Tag: advice for recent grads

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Five Rules for Getting a Job in Journalism in 2021.

So you’ve just graduated — congrats! — and you’re trying to get that first job in journalism. Or you’ve been working in the industry for a while, and you’re hoping to get that next job.

I’ve worked at startups (BuzzFeed), established newsrooms (The New Yorker), and launched two journalism businesses (Stry.us, Inbox Collective). I’ve been lucky enough to hire for my teams, so I’ve got perspective on both sides of the hiring process.

Recently, I got the chance to talk with a class of soon-to-be-grads about how they could think about getting their first job in the field. I shared five key rules for them. I hope these rules will help them — and might help you, too.

1.) Your side project is your ticket in — Launch something! At BuzzFeed, everyone had a side project, and I’ve been a believer in these ever since. It’s never been easier to launch a newsletter, a podcast, a blog, an Instagram, or even a print publication. Show hiring managers what you can do and how you work by launching something of your own.

2.) You don’t need to wait for the traditional gatekeepers. — So many early career journalists only apply to big, established newsrooms. But in some cases, applying to those types of newsrooms might be the wrong approach for you. You might get more experience and more opportunity at a smaller outlet. Project Oasis, for instance, maintains a list of more than 700 local newsrooms, many of which are actively hiring right now. Be willing to start small, and work at a place where you can really grow as a journalist. Don’t worry about the title or the size of the org — find a great team where you can learn a lot and do great work.

3.) Even if they’re not hiring, you can ask if there’s a way to help. — Reach out and see if there’s a way to get involved. Maybe there’s an opportunity to freelance or intern. Maybe they’d be open to bringing you on a role that isn’t listed. Maybe they need additional help on a specific project. Reach out — you never know when you might find an editor or a manager who’s willing to give you a shot.

4.) You’re as good as your ability to stay in touch. — If you do get a chance to chat with someone in a newsroom, even if it’s just for a coffee, follow up and say thank you. Buy stationary and send them an actual thank you note. And stay in touch over the coming years. When you see them publish a great story, shoot them a congratulatory note. So many people never follow up. Don’t be that person!

5.) Your next job might be one you create. — There’s never been a better time to create your own newsroom. There are amazing tools — for publishing (CMS), distribution (email, social media, audio), and monetization — to allow you to create a publication. Many of these tools didn’t exist even a few years ago, but they do now. Maybe your first job isn’t at a traditional newsroom — it’s you and a few friends building your own thing. The tools, training — and in many cases, the funding — is there, if you want to start something new.

Remember: We need people like you to tell these stories, and I hope you’ll pursue a career in journalism. Whatever you choose to do next, I wish you good luck. 

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That photo was taken by Hatice Yardım for Unsplash.

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Be Prepared.

When I interviewed a candidate at BuzzFeed for a role on the newsletter team, I always asked the same first question: Do you subscribe to any of our newsletters?

These were candidates who’d applied specifically for a job on the newsletter team. They’d submitted resumes and cover letters for the role. We’d read through them, picked the candidates we’d liked, and set up a quick phone screener — 20 minutes on the phone to ask a few questions. Each candidate had a few days to prepare for that interview.

And yet: Probably forty percent of the candidates I interviewed immediately said “no” to my simple question: Do you subscribe to any of our newsletters?

I was always astonished by that. How could so many people know absolutely nothing about the types of work we’d done? Signing up for a newsletter was remarkably easy, and free. And yet two out of every five candidates failed to do even that.

In all the interviews I did, I can’t recall a single candidate who answered “no” and got a second interview.

I tell that story now because I’m reading “In the Land of Men,” a memoir by Adrienne Miller about her time working at GQ and Esquire. In it, she tells the story of her first day of work, walking through the office with GQ editor David Granger:

“As Granger and I spoke, it became apparent that I did have one thing going for me: I was able to talk about past issues of GQ. Later, he said that I got the job because I was the one person he’d interviewed who’d actually even bothered to open the magazine.”

“ ‘Never underestimate how unprepared most people are,’ he would later observe, correctly.”

The bar to clear in a first interview is pretty low: Show up on time, have a few questions ready to ask, and make sure you’re knowledgeable about the place you’re interviewing at. That minimum effort won’t get you the job — but it might be enough to get you to the second round of interviews.

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Try It Before You Realize How Hard It Is.

When I was 17, I got an summer internship working at a paper on Nantucket. It didn’t pay much, but the paper was small — there were maybe eight of us, total, putting out a newspaper every Wednesday — and they gave me opportunities to write. For a high school junior, it was a great job.

Being young had its advantages: I was willing to say “yes” to assignments that more veteran reporters would have been wise enough to say “no” to. I pitched a weekly profile on local workers, a new police blotter column, and several big feature stories. It was a lot for one reporter to take on, but I didn’t have enough experience to know better.

But nothing really compared to something my boss, Don, pitched to me. He’d seen a weekly paper in another town that had printed an ambitious special section. They’d dispatched a handful of reporters and photographers, in shifts, to document a single day in their town, and then packaged it all together into a special section on 24 hours in the life of their city.

Don suggested that instead of having a team of reporters and photographers attempt that, I could do it alone. 24 hours, a bunch of stories and original photos — by myself.

No one else on staff would have been dumb enough to agree to that. Of course, I did.

So what happened? That day, I set out with a camera, a notepad, and my RadioShack tape recorder. (It was 2004.) It was a quite the day: I interviewed people all over the island, ate lobster on the beach (for journalism! And also for my first-ever expense report!), and reported a story from a nightclub that wouldn’t legally allow me to enter their premises for another four years. At one point, in the middle of the afternoon, I stopped by the office to hand over a flash drive of photos. I remember one of my co-workers semi-jokingly announcing, “Look! He’s still alive!”

In the end, we turned my package of stories and photos into its own eight-page section of the paper. My bosses were thrilled, and so was I: By trying something that no one else was willing to try, I ended up with my own section of the paper. Not bad for a summer intern!

Naïveté was my secret weapon that summer. I wasn’t scared or nervous or overwhelmed by anything at the paper — just excited to try new things. That mentality got me all sorts of exciting opportunities. Over and over, I tried things because I didn’t know how hard they were supposed to be. Fifteen years later, I’ve learned how hard many of these things really are — but I’m still trying to push for new things anyway.

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That’s a photo I took a few years ago, flying above Nantucket.

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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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You Are Not Behind.

A J-school student told me a few weeks ago that she’s worried she’s behind when it comes to her career. Her peers have more experience or have won more awards than she has. She sees college journalists at other schools who seem to be a few steps ahead of her professionally.

“Am I behind?” she asked. “Should I be worried?”

I told her that I remembered feeling the same way in college. Back in 2005, I remember watching ESPN and seeing a headline-making interview that NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens had done with a college sophomore at Syracuse. I’d always thought I was a little ahead of the pack: I’d been published in The Boston Globe, had written for a few different papers at that point, and was in journalism school at Mizzou. I’d won a national award for high school journalists. I was doing pretty well!

And then I watched that ESPN interview and thought, There’s someone else ahead of me! I’m falling behind!

How were they “ahead,” exactly? They’d done something different — something pretty exceptional — and it scared me to think that there were others doing great work, too.

But a few years later, I started to look back and wonder why I’d been so nervous in the first place. I wrote:

I get jealous, sometimes, when I see 25 year olds who are way ahead of where I am. I get competitive. How’d that person pull off a book deal at 25? How’d they get a movie done? How’d they make their first million already?

But then I remember that this isn’t a 400-meter race. We’re not all shooting for the same end goal.

We’re all on different paths. We’re all running our own races at our own speeds.

It’s tough to tell where each of us is going now. It’s only with time — a decade, maybe more — that we’ll start to understand where we’ve been going.

In the meantime, what really matters is that we keep going.

That’s what I reminded that J-school student: There is no race. There is no ahead, or behind. There’s only the path you take, at the speed that suits you best. Keep moving forward — launch things, try things, keep learning. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done at 20, 30, or 70. There’s always more road ahead of you, and new opportunities. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done today — your best work is still ahead.

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That amazing dirtbike race photo is by Simon Moog on Unsplash.

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6 Simple Tips For Writing A Great Resume.

Here’s a not-all-that-surprising declaration, based on 5+ years of looking at resumes: Most resumes aren’t very good. They suffer from the same basic issues in design and editing.

But you — the future job applicant! — can do better! Here’s a simple list of ways to make your resume better right away:

1) Use a template from Google Docs to design your resume — They’re clean, they’re simple, they’re easy to share, they’re free, and they’re designed to help you get all of the key information onto a single page. (They also come with a matching cover letter template, which is a nice touch.) Use their templates — you career’s too important for a resume created in Word!

2) Showcase what you’ve actually done in a role — Every bullet in your resume is an opportunity to show me what you’ve actually done, and how much of it you did. If you had an internship in college at a newspaper, saying, “Wrote stories about _____” is OK, but “Wrote 20 feature stories about _____” is far better.  The more you can show the size of your impact, the better.

3) Be strategic about where you place the education section — If you’re in school or just graduated, education should probably be the first thing on your resume. Recruiters will judge a resume differently if you’re in school or a recent grad. If you’re a few years out, it probably belongs towards the bottom of the resume.

4) Throw in a fast fact about yourself, but only if it’s really great — If you’ve achieved some sort of truly unusual feat — maybe you won your university’s Scrabble tournament, or you’re a championship slam poet — it actually might be worth including! The goal with your resume is to catch a recruiter’s eye, and a detail like that might help you stand out from the crowd. But it would have to be a heck of a tidbit to be worthy. (It’s great that you’re the captain of your rec softball team, but that’s not quite the level of excellence that will help here. And if you do include a fast fact, limit it to one, please!)

5) Put everything in the past tense — I’ve seen resumes where some roles are in present tense, and some are in past tense, and it gets a little unwieldy. Keep it simple, and keep it all in past tense — even your current job.

6) Keep it to one page — A recruiter is using your resume to decide if they’d like to know more about you. The resume is a first glance, not a deep dive. No matter how much you’ve done, you can keep it to a page.

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Don’t Make Business Cards. Build Your Own Website Instead.

I talked to a group of journalism students last week, and they had a professional question: Do students need their own business cards?

The short answer: I don’t think business cards help much with the job search. Every journalism student’s business card looks pretty much the same: Your name, your contact information, and a line somewhere that says “Reporter/Editor/Journalist.” When you’ve got three inches of space to work with, you can’t say much.

If I were in J-school, I’d focus instead on the space where you can say a lot more: Your own domain. I’ve given this advice before, and I’ll say it again:

When someone gets your resume, the first thing they’re going to do is Google your name. And if you’re pitching an organization on your digital skills, you need something better than yourname.wix.com. Go to domainr.com and search for your name. If you can buy yourname.com, do it. If that’s taken, try something that fits your career aspirations: yournamereports.com, byyourname.com, yournamestories.com, etc. Build a website that showcases your reporting, and make it easy for someone to contact you. (You wouldn’t believe how many people build websites with no contact information!)

Then take the next step: Open up an incognito window, and search for your own name. (That way, you’ll see results that aren’t personalized for you.) What comes up? Is there anything on there you wouldn’t want a potential employer to see?

Your goal should be to get your own domain to the top of the page — but at the very least, you want it on the first page. (If you built your site with WordPress, use a tool like All in One SEO to set up your site correctly for Google.) Make sure that what comes up represents you: a LinkedIn profile (and yes, take a minute and personalize your LinkedIn URL), a Twitter account, and clips or work from your previous experiences.

If you meet someone new, remember: What matters most is what they’ll see when they Google you. Make sure that what shows up there — your personal domain, your professional social media profiles, etc. — showcases who you are and what you want to do next in your career.

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That photo is by Nick Adams from Unsplash.

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Why A Side Project Can Be So Valuable.

If you’re still in school, or just out of college, you should really have a side project. If you’ve got a job or an internship for the summer, that’s great — but that gig probably isn’t showcasing your work in the way you want. It’s up to do to build your own showcase.

But you should also understand this: As someone who’s hired (and, at this moment, hiring), when I look at your side project, I’m going to be asking two questions:

1) Does that side project make you better at the thing you really want to do?

2) Does it reveal something about you?

Let’s take those one at a time:

Does it make you better at the thing you want to do? — If you’re applying to a newsletter job, and you’ve got a side TinyLetter, I’ll be intrigued. I’ll want to see how you’re applying relevant newsletter skills on a personal level: Are you running A/B tests? How are you measuring success, and what tools are you using to measure it? If you’ve been working in a non-editorial job for a few years (like marketing or advertising), having a TinyLetter as a showcase for your skills might be a good way to prove that you’re ready to transition to a newsletter job, and to show me that you’ve been honing your skills through that side project.

Does it reveal something about you? — Maybe you’re applying to that newsletter job but your side project doesn’t have anything to do with newsletters. Maybe — and I’ll use a random-but-real example from two of my old co-workers — you launched a podcast about the Baby-Sitters Club series.

Making that podcast won’t tell me a lot about your ability to edit a newsletter, but it’s still relevant, because it tells me a lot about the way you think and the way you take on big tasks. Just from listening to your podcast and talking with you about it, I’ll be able to learn a lot: What you’re interested in, how you approach a new project, what kind of tools you use to stay organized, and how you collaborate with others.

I can’t say this enough: Start something new. It’ll give you an outlet for your creativity, showcase your work — and it might help you get hired.

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That stock footage at the top doesn’t have much to do with this post — I just kinda liked it. It comes via Unsplash, my favorite site for stock photos, and photographer Stephen Di Donato.

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Some People Specialize, Some Are Versatile.

A basketball team can put five players on the floor at one time. A baseball team can have 25 players on the roster on game day.

So how do you build the best possible roster with those limitations?

I’ve been fascinated by some of the ways teams are trying to address that question. In basketball, the buzzword of the moment is “positionless.” Instead of trying to find players that fit traditional roles — like a big, burly center to play in the post — teams are looking for players that can fit multiple roles. In today’s NBA, the ideal big man might be asked to dribble the ball up the floor, hit 3s, and also defend inside.

Of course, it’s not easy to find players who can do that. LeBron James is built like a center and passes like a guard — but he’s a once-in-a-generation type player. The challenge is how to find lesser talents that still bring a meaningful combination of skills — scoring, passing, defense — to the table.

Baseball started moving in this direction last season, when the San Diego Padres tried to use their backup catcher, Christian Bethancourt, as an occasional pitcher. (He got hurt in the first month and only played in eight games.) Still, the idea made a lot of sense. On a baseball team, you’ve got eight starting position players and five starting pitchers. That leaves 12 spots for your backups: 7 or 8 pitchers, and 4 or 5 players for the rest of the field. But if you can maximize those spots by having a pitcher who can also field, it opens up new possibilities for a team. Suddenly, you can keep an extra player on your roster — a sixth starting pitcher, an extra pinch hitter — instead.

This year, the Los Angeles Angels have a player on their roster who might really kickstart a trend towards versatility: Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese-born player who came to the majors this year with LeBron-like hype. He’s one of the Angels’ starting pitchers, and when he’s not pitching, he’s the team’s designated hitter. It’s only the second week of the season, but so far, it’s going incredibly well:

The old model would have forced Ohtani to specialize: You can hit, or you can pitch, but not both. But if Ohtani continues to play at a high level at two positions, this might change the game for good. It could take a few years for the impact to trickle down to college and high school ball, but eventually, you’ll see more players who can serve multiple roles on a team.

For anyone early in their non-sporting careers, it’s worth thinking about what’s happening here and how it might impact your career. If you had the choice, would you rather pitch yourself as a specialist, or as someone who’s versatile?

There are some limits to versatility: I remember pitching myself after college as a do-it-all backpack journalist, someone who could shoot video, write and report, handle social media, and edit stories. The truth was: I was a hard-working reporter, but barely proficient at the other skills. There’s a big gap between “I can produce video” and “I’m great at producing video.” Companies hire for excellence, not competence.

I wish I’d pitched myself as more of a compromise, a combination of versatility and focus. I was a strong writer, a good reporter, and starting to develop as a photographer. Those three skills made me an interesting candidate. But the more I added in — I talked about work I’d done with interactive graphics in Flash, and experience with data — the more it looked like I was trying to pad the resume.

The point is: Versatility can be an asset. It’s something that might get you in the door at a place that only has so many spots on their team. But if you’re going to pitch yourself that way, you’ve got to be good at everything you do — recruiters will see through it if you’re just adding fluff to your resume.

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How To Pick a College.

I remember the first time I visited Mizzou. It was towards the end of the winter — maybe late February or early March. There weren’t flights to Columbia back then, so you had to fly to St. Louis, and then take the MoX shuttle to town. (Meet near the mural of astronauts at baggage claim, grab your complementary 8 oz. bottle of water when you board the van, two hours to Columbia. I’d eventually learn that ride by heart.)

I was riding in the back row of the MoX, sitting next to a man in his 50s. We struck up a conversation. He’d gone to Mizzou, and he loved the place — loved the teachers, loved the school spirit, loved Columbia. If Mizzou had sat me down next to Truman the Tiger and played the fight song for two hours, they wouldn’t have found a better cheerleader for the university.

I went into the weekend curious about Mizzou — but not sold on it. I had always wanted to go to school in a college town. I loved schools with school spirit, and with big sports programs. I wanted to go to a place with a great J-school, and I wanted a place that was a little different than the D.C. suburbs.

Columbia, Mo., was certainly all that.

But I didn’t really know what I liked about Mizzou until I started talking to the people who knew it best.

It was that guy in the back of the MoX, telling me why he loved Mizzou. It was the reporter who took time while traveling on assignment to call and tell me what the J-school had done for him. It was the friend of a friend who made sure I knew about the lifelong friendships he’d made at school.

They helped reveal something special about the culture at Mizzou — and it’s only through hearing the stories of the people who’d been there that I knew where I wanted to go to college.

If you’re reading this and you’re picking a college, here’s my best advice: No matter where you go, your experience at school will be shaped by the people around you. Even at the biggest schools, you start to break down a campus into smaller communities: Clubs, teams, classes.

It always ends up being about the people.

So when you’re picking a school — or for that matter, a job, or a place to live — talk to the people who’ve been there. They’ll reveal far more about the place than any college guidebook or tour will.

One more story: I remember when my little brother was visiting colleges. He was down to two final schools: Michigan and Southern Cal. He visited Michigan in the dead of winter — early February, temps far below freezing. He visited USC a few weeks later — I don’t believe the temperature went below 72 or above 75 degrees all weekend.

We were sure he was going to pick USC.

And then he told us he was going to Michigan.

Why? Because, he said, he’d thought a lot about the types of kids he knew who were at Michigan, or who’d gone to Michigan. They were the kind of kids he wanted to be: Passionate, hard-working, humble, smart.

And if kids like that belonged at Michigan, then he did, too.

Look to the people, listen to their stories. They’ll guide you to a place that’s right for you.

———

I took that photo back in 2007 at a Mizzou baseball game.

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