The Irish creative industries have featured in recent cultural policies that have centred on the promotion of Irish culture and heritage and on the economic exploitation of heritage through the development of strong creative sectors. There are policy-led drives for more skilled workers to sustain this creative economy and creative industries policies refer to the need for more training, education and supports for workers to enter the industries. However, new entrants report difficult transitions from education to work and a culture of exploitation should they eventually find work. They feel the need to engage in unpaid affective labour to try to make themselves attractive to potential employers and often are left with low or no pay. Our study reports similar findings, where interviewees report inequalities, precarity and unfairness when seeking entry to media industries. We find a paradoxical narrative that negates inequalities and unfairness and identifies individual confidence and persistence as key to interviewees’ career success. While ‘unfairness’ defined media work for those who struggle to gain it, ‘luck’ used to explain entry into media work.