Reading List

A weekly roundup of job-hunting tips, career advice and interesting articles relevant to the magazine industry and being an editor.

• "How to Write a Great Accomplishment Statement" by Tim Tyrell-Smith on Tim's Strategy. Next time you update your resumé, really sell yourself by explaining what you accomplished in each position; don't just list your job duties.

• "The 5 Most Common Interview Questions – and How to Answer Them" by Katie Amey on Ed2010.com. Customized for magaziners.

• "Too Much Information:Why I Don't Trust Employment Interviews" by Maria Gottschalk on YouTern's The Savvy Intern blog. A few tips on how to fairly evaluate all applicants when conducting job interviews.

Reading List

A weekly roundup of job-hunting tips, career advice and interesting articles relevant to the magazine industry and being an editor.

• "Bored People Quit" on Rands in Repose. Required reading for editors in charge of a team. If you don't want to lose your best editors, that is.

• "99 Tips That Will Help You Land a Job" by James Clear on Passive Panda (via Alltop). From having the right mindset to interview tips to how to negotiate a salary, some great gems.

• "Help! I Can't Land a Job Interview" by Rosa E. Vargas on YouTern's The Savvy Intern blog (via @ginidietrich). I strongly urge everyone to heed Vargas' advice about resumés: Yours must "outdistance" others – it is a marketing tool, not a list of everything you've ever done.

• "Orgasm Guaranteed: What I learned While Freelancing at Cosmopolitan by Katherine Goldstein on Slate. An amusing account of life in the fact-checking trenches.

2 unrelated interviews: Wintour and Husni

"I like people who represent the best of what they do and if that turns you into a perfectionist than maybe I am." – Anna Wintour in an interview with 60 Minutes

"When the economy is bad, when everybody is shrinking, when the big media companies are at a standstill, that’s the best time to start a new magazine because it’s going to take one to two years for that magazine to evolve and establish itself. Then you hope in two years, the economy will pick up and you’re ready for that marketplace." – Samir Husni in an interview with Industry Intelligence Inc.

reader's question: what's a good weakness?

In response to Friday's post, one commentator asked what a good response would be to the job interview question What are your weaknesses? This is probably every one's least favourite question, but a common one, so be prepared.

One strategy is to turn a negative into a positive. Admit to a weakness – a minor one – then quickly turn the conversation to how you have overcome that weakness, or how you manage it.

For example, I get distracted very, very easily. A person walks by, an email pops up, or I hear someone talking about a movie I just saw and have to add my two cents. I manage these distractions, in part, by wearing headphones and listening to music to block out sounds, and by turning off all auto notifications on my email – no dings or bouncing icons. This demonstrates to the interviewer that I'm capable of self-assessment and self-improvement.

And that's the main point of the question. The interviewer wants to know if you can recognize where you need improvement and if you can figure out how to make yourself better.

And keep in mind, you don't want to admit to anything that might be a deal breaker, like you hate writing or don't always work well with others. But you also don't want to say anything completely irrelevant either. A weakness for chocolate or an inability to manage your chequebook are just weird answers.

interview no-nos

There are certain things we just shouldn't say. Particularly on job interviews. If asked what you're weaknesses are, don't say you have none or you that you don't know. Or even worse, don't say you're a perfectionist (no one buys it, and it's a transparently underhanded way to say that you don't have any faults). Check out the Ed2010 site for more tips on what not to say during an interview.

interview taxonomy

Some interviews go swimmingly. Others, well, not so much. Sometimes you walk out of one and think, What the hell was that? And it's not always necessarily by fault of your own. MojoGrad has provided a very thorough illustration of common "hideous" interviews. Below is the list, with comments on my own experiences with each kind, but I also recommend visiting MojoGrad for some funny tales and decent advice (it's a longish but good read).

The Interview Where I Was Completely Out Of My League. I've done this more than once. At the end of university, I applied to be EIC of a small, local arts publication. My only experience was running the school's student magazine, but I thought I could totally do the job. It wasn't until I was facing the interview committee that I started to wonder why the hell they had even called me in the first place.

The Interview I Was Late For. My first publishing gig. My sister was supposed to pick me up and drive me, and she was late. (Can you tell it's still a sore spot?) I had to call the interviewer and say I wasn't going to make it on time. I got the job, however.

The Interview In Which I Tried Desperately Not To Laugh At The People Who May Employ Me. Luckily, haven't had this experience.

The Interview That Was Frankly So Much Trouble I Shouldn’t Have Bloody Bothered. One of those times I was desperate for a job. A temp agency sent me out to a place in the middle of nowhere Mississauga – you know, where public transit doesn't seem to exist. My mom drove me (slightly embarrassing) and we got a speeding ticket on the way. Then in the interview, the company was super-sketch. The owner's cars sat in the back of the warehouse under tarps, and "my office" was an empty, badly lit room with one desk set up in the corner and miscellaneous equipment piled in another. I never really got a sense f what the job actually was – I'm convinced it had something to do with the mafia. The guy offered me the job on the spot, and then called a few days later and the position magically didn't exist anymore. For the better.

The Interview Where The Questions Are So Clichéd You Wonder If They Actually Found Anything Out About You. Nearly every interview with an HR representative. (Sorry HR peeps.)

The Interview Where You Already Know The People Interviewing You. Done it. A little odd, but not so bad.

How about you? Any stories to share?

Thanks to Briony Smith.

Speaking of interviews, it occurred to me that one of the best ways to learn how to conduct one is by watching someone else do it. There are plenty of examples on television, with talk shows and programs like Inside the Actors Studio (videos here) and The Agenda, but I wonder if these are as useful if most of your interviews are in relation to service pieces. And I wonder whether there needs to be more mentorship in our industry – more opportunities to learn by watching.

three tips on interviewing for a story

I'm in the midst of conducting several interviews for a project I'm working on. I've managed to avoid doing many interviews so far in my career, which I've always been relieved about since it's not my strong suit. But working on this project, I've had the opportunity to talk to numerous people on the same subject, asking many of the same questions. As I'm going through the process, I can see myself growing and becoming more adept at interviewing. At the beginning I was stiff, sticking to a list of questions and going from one to the next. Now it's more like my subject and I are having a real conversation. I'm getting better at guiding the interview to get the material I need, and since I'm not stuck to a list, I pick up cues from what the person says and get material that I may not have otherwise. Here are three ways to improve your own interviews:

1. Practice. You may not get to do the same interview seven time like I'll be doing, but like anything, you'll get better the more you do it.

2. Know your material – what you want to get from the interview – inside and out. Your list of questions then just becomes a reference to make sure you don't forget anything. This facilitates No. 3...

3. Have a real conversation. If you're more comfortable and your subject feels like you're actually listening to what he/she is saying, you're likely to get better responses.

edit beautiful

In an interview with Mediabistro, House Beautiful EIC Stephen Drucker talks about the shelter category, rising to the top and the art of editing. Here's what he has to say...

On over-intellectualizing

"Editors feel the need to make it really important, and they make it important by over-intellectualizing it. It's really about pleasure. It doesn't need a big intellectual justification. It doesn't have to be puffed up into something big and important. What often happens is that while everyone is intellectualizing, all the reader just wants to know is, "What's that great color blue on the wall?"

On getting to the top

"When I started, it was really very simple. You started as an editorial assistant. You hoped your boss left, retired, or died, and you stayed, stayed, and stayed, and the last person standing, with luck, got to be editor-in-chief in their 40s or 50s. ... Now, there is much more respect for people at every level of a magazine, because the staff is smaller. It's recognized that a 24-year-old editorial assistant may have a lot to contribute with voice, their knowledge of the Internet, and what they like, because it's an indicator of what's to come."

On writing fashion copy

"It's a great art to write fashion copy. It is a really specialized and under-appreciated skill to write those haikus that go into fashion magazines. To write captions for magazines like ours, they have to sound really musical. It's all in the ear."

On knowing your reader

"When you come to a magazine, it's a mistake to think you can just walk in and succeed. No matter how much experience you have, you have to come in and get to know the reader of your particular magazine, even if you've worked at five other magazines in your category. The reader of your particular magazine has very particular likes and dislikes, and it takes an ear to learn what they are, no matter how astute an editor you are."

Read the entire interview here.