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Here, Read This.

Julia Evans posted this fantastic little guide to getting feedback from your boss. Her advice is excellent: The more specific you can get with your questions, the more likely you are to get specific, actionable feedback.

(That guide comes from her new zine, which is available here.)

One more thing to add to Julia’s suggestions: Set up a weekly check-in with your boss. When you have regular conversations with them, feedback becomes part of the week-to-week process of your work, instead of something that only happens during an annual review. Getting negative feedback isn’t always easy, but it does become easier to get (and give) feedback if there are regular opportunities to do so.

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How To Network At Work.

If you want to be successful at a new job, there are only two things you have to do well: Ask great questions, and know lots of people.

Let’s talk about that second requirement for a moment. The people I’ve seen succeed at companies, both big and small, are the ones who can say: I know exactly who we should talk to for this project! At work, it’s not just about what you can do — it’s also about who you know.

So how do you get to know more people? Two strategies have worked well for me:

1) Have lots and lots of coffee — Reach out to colleagues just to say, “I’d love to hear what you’re working on!” Be curious, and learn more about what else is happening around you. Ask your co-workers to introduce you to interesting people that they’re working with. If you’re nervous about reaching out to new people, make it a weekly habit: Every Monday, email a new person to set up a coffee, and by the end of the year, you’ll have made dozens of new connections at your office. (Don’t be nervous that they won’t reply — most people love talking about themselves and their work! They’ll be thrilled that someone is interested and wants to listen.)

2) Congratulate your colleagues — When someone does good work — when they publish a new story or launch a big project — email them to say congrats. It doesn’t have to be a long email — a sentence or two is enough, and often hugely meaningful!

Remember: The more people you know, the more likely you are to know the people who can help you get stuff done around the office. So reach out for those coffees, and send those congratulatory emails. They do make a difference.

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That photo is by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash.

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How Do You Have The Awkward Conversation About Your Job Search?

A friend of mine is searching for a new job. She has a job right now, but she’s ready for something new. She’s doing the right things: She’s gotten her resume in order, and she’s reaching out to colleagues and contacts to start talking about opportunities elsewhere.

But she’s still a little nervous about one thing: Won’t it seem desperate or too aggressive if she comes out and asks for help in her job search?

Here’s what I told her: I remember when I graduated from Mizzou, in May 2009, with the country in a recession, and major newspapers closing and cutting staff nearly every week. It was a lousy time to be a journalism graduate. I needed a job, and no one was hiring. If there was ever a time to feel desperate, it was then.

But amazingly, I got a job. The reason? Several Mizzou grads were remarkably kind to me and helped me land the interview that led to a full-time job. They told me: When we were first searching for jobs, Mizzou grads helped us get in the door. Now we’re trying to pay it forward.

Everyone in this industry has been in their shoes. If you haven’t been laid off, you know someone who has. You know the feeling of needing some help — an introduction, a lucky connection, a bit of good advice — to get the next job.

And all of us who’ve been there recognize that feeling, and remember how grateful we were when help came. That’s why so many people are willing to be unusually kind when it comes to talking about your career. They remember the people who helped them, and they’re often excited to pass that support along to the next person.

There’s no need to be worried about the awkwardness of the conversation. Just be up front. Make sure the people you’re connecting with know that you’re searching for a new role. Make sure you explain why you’re reaching out to them, and why you think they can help (a little bit of flattery never hurts!). Make sure you don’t waste their time by bringing good questions to the table. Make sure you say thank you. (Send a thank you note, too!)

The old adage is true: The worst thing someone can do when you ask for help is to say “no.” Don’t get discouraged. Keep asking good questions and making connections — that’s how you’re going to get the introduction you need to get to that next job.

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That stock footage comes via rawpixel and Unsplash.

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The Gym Radius, and What It Means For Your Work.

A few months ago, I started going to a new gym. I’d been at the same one for a few years, and I generally liked it. It was a huge space, with lots of daily classes, tons of machines, and nice locker rooms. They had multiple locations across the city. But despite that, I’d pretty much stopped going.

It wasn’t the gym itself — it was the location. The gym was a 12-minute walk from my apartment, and on anything less than a perfect day, I’d talk myself out of working out. I’d tell myself that it was too far away to walk in the cold, or too wet, or too humid.

I think I’m like a lot of people: I’ll work out, but only if the gym is so close that I can’t make an excuse for not going. Let’s call that excuse-free zone “the gym radius”: the distance from home or work that a gym needs to be to get you to visit regularly.

My gym radius is tiny: a 5-minute walk from my apartment. When I lived in Columbia and worked out 4-5 times a week, it was because there was a great gym on the ground floor of my building. It’s tough to make an excuse — even in a snow storm — when all you have to do is walk downstairs to work out. In Springfield, the gym was a short drive away — still close enough for me.

Now I’m at a gym that’s a quarter-mile away — five minutes, door to door. It doesn’t have the classes or the amenities of my old gym, but it turns out that I don’t really care about that. All I want are some machines, an area to stretch, and a short walk — that’s enough to get me out a few times a week to do the work.

I’ve been thinking about what this means for the rest of my work. What are the other situations I need to put myself in to do great work? If I were you, I’d be asking:

Do you work well remotely, or do you need to be in an office? — Some people work well in a remote setting, but others feed off of an office environment, where casual conversations might lead to unexpected ideas. (Some of my favorite projects have been the result of a quick chat in an elevator or by the coffee machine.)

Do you work better with others or prefer to fly solo? — Make sure you know the answer here, and find a role that allows you to play to those strengths.

Do you like to operate as a manager or an independent contributor? — Again, understanding your strengths — Do you like to lead? Do you mind taking on responsibility for the work and output of others? Are you willing to make sacrifices for the sake of your team? — can push you towards the right role in a company.

Can you multi-task, or do you prefer to focus on specific tasks? — I’ve found that most people aren’t great multi-taskers — in fact, multi-tasking typically leads to lost of unfocused, unfinished work. If you’re like me — I’m not a very good multi-tasker — then make sure you’re blocking out time during the day to focus in on one specific project. Even a 30-minute window without distractions can be enough to make huge progress on a task.

These questions are just starting places for a bigger conversation about work habits. But remember this: If you want to do your best work,  make sure you’re putting yourself in the right situations — and the right settings — to do it.

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That photo of someone working out comes via Victor Freitas and Unsplash.

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The Importance of Glue Work.

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I wanted to pass along this wonderful talk from Tanya Reilly, an engineer at Squarespace, where she talks about a concept she calls “Glue Work.”

What’s Glue Work? These are the behind-the-scenes contributions that someone puts in to help their team. At any successful company, there are always a few folks who quietly do this type of work. It’s not core to their job, and they don’t always get recognition for it, but it makes a difference.

And reading through her talk, it reminded me of something from sportswriter Seth Davis, who covers college basketball. Every year, he releases his All-Glue team: a list of unheralded players who elevate the play of their teammates. Here’s what he wrote in 2009 about J.T. Tiller, from my Missouri Tigers:

The Atlanta Celtics are one of the most glamorous programs on the amateur basketball circuit, which is why Mike Anderson, then UAB coach, watched them play many times during the summer of 2005. But instead of locking in on mega scorers, Anderson instead found his gaze drifting toward J.T. Tiller, a 6-foot-3 guard from Marietta, Ga., who was drawing scant interest from other high-major schools. “He was one of those kamikaze guys who did all the little things that add up to winning,” Anderson recalls. “He played so hard and gave everything he had, and he had a huge impact on the game just from a defensive standpoint. Most guys don’t get after it defensively during the summer, but this kid had no ego. He was all about winning.” …

Every coach asks his players to do the subtle, unglamorous things that don’t show up in a box score, but Tiller is one of those rare players who specializes in doing just that.

He is, in other words, the consummate Glue Guy.

I love this kind of teammate — unselfish, and committed to doing the extra work to make the team better. At Stry.us, all of us sometimes had to do Glue Work. I remember one reporting trip, to Joplin, to cover the story of a mosque burned down by arsonists. That day, I needed to serve as a last-minute photographer, an editor, a driver (and at one point, the last two things simultaneously, during one memorable drive down I-44). Having a team full of people who could glue things together meant that we could always get done whatever we desperately needed to do — but didn’t yet have.

On a great team, you need that glue. Reilly’s talk is a wonderful study of why it matters, and how those who do that type of work can make sure they get the respect, recognition, and career success that they deserve.

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That photo at top comes via the Elmer’s Instagram.

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Side Project Stories: Build The Internship You Really Want.

In the spring of 2006, I was finishing up my freshman year at Mizzou, and trying to find an internship for the spring. I was too young for jobs at a big paper — they were looking for a junior or senior who they could hire soon. So I tried two different avenues: One was to apply to smaller papers back home in Washington, D.C.; the other was to try to convince an organization that didn’t have a media presence to let me create one for them.

There’s a college all-star baseball league in the D.C. area, with a team about 15 minutes from where I grew up. I shot their general manager a note, and asked if they wanted someone to “cover” the team for the summer. I’d write game stories and longer features on the team, and cut together video that we’d put on YouTube. It was a low-risk kind of ask. I wasn’t looking for housing, or even to get paid. They didn’t have anyone who did that kind of work already, so anything I contributed would be a bonus for them.

The team said yes — but so did a paper in D.C., and they were offering the chance to cover a handful of teams, including the Washington Nationals. I took the job at the paper.

But here’s a story from The Ringer about Dan D’Uva, who actually followed through on the idea of creating his own summer internship program on Cape Cod, in their famed college baseball all-star league:

In 2002, D’Uva and his New Jersey high school classmate Guy Benson came to the Cape and told the Chatham brain trust they wanted to be the team’s announcers. No team in the league had announcers. But D’Uva and Benson had an unusual sense of purpose. “They were like laser beams,” Bob Sherman, the A’s vice president, said.

D’Uva and Benson called games featuring Evan Longoria, Andrew Miller, and Todd Frazier. When D’Uva graduated from college and began his long climb through the minor leagues, he volunteered to run the Chatham internship program…. When former Chatham interns started getting jobs at MLB Network and Colbert and with various minor league teams, word got around the broadcasting factories of Syracuse and Arizona State that the Chatham job was the one to score.

D’Uva’s now the voice of the Vegas Golden Knights hockey team — logging thousands of hours on air during his high school and college years surely helped — and the broadcasting program he started in 2002 is one of the most desirable broadcasting internships in sports.

This is exactly the kind of thing an ambitious college — or high school! — student could try. Maybe there’s a minor league baseball team near you that could use a photographer to run their Instagram, or a museum in your hometown that would love to start a podcast series. Maybe you could do something part time — just a few hours on a weekend — and combine that with a summer job to help pay the bills. Be ambitious and pitch the internship you want. You might end up building something that could be great for your future career.

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How to Get a Job at The New Yorker.

This week's cover, “On The Beach,” by @tomgauld. #TNYcovers

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In the year since I started this job at The New Yorker, I’ve been asked one question more than any other: How do I get a job there?

Here’s what I can tell you: This is unlike any place I’ve ever worked — and probably unlike any place I ever will work. We hire uncommonly smart and talented people.

But it’s not just intelligence and skill that make someone a great New Yorker staffer. The one thing that really stands out about this place is the focus that everyone brings to their work. Editors, reporters, artists, fact checkers, designers — every single person here has that singular focus on their work. The things that my co-workers make are absolutely exceptional, and that’s not by accident: These are people who are driven to be the best in their field, at whatever it is they do.

Whatever you want to do for us one day, you’re first going to have to learn how to be great at it on your own. Be focused enough, and build up the right portfolio of work, and you might get the chance to do it with us one day.

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Ask Something To Learn Something.

About a decade ago, a friend of mine was asked an unusual question on a job interview: What’s your favorite Bruce Springsteen song?

Now, there are certain scenarios where that question might make sense. Among them: If she was applying for a job in the music industry (she wasn’t), if she was from New Jersey (she wasn’t), or maybe even if she was alive when Bruce Springsteen was still cranking out hit records (again: she wasn’t). She hadn’t brought up a personal appreciation for Bruce Springsteen either. The question just appeared, out of nowhere, for no good reason — and as a hiring manager, that drives me crazy.

When you’re interviewing a candidate, every single question should have a particular purpose. For instance, here’s one of my favorites:

If you’re interviewing for a job on my team, be ready to answer this question: What tools or apps do you use to work?

When I’m hiring, I’m looking for people who are going to be able to work well with my team. If a candidate has the right work habits already, I’m confident that we can teach them the skills and give them the confidence to do great work. So that’s where my question about tools comes in — because the tools you use to work secretly reveal a lot about your work personality.

Or let’s say I decided that curiosity was a trait I needed in a future hire. How might I learn whether or not a candidate was curious? I could ask them: Do you pay for any news sites? Which ones, and why? Or I could ask: What books have you read and loved lately?

If I’m trying to learn how they approach a problem, I might ask: We’ve been struggling with such-and-such challenge lately. Have you ever encountered an issue like that before? How did you solve it?

If I’m trying to find out how they work, I might say: Tell me about your routines, or, How do you handle your work when you have a lot to do?

If I’m trying to learn whether or not they have a mastery of their subject matter, I might ask: Is there anyone in our field who you’d love to get coffee with?, or, Who do you look up to in our industry?

When you’ve only got 20 or 30 minutes to talk with a candidate, make sure you get the most out of that time. Ask questions with a purpose.

I know some hiring managers will ask questions to see whether or not a candidate will freeze up during an interview. (For what it’s worth: I don’t think that’s what the Springsteen question was about. I think that was a case of a middle-aged manager hoping to find a way to relate to my friend, and badly missing the mark.) But I don’t quite understand the idea of asking a candidate, “Why is there fuzz on tennis balls?” or “How many square feet of pizza are eaten in the U.S. each year?” Unless solving trick questions on the fly is going to be part of this candidate’s job, you’re not going to learn anything about their potential fit in a role from those questions — besides, maybe, whether the candidate can BS on their feet.

Keep your questions simple. Ask questions that get to the heart of the candidate: Who is this person? How do they work? What drives them?

Make sure you ask something to learn something.

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That photo of a Springsteen record is by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez for Unsplash.

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Best Buy (Best Buy!) Did Something Incredibly Smart.

Back in 2016, after a trip to Best Buy, I wrote a post about the experience. I’d gone to get a new sound system installed in my car, and after experiencing surprisingly excellent customer service on that visit, I had an epiphany: Why was Best Buy trying to compete with Amazon on product selection when they already had a unique competitive advantage?

Here was my problem, the thing that brought me to that Best Buy a few weeks ago: My car has an ancient sound system, and it was time to install a new stereo that allowed me to plug in an iPod and connect a phone via Bluetooth. Best Buy, it turns out, is still a trustworthy place to handle such a complicated installation.

Here was my Dad’s problem, the thing that brought him to Best Buy last year: He needed a new, cheap laptop, and he trusted Best Buy to sell him one and give him the customer support to install the software he needs on it.

In both cases, Best Buy has a team devoted to helping customers install and use their new electronics: Geek Squad. And for an older generation that uses electronics every day but doesn’t always understand it, Geek Squad — much like their Apple counterparts at the Genius Bar — can actually solve a problem for consumers. They’re a trusted source of knowledge when it comes to professional installation and help on complicated electronics.

Here’s my fix: Rebuild the entire business based on Geek Squad, and the help they can give customers when making an expensive purchase.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when Bloomberg published a huge feature on Best Buy, titled “Best Buy Should Be Dead, But It’s Thriving in the Age of Amazon”. What’s changed? They’ve figured out their competitive advantage!

Best Buy’s better-known Geek Squad deploys agents to help customers with repairs and installations. The advisors act as, in Best Buy’s language, personal chief technology officers, helping people make their homes smart or merely more functional… They’ve already learned about the devices and appliances they can offer: TVs, sound systems, refrigerators, washing machines, security cameras, doorbells, garage doors, and smoke alarms, as well as Amazon Echo and Google Home and Apple HomePod, and smart shades and lighting and thermostats… [The old strategy was] about getting people into Best Buy stores and onto its website; Best Buy’s future will be about getting its people into homes.

Will Amazon copy the model? I mean, yes — they’re already doing it! But still: It’s exciting to see a big brand successfully make the pivot towards a business model that could work in the long run. Good luck to Best Buy — sounds like they’re onto something interesting.

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“Best Buy” by Mike Mozart is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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