Covering an event for a job interview?

i did this when hiring a news reporter but i paid the applicant for the two stories he did.

 

I always thought this was a little strange. I get the fact that they want to see how you handle yourself, but isn't that what references and clips are for? My other question is, say you don't get the job, and say it's at a newspaper close to where you currently work, maybe within the state, when that article gets published, can your current employer punish you for that?

 

Back in the day, newspapers would treat job candidates well, make them feel special, take them to lunch and/or dinner, generally behave toward them in ways that made them think they were going to be among the most important folks on the staff once hired.

Then, in time, they'd treat you as shabbily as the rest of the wretches in the place.

Nice to see more consistency now, courtesy of this lousy job market and industry decline. They can treat job candidates as poorly as they treat actual staffers. Truth in advertising.

Consider this a reverse tryout of the people for whom you might end up working. Your test drive of them.

At the very least, they should have a) let you know in advance you'd be covering a live event for them as a tryout, even if they wanted to "spring" the chosen game on you for some odd reason to test spontaneity or something, and b) made it clear they'd be paying a stringer's fee for the work, if the story got published.

 

Related question: In job interviews these days -- for those of you who can remember what those were -- do employers, instead of indicating when you might expect your first raise, give you an idea of when you'll have to take your first pay cut from that starting salary?

 

I don't this like form of interviewing, at least from the applicant's perspective. Way too stressful.

 

1.) I have no problem with a newspaper asking an prospective employee to cover a game or write any type of story as a tryout. I do, however, think it should not be placed in the paper. The reason for asking a writer to try out is because clips can be misleading; a good editor can make any writer look significantly better.
2.) Springing it on you? Yeah, that's kind of silly. Why not give prospective the employee a head's up, and if they are offended by the notion -- guess what, you don't go to the interview.

 

This type of thing happens quite often in interviews in other fields. A family friend with a master's degree and over 25 years of experience was interviewing for a senior managerial position in marketing a couple of years ago. As part of the interview, they made her complete a full marketing plan. They ended up giving the job to a younger, cheaper candidate. It turned out they just brought her in to get some free consulting.

 

This is like going to the dentist for a "cleaning" and then leaving five hours later with a root canal.

 

I was sent to a game to do a story 21 years ago as a sort of tryout. I was in town for the night anyway. Not that unusual. It was a big paper. I was their first sports hire in at least 10 years. They wanted to see if I could handle deadline.

 

But without knowing in advance? That's bullshit.

And it was a softball game.

 

Whatever happened to the old writing tests, where they put you in a room, provided you with some papers that contained details of a sample event with scattered quotes and asked you to craft it into a story in a specific amount of time? This allowed the prospective rmployer to evaluate your deadline writing skills without you having the fear that they were just using you for a free story in the paper.

 

I've known guys who were taken out to "gentlemen clubs" when they were interviewing for a sports writing job.

But covering a softball game on deadline sounds like fun, too.

I've spent an entire 8hour day interviewing with a half-dozen or more people in three different buildings and didn't get paid for that.

Found out later they decided to base the job 1,000 miles away.