Application and Interview Suggestions,

When I moved to Minnesota, I used the fact that I had extended family a few hours away. It also helped that I decided to help with news in my senior of college and pulled off a couple of good enterprise pieces. Don't be one of those whose dream is to be a sports writer. Don't tell me how great your internships were.

Tell me how good you are at covering two games a night, shooting photos, coming back to take calls and compile box scores, and how good you are at design. Those are the reasons why I would want to hire you, and if you've been looking for work for a while, you should expect to be in some Podunk town doing all of those things. You're not probably not going to cover a college beat or get to cover pros on your own time. You're going to start at the bottom, which BTW, is not always a bad thing.

I know a little about where other posters work and they're not covering the top college beats, and neither am I. We're just trying to grind out a living.

 

Can you produce video from an iPhone or similar PDA?

Use the word "content" a lot, more so than "story" or "article."

Brag up the number of your Twitter followers and how that number has increased since your most recent big scoop.

And, yes, I'm serious. (And I work at a 250,000+ daily.)

 

Of course, it goes without saying, that having the balls to ask a coach -- after, say, a double-overtime loss in which the kickcing game played a role -- why he didn't go with the backup kicker after the first-string guy missed his first three PATs and FGs is highly subordinate to the online hits.

 

If a job advertisement says either e-mail or mail an application packet, is doing either one better than the other?

 

Spelling and grammar matter, so triple-check and have one or two other people read the information before sending.

One mistake maybe could be overlooked, although that's the (a) reason for multiple checks and (b) point of editing thoroughly. Multiple mistakes would get your package tossed aside quickly.

 

The only thing I would say here is that some editors, sadly, still have trouble figuring out what to do with a PDF ... and some papers still have such outdated e-mail systems that attachments won't open properly (especially large ones). So you can never go wrong with a physical package of clips.

That said, personally I always prefer e-mail. I can tag it and make sure to come back to it later, whereas envelopes find the most curious ways to get lost in my cluttered world.

 

Does anyone expect there to be a rush of job openings after the new year because newspapers wouldn't have replaced them until then? Or should the rate continue as it's been the last few weeks?

 

There may be a few as managers return from holidays, but I wouldn't expect a rush. Most hirings are tied to the budget, and the budget is tied to the Fiscal Year not the Calendar Year.

 

The biggest key to getting hired in this business is knowing people.

How can you not know too many people if you have plenty of internship experience?

You need to get back to those folks, let them know you are looking, use them as references.

Bottom line is that most people doing the hiring will have a stack of resumes and clips.

If a sports editor can vouch for you, you'll have a leg up.

If someone doing the hiring says that he is looking for a reporter and a sports editor can say, "Hey, dkphxf is looking for a job and probably a vowel" -- that helps too.

Get your name out there -- not just in the pile.

 

Why didn't you get to know people during your many internships, especially at MLB.com? Just having a fancy internship won't get you a job.

 

When looking at resumes/cover letters, do editors ever say, "Candidate X has 10 years experience and Candidate Y has two years -- bye-bye, Candidate Y?"

I've applied for a few gigs, and the response is they want someone with more experience, though I feel I'm certainly qualified for the position and capable of handling the responsibilities. Obviously, with the business as it is, there are lots of experience candidates bouncing around who were fired from jobs before.

 

From everything I've seen/dealt with in an admittedly short time in the business I'd imagine this sometimes happens. But in a bigger sense I think these processes are organic and can vary widely. Some places look for people who can come interview quickly, others will take more time. Some will see X's 10 years and move Mr. Y lower, but just remember there is a big jump from X getting the first callback to X taking the job.