Every now and then, students and aspiring journalists write to me for advice about entering the field. Here’s an email I sent to a journalism student recently, published with permission.
As a journalist with not a lot of “official” experience under my belt, how would you recommend catching employers’ attention?
It’s getting really frustrating because I’m hearing most places aren’t even looking at your cover letter or samples—they’re checking to see how long you’ve been employed by publications and tossing your resume at that. So I feel like I’m caught in this game of pong—being sent away for not having experience, but not able to gain experience because no one wants to hire me.
How do you fight against that and make yourself stand out?
This is all anecdotal of course, but you want to know what worked for me and helped me stand out? It all boiled down to this: I presented an ultra niche, super specific set of skills.
At the beginning of my job hunt, I figured it’d be best to be as general as possible. To submit samples of a wide variety of types of writing I’d done, from personal to technical to news to features. And to showcase ALL of my skills—wouldn’t they be impressed that I can code, design websites in WordPress and Drupal, master the Adobe suite, build infographics, and teach? Because that would mean a much wider variety of companies would think I was the perfect fit, right?
Not so much. I hardly ever heard back from anyone when I used that approach. I guess I came across as bland, one of a thousand “versatile” journalists.
Here’s what did work: picking a beat and sticking to it. Saying I’m Lauren, and I write about geeks. Writing only about fandom on my blog. Submitting journalism, photojournalism, and videojournalism about maid cafes, artist alley denizens, and furries. I reworked my resume to put my geek experience up front: my internship with Kotaku, my year running the Anime USA marketing team.
After that I was no longer some journalist. I was the geek journalist (or as I like to call myself, the Otaku Journalist.) I definitely still got lots of rejections, but people remembered me. This approach weeded out anyone who might be ambivalent toward my skills. They either loved me or they hated me. Plus, I knew the people that loved me knew EXACTLY what I was all about, and that if they thought I’d be a good fit, I’d be a good fit.
I think humans naturally have a need to categorize things in order to remember them, so why not take the guesswork out of it for them? I’m sure there’s one aspect of journalism that you’re either REALLY good at or REALLY passionate about—or both. Figure out what that is, rework your resume and cover letter around it, and see if people don’t find you more memorable.
Do you have a question you’d like to ask? Drop me an email or visit my Tumblr Ask box.
4 Comments.
This is interesting to me because the reason I got hired at the newspaper I work at was my versatility. I work at a small weekly and you have to be a “Jack of all Trades” because of the limited staff. I think it’s awesome you got the geek beat though. I hope I can cover some fandom stories one day. ^^
@Hanasha, that’s fantastic that you got hired because of your versatility! In my experience, it’s the exact opposite. I guess because so many journalism grads have to master everything from HTML to infographic design, my local news organizations have their pick of versatile people. For me, it wasn’t an edge: I didn’t get a job once because the other guy had all of my skills AND two years extra experience. I find that specializing in a field helps to make employers less likely to compare me to other similar applicants and put me in a category of my own.
The traditional way of getting hired no longer works.
So stop sending your resume to any and everyone. Everything you do has to be customized to the company and the hiring manager. If not, you won’t stand out or get that all-important interview.
Companies hire people to solve problems (both positive and negative). Your ability to uncover your target employers problems and position yourself as the solution is what will get you hired.
Here are just a few potential problem areas. Completing projects on time and on budget, improve product quality, improve customer service, increase sales, reduce costs, enhance online marketing, etc.
Now here’s the good news. There are jobs for grads if you know how to find them!
I’m working with three Ohio State University seniors to help them get the job they want upon graduation.
On this week’s conference call I showed them how to zero in on the job they want and to locate companies with those positions. They were amazed to see all of the opportunities.
Next week we’ll complete our analysis of the target companies to learn as much about them as possible.
These soon to be grads are making exceptional progress.
Bob Prosen
CEO
The Prosen Center
for Business Advancement
@Bob, I believe strongly in specializing your skills in order to get the job you want, but your advice takes it to one further, more practical step—specialize your skills for each job you’re interested in. This is great advice especially for students with little experience. So if you want to work as a health reporter, put the story you wrote about the university health center at the top of your portfolio. If you’re looking at a job as a crime reporter, send in your police beat stories to the hiring manager. Even if you’re not experienced enough to be specialized yet, you can create that illusion for employers. Thanks so much for making me think about this!