- Michelle Tokunaga had no idea what an NBC page was before she applied for the job in New York City.
- Tokunaga says the experience was invaluable and shares her best advice for getting into the program.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michelle Tokunaga, a former NBC page who now works for Comcast in New York City. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I had no idea what the NBC Page Program was or what a page even did when I applied to the prestigious 12-month fellowship. I had never watched the comedy TV series "30 Rock" and didn't know who Kenneth, the show's cheerful page, was. I only found out because my sister knew I was looking for jobs in TV production and sent me a link to the job listing.
Even though I figured there was zero shot I'd get in (the program is well known for being highly competitive and has a lower acceptance rate than Ivy Leagues), I decided to apply anyway.
Now, I couldn't imagine where I'd be today if I hadn't done the page program — it shaped my career and gave me the experience of a lifetime.
Here's what the hiring process and program were like
I started as a page in November 2019 and sent in my application three months prior in August. I submitted my resume and cover letter through the NBC careers website. To my surprise, I heard back about a month later that I'd gotten a first round interview.
1. Video interview
The first stage is a video interview, which to be honest, was terrible and stressful. Essentially, it's a recorded Q&A through their own portal. Once you start the interview, you only have about 30 seconds to read the prompt and another 30 seconds to answer — and there are no redos.
This part of the interview process is obviously tough, so my best advice is to just relax and try to pretend like you're being interviewed by a human being. After I was accepted into the program, our page managers told us that they know it can be awkward, so they take that into account when evaluating.
2. Panel interview
A few weeks after the video interview, they reached out again letting me know I'd made it to the panel interview round, which took place in person at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. It was intense: There were nine other candidates in the room, and the entire process took around three hours. Basically, they started at one end of the table and asked each candidate two or three general career questions — and then we had to give a 2 minute presentation that we'd been told to prepare ahead of time.
It was nerve-wracking waiting for your turn while simultaneously listening to the other candidates and thinking of how to craft your own response. The prompt was something along the lines of, "What's something that changed your life perspective or made you the person you are today?" I spoke about my experience growing up biracial — my mom is white and my dad is Japanese — and grappling with my identity.
You had to have precise timing because they'd stop you even if you weren't finished answering – they wanted to see that you had solid public speaking skills (which is a necessary skill to lead studio tours) and could follow directions.
3. Individual interview with management
Then, there's the individual interview with members of the management team. Candidates were asked to leave the main room and wait our turn to be called in one by one. This part of the process was pretty standard. The interview lasted around 10 minutes and consisted mostly of questions about my career goals and what I'd been up to previously. Most of us come right from college, but that's not always the case; someone in my cohort was 28 when we started and had formerly been in the marines, so it's open to anyone who wants to apply.
4. Group projects
Finally, they grouped us together us up to work on projects. My group had to create a pitch about what strategies NBC should use to market the Olympics. They're not expecting you to nail this portion and know exactly what to say, they just want to see some creativity and how well you collaborate on a team.
After a few more weeks of waiting, I got an email saying I'd gotten into the page program in October.
My best advice for getting through the interviews is to show that you can solve any problem
The hiring team really just wants someone who's adaptable and can problem solve in any scenario. They're trusting you to work SNL or The Tonight show — you have to be able to think on your feet under pressure.
My best advice I could give anyone who's going through the interview process is to talk about how you demonstrated those qualities in previous jobs and life experiences. Driving home the point that you made a quick pivot and took charge of a situation is a must.
In total, the hiring process took a little over two months.
I applied in August and didn't start until the end of November. Some people came from Ohio or Texas, and they had to relocate to New York in just a month. That was one of our bigger gripes as pages; they only gave us about a $600 stipend to move to New York, which isn't much.
There were around 25 people in my cohort, and we had three weeks of training when we first started. It kind of felt like we were going to school — we took notes, took tests, and learned about the building and the history of NBC.
After training, we started our three-month ambassadorships, followed by three rotations, which are each three months long, totaling 12 months.
The first few months of the program were chaotic but incredibly fun
Here's where we had to put all of our knowledge to the test. We gave three to five studio tours a day of The Tonight Show studio, SNL, and The Today Show, which was always extremely hectic because these shows were always either filming or preparing to film.
You could be notified that your tour route had changed at any moment, even mid-tour: You'd be planning on taking a group to the SNL set, but now they had a rehearsal — you have to be able to think fast and pivot to something else without getting frazzled.
NBC news anchors like Lester Holt and Hoda Kotb would often pass by and jump in on a tour, giving their own spiel to the tour group. Around Christmas, we had to come in around 4 a.m. for The Today Show, and Hoda left a thank you note for us along with desserts baked by her mother.
While the news anchors were super friendly and went out of their way to say hi to us in the halls, SNL cast members were usually more standoffish. The SNL studio and the page office were on the same floor so we'd see them around often, but it was a 50-50 shot whether or not they'd acknowledge our existence. I didn't take it personally though — they're at work like everyone else.
This phase of the program was hectic, but there were a lot of funny stories exchanged between pages. We were giving tours during the day and working a show at night. I was placed with The Tonight Show and occasionally Late Night with Seth Myers.That early on in the program, they never assign pages to SNL — the dress rehearsal and live show is all in the same night, so it's a crazy-long shift and pure chaos. The late night shows aren't easy either, but at least we'd get to go home before 2 a.m.
Another main duty pages take on during this time is recruiting audience members for shows and managing the standby ticket lines. NBC gives out tickets to people well in advance of the show, but not every single person will show up.
So throughout the day, when we weren't giving tours, we'd walk around outside 30 Rock and get people to sign up for a standby line; ideally, we'd sign up 80 to 100 people, or around 150 on days with bad weather when no-shows are more common.
The standby line was always sort of a mess. We'd have to round up every single person, about 100 of them, in chronological order based on the number on their ticket. People would be upset and complain about their place in line, others didn't speak English, and some would argue with each other about who got there first. It takes major patience and crowd-control skills and almost feels like babysitting.
At the end of the ambassadorship, you get to rank your top 5 assignments
During the ambassadorship stage, we were working 60 to 80 hour weeks, so it was definitely tiring.
We had a lot of mini-assignments during this time. We'd work the Today Show in the morning, which meant we had to be there from 4 a.m. to 9 a.m., then jump into three back-to-back tours, recruit for Jimmy Fallon, and at night work the Tonight Show.
Right as our ambassadorship came to an end in February 2020, and we were about to get our first three-month assignment, COVID hit. I didn't step back into 30 rock until that October, but until then, everything was remote.
This is also when we ranked our top 5 assignments. Before the pandemic, there was a business assignment, which would focus mostly on HR, a content assignment, where you would get assigned to work on SNL or The Tonight Show, and a consumer assignment, which was usually marketing. During the pandemic, they omitted content assignments since no shows were in production.
I ended up with all three business assignments, which I was really sad about.
I didn't like the politics within the program and that we were only being paid minimum wage
The program isn't advertised as being as business-heavy as it actually is — at least to me. All of the assignment teams rank which pages they want, and I felt like we were pigeonholed based on our experience — if you'd had a marketing internship in the past, you'd get placed in a marketing assignment, for example.
That was one thing I didn't like about the page program — the politics that influenced who got which assignments. I didn't really feel like I'd gotten the hands-on production experience that made me want to apply in the first place.
My first assignment was at Campus Programs, which is the NBC internship program. They had never run a virtual internship before, so I was on the team that was helping lead the first ever virtual internship for NBC.
Three months later, I was placed in another HR assignment at the entertainment and lifestyle group, on the diversity and inclusion team. I didn't have a lot to do, and it was virtual, so it was a lot of sitting around waiting for a task.
Though my assignments weren't ideal, I didn't blame the people who ran the program. They had the difficult task of fitting a hundred pages into very specific roles, and they can't let everyone work on SNL.
Since you don't have control over which assignments you get, you have to make the most out of what's handed to you. Feel free to wallow for a little bit (I definitely did), but then you should try to learn as much as you can while enjoying the people that you're working with. They'll support you and want to help you grow in that area.
There were also extremely high expectations placed on pages, but we were only getting paid minimum wage in the beginning, which was $15.50 in New York.
Many of us complained about how low the pay was, especially because we'd been used to working 70-hour weeks in the beginning of the program and getting paid overtime. Once our assignments started and we were working 40-hour weeks, it was a stark pay difference that wasn't very sustainable. They eventually raised it to about $18 during the pandemic.
Set up as many "informationals" as you can
As a page, you're able to set up what we call "informationals," which basically means you can meet with anyone at the company and talk to them about their position. I definitely recommend taking advantage of this; I made a point to seek out as many informationals as I could to figure out where I'd best fit at the company and what I would enjoy the most.
My third and final rotation was at Peacock doing project management and working on advertising on the platform. During that rotation, I also got the chance to do supplemental SNL work on the side, which was really what I wanted to be doing in the first place. I would work my normal five days at Peacock and then head to 30 Rock on Saturdays once they started having in-person shows again in October 2020.
It was intense because we were still in the thick of the pandemic, but NBC desperately wanted to come back. They only signed us up for the first few shows, as a sort of trial to see how it would go. After the first episode back, which Chris Rock hosted, all of the pages were huddled together after the show, and Keenan Thompson was walking down the hallway. He stopped when he saw us and said, "Thank you guys for everything you do. It wouldn't be possible without you." That was extremely gratifying.
At the end of the 12-month program, NBC gave us an optional additional three months to work on various extra assignments. It's really just an opportunity to apply to other jobs at the company if you haven't been offered one already. After completing my Peacock assignment, they offered me a full-time role as an assistant coordinator, so I started that position right after my 12 months.
If you want to be a page, prepare for it as you would any other job
Do all of your homework and research the company and role as much as possible. I think the best place to start is reaching out to former pages, especially recent ones. You can message them on LinkedIn and ask to hop on an informational call just to get a sense of what the program is like. Usually, we're very open to talking about it — we've all been in your shoes, and I'm sure many of us reached out to former pages as well.
I think part of the reason I ended up getting accepted was because I thought it would never happen for me, so I wasn't in my head during the lengthy and intense hiring process. Don't agonize over it. It's just a job, and you can apply four times a year. And honestly, sometimes the program isn't for you.
A lot of people have been dreaming of getting into the page program for years, and it's completely normal to have nerves. That said, my advice is to try to not come across as too needy. They can also sense when someone is applying just for the clout or glamor, and that's definitely a turn off. They want people who will be able to keep their cool, for example, if they run ino Colin Jost in the elevator, which happened to me.
I'm now at Comcast thanks to the page program, and I recommend the fellowship to anyone
I'm still close with my cohort to this day — you leave the page program with an incredible sense of community and a long-lasting network that helps you both professionally and socially. We're all included on an email chain where all former pages can reach out letting us know about job openings at their companies, at NBC or elsewhere. I get about 5 of these a month, and people even use it to find roommates in different cities.
I found my current project management job at Comcast, NBC's parent company, directly through one of my connections at Peacock. I also got the opportunity to interview for the head writer assistant position on a Peacock show called Girls5eva. I didn't end up getting it, but I definitely had a foot in the door because of my experience in the page program.
Right now, I'm not sure if I want to go into production anymore. I'm also interested in going to graduate school for social work, so for now, I'm taking things a day at a time. The page program has its pros and cons, it ended up being a truly invaluable experience for me — and I know it gave me memories and connections I'll have for life.
If you've landed a highly competitive or unusual job and want to share your story, email Dorothy Cucci at dcucci@insider.com.