevant union for Australian journalists, producers, camera operators, editors, and many other editorial and production roles, and a meaningful share of Seven's editorial workforce is MEAA-aligned. Many editorial, broadcast, and production positions are covered by the relevant Enterprise Agreement that sets minimum classifications, redundancy terms, parental leave provisions, and conditions. Membership is voluntary but common across newsrooms and production operations, particularly for journalists and broadcast crew. Industrial action has occurred across Australian media in recent enterprise bargaining cycles, and awareness of the EA framework is expected for senior editorial candidates and for anyone moving into a people-leadership role. The specific EA that applies to a role will be referenced in the employment contract and is the right place to look for precise classifications rather than relying on general internet summaries.
What should candidates know about CEO Jeff Howard and the current Seven leadership?
Jeff Howard became chief executive of Seven West Media in mid-2023, moving into the CEO seat from a finance background inside the group after a period of interim leadership following earlier executive transitions. Kerry Stokes AC remains chairman, and Bruce McWilliam has been commercial director and a central figure in the company's legal, regulatory, and sports rights work for many years. Beneath the CEO, division heads run Seven Network, 7plus, The West Australian, news, sport, commercial and sales, and corporate functions. Australian commercial media leadership has moved quickly over the past few years across Seven, Nine, and News Corp, so candidates preparing for senior interviews should verify the current executive line-up on sevenwestmedia.com.au, the most recent annual report, and the latest ASX announcements — referencing leadership accurately is a basic credibility marker that separates prepared candidates from the rest.
Open Positions
Seven West Media currently has 18 open positions.
Related Resources
Sources
- Seven West Media Corporate Site — Seven West Media
- Seven West Media Careers Portal — Seven West Media
- Seven West Media Investor Centre — ASX SWM Filings and Annual Reports — Seven West Media
- Seven Group Holdings (ASX: SVW) Investor Information — Seven Group Holdings
- 7plus — Seven's BVOD Streaming Service — Seven Network
- The West Australian — Perth Newspaper of Record — Seven West Media
- 7NEWS — Seven's National News Brand — Seven Network
- Mumbrella — Australian Media Industry Trade Coverage of Seven West Media — Mumbrella
- AdNews — Seven West Media Coverage — AdNews
- B&T Magazine — Seven West Media Coverage — B&T Magazine
- Australian Financial Review — Seven West Media Business Coverage — Australian Financial Review
- Sydney Morning Herald — Seven West Media and Australian Media Industry Coverage — Sydney Morning Herald
- ABC News — Australian Commercial Media Industry Reporting Including 2024 Layoffs — ABC News
- MEAA — Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance — Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance
- ACCC — News Media Bargaining Code Background — Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
- Glassdoor Australia — Seven West Media Reviews — Glassdoor
- LinkedIn — Seven West Media Company Page — LinkedIn
