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.

job search frustration

If you're in a job you hate or have been out of work for a while and you're desperate to find a new gig, the worst thing you can do is let that desperation show to potential employers. In a pair of posts (with a third promised), recruiter Lindsay Olson talks about how frustrating job hunting can be.

She shares an absolutely horrible job inquiry sent her way, which starts out

"I'm hoping you won't say that you 'don't have anything right now', or you 'don't have anything at my level'. That would be a horrible way to start the week."

The letter is quite cringe-worthy, and worth the read. Of course, it speaks to the frustration a lot of people are feeling right now, so Lindsay also offers up a few tips to keep in mind on why a company will and will not hire you. A company will not hire you because you have bills to pay and need the job; they will hire you if you're the right person for the job. Make sure they're hearing about the latter and not the former. No one responds well to desperation.

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.

the thrill of it

There are many reasons why I love being an editor, and I was reminded last night about one of them: the thrills.

There's the thrill of getting your first internship. Of seeing your name on the masthead for the first time. Your first business card that says editor. Your first byline. Landing the job at the magazine you've always wanted to work at. Meeting an editor you've long admired (our celebrities, if you will). The really good swag (admit it). And, of course, getting nominated for a National Magazine Award.

This is my first time being nominated, and it's a very nice little thrill.

Congrats to all the NMA nominees.

ed on the web

Two new things to report about Ed2010.

If you're an Ed member and have missed the daily newsletter, Ed News is back. Starting today you'll find Ed's daily roundup of magazine industry news (mostly US-based) through the Ed2010News Twitter feed.

Ed2010 Toronto now has it's own homepage on the Ed website. There you'll find details on the chapter, as well as news on upcoming and past events.

industry leaders on innovation, print and the web

Samir Husni – that's Mr. Magazine to you – has published a series of brief videos in which industry leaders talk about magazines:

Part 1: Eleanor Griffin, editor-in-chief, Southern Living, on the soul of a magazine; Howard Greenberg, design director, Southern Living, on the differences in innovation between print and web.

Part 2: Jim Sexton, senior vice president and editorial director, Southern Progress Corporation Digital Network, on how print and web complement each other.

Part 3: Lindsay Bierman, editor-in-chief, Coastal Living, on innovation in reinvention.

Part 4: Vicki Wellington, publisher, Food Network magazine, on extending the brand.

Part 5: Trisha McMahon, editor-in-chief and senior vice president for communications and public relations, Morris Visitor Publications’ New York division, on the value of print.

career intern

I don't know if I've said this before, but there is such thing as doing too many internships. After one, you should be able to start applying for entry-level positions. You can do as many as three, but more than that and potential employers may start to ask why you haven't landed a job yet. Joe Grimm on Ask the Recruiter points out that even more important is how long you intern after becoming employable (e.g. graduating from school). If you're getting nowhere with the job hunt, put your efforts into freelance gigs and networking instead of doing another stint as an intern, even if you have to get a part-time job outside the field to support yourself. You'll build contacts and your portfolio, which is more valuable.

meeting notes

Maybe all those meetings you have aren't necessary. And if they are, maybe they needn't be as long. There are three things that guarantee zone-outs: rehashing what everyone already knows, talking about things that are relevant to only two or three people in the group, and going off topic.

A selection of tips from Seth Godin on how to make your meetings more effective:

• Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length?

• Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious. [This might not work for story meetings, but can you imagine how much more quickly a weekly update meeting would go?]

• Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.

• The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.

I'd add to the list Start All Meetings On Time.

bossnapping

Last week, 3M workers in France held the company's chief executive hostage for two days in anger over layoffs. They didn't gain much – just a promise from 3M to return to the negotiating table to discuss redundancy deals – but I can imagine they certainly got some satisfaction from taking revenge on the big boss.

untapped resources

Do you ever get the sense that you could do so much more, if only your employer would allow you to? You're not the only one. As reported by the Guardian, 40% of surveyed employees in the UK (I'm sure the Canadian figures are comparable) feel that they have more skills than their jobs required.

If you're feeling underutilized, speak out and volunteer for additional projects or talk to your manager about increasing/changing some of your duties. If you're a manager, take the time to ask your employees (perhaps during a review) whether there's anything else they'd like to do, or if they have any interests beyond their daily routines. If a person doesn't feel challenged, he or she may end up looking for greener pastures. It's kind of like that really, really smart kid in school who was bored so skipped class so much and eventually dropped out.

easy pdf clippings

Here's a neat trick I learned last week from Ed2010 member Syd:

All you need to generate PDF files of your article clippings is a library card. On the Toronto Public Library website, do an author search in the magazine database for your name. All your articles pop up and you can simply email yourself the PDF. No tedious scanning.

magnet, I thought we were about magazines

Every year I look forward to conference season. But I have to say, I'm a little disappointed in MagNet's 2009 lineup. It's a little flush on offerings for writers compared to other magazine departments; 28 seminars for writers versus 10 for editors – nearly a third as many. (This is how the other departments stack up: 23 seminars for management, 12 for digital, 9 for ad sales, 9 for circulation, 6 for small magazines, 5 for design and 4 for production.)

And some of those writing seminars: selling your book, novel writing, romance and erotica novels, book publishing trends, screenwriting. I'm a little confused because I thought MagNet was a magazine publishing conference. In fact, from the website: "MagNet is Canada’s premiere public policy, professional development and networking conference for magazine professionals" [my itals]. Can someone enlighten me as to why the diversified curriculum? I'm not being snide – I really want to know.

(First the salary report, now the conference lineup. There's just no pleasing me this week.)

what do editors make?

If you missed it, take a look at the compensation study released last week by Magazines Canada and the cultural Human resources Council. It's nice to be armed with info like this when you're negotiating a salary, but I sure wish they had broken it up by circulation or company size. Is it just me or do the median salaries seem neither to reflect standard incomes at the big publishers, nor at the smaller companies?

Other salary resources:
• Masthead Salary Survey, 2006
• Ed2010 Salary Reports (US)
• Folio Editorial Salary Survey, 2008 (US)

ed happy hour was hoppin'

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Toronto Ed2010 Happy Hour last night! We had our largest turnout, with more than 40 people showing up (according to the waiter's guess – I lost count). We might just have to book a larger space next time. Lots of talk about the economy, internships and general magazine stuff. I was so busy chatting away, I nearly forgot to take pictures; all I got were fuzzy crowd shots. Congratulations to Katie Lamb, who won our Chat-with-an-Editor raffle. She'll be having dinner with Liza Cooperman, executive editor of Hello! Canada. And congrats to our two door-prize winners who each won a one-year subscription to The Walrus.

Hope to see you at the next one!

ed2010 toronto happy hour tonight

Don't forget! I expect it's going to be a big one – lots of people signing up for the email list and joining the Facebook group. (Of course, now that I've said that, four people will show up. You'd better come out so I don't have to eat my words!)

The Happy Hour will be from 6-9 pm at the The Duke of York (39 Prince Arthur Ave., near the Bedford exit of St. George subway station), in the 2nd floor conservatory (go upstairs to the back).

Come out and mix and mingle with other young magazine editors. We're having another Chat-with-an-Editor Raffle, with a chance to win dinner with Liza Cooperman, executive editor of Hello! Canada. Tickets are $5 at the event. Plus, we've got door prizes: Everyone in attendance has a chance to win one of two free one-year subscriptions to Walrus Magazine.

For details, go to Ed Toronto's Facebook page.

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.

make your cubicle more bearable

For those of us stuck in cubicleland, here's a suggestion from the Style North blog on how to improve those horrible fluorescent lights above our desks: Using a highlighter, colour the acrylic cover pink to create a rosy glow. If you're not one for altering company property, I think you could also achieve the same effect by tacking up a pink gel or tissue paper over the cover.

what to do if you're laid off

Some practical advice on what to do if you find yourself being laid off, from Time:

Don't sign anything right away, ask a lot of questions and write everything the person firing you says.

Doing this could give you ammunition to negotiate a better severance package or file for wrongful dismissal. For the entire piece, go to Time. Found through Save the Assistants.

that's what I call memorable branding

A very cool business card (pretty obvious what company it's for), from Save the Assistants.

reader's question: does my foreign experience count for anything?

Q. I am a foreign citizen with an open work permit for Canada and am trying to find a job as a journalist here. I posses a journalism degree from a foreign school and have more than 12 years of job experience, with articles of mine being published in both English and my native language.

I have applied to many positions, but even though I consider my resume as comprehensive enough, I haven't been invited to any interviews nor had any other kind of response. As it is not usual for employers to give reason for declining a candidate, I don't know why I haven't been considered. But following debates about Canadian employment policies and immigration, I came quite often across the complaint that Canadian employers do not recognize foreign qualifications and experience (enough). This lead to my assumption that there are problems with my foreign degree/ experience and that I would have to obtain a Canadian degree in order to improve my chances to be considered for employment.

Do you think it is indeed my foreign degree and my foreign experience that let my applications fall through? Would pursuing a Canadian college degree in journalism significantly improve my chances or would I just waste a lot of time and money just to find myself in the same situation again 2 or 3 years down the road?


A. You're not the first person to ask me this. Unfortunately, you're partially correct: foreign credentials and experience don't hold up as well against Canadian experience.

It's not politically correct to say this, and most people won't admit to it, but employers, whether consciously or subconsciously, likely make the assumption that non-natives just don't get it, in a number of ways.

First of all, there's the language issue. In an industry built on mastery of the written word, can they count on someone for whom English is a second language to turn in polished copy? Will sentences, paragraphs, be stilted and need more editing than usual? If the person is applying to be an editor, will they be able to correct copy correctly? No mater how fluent you are, there's always at least a small doubt.

To counter this assumption, your resumé, cover letter and any correspondence must be impeccable. I'd recommend having a born-and-raised Canadian read over your application. In addition to the standard proofreading, he should look for uncommon turns of phrases – sentences that although correct, are not the usual way something would be said. Whether it's the choice of one word over another, or the structure of a sentence, the smallest thing can eliminate you. (Hey, even a minor typo or misplaced comma can land a resumé in the No pile – a problem for every applicant, Canadian and non.)

An extension of the language issue is whether or not a foreigner understands and is able to navigate Canadian culture. Do you get the cultural references? Will you know where to go and who to call to get information or secure an interview? For example, if you're assigned to write a story about the current hearings to determine whether broadcasting over the internet should be subject to federal regulations, will you know what the CRTC is and its history? Will the editor have to hold your hand, explain things? Will the story take longer, or will you miss something? Fair or not, an employer might wonder.

Finally, there will be the question of whether your credentials are equivalent to Canadian credentials. Associate editor at a mag in another country? Did you do the same thing as an associate editor does here? That newspaper clipping: done for a reputable outfit, or some Mickey-Mouse operation? An employer might not know what weight to give your experience because he's just not familiar with where that experience comes from. And when he's going through hundreds of resumés, the extra work of trying to figure that out can be enough to send your application to the reject pile.

So this doesn't happen, make it easy for the employer. Think about including things like URLs to the websites of publications you've worked for in your resumé or cover letter, or circ numbers to indicate the size of the magazine. Include descriptors where you can, like "largest daily" or "published by such-and-such-country's second-largest publisher". You want to give the employer a good sense of the type of places you've worked for.

Now, I wouldn't recommend starting from scratch and going back to school to get a Canadian degree. Unlike some professions, it's not necessary to update your qualifications in order to practice journalism. However, a course or two of a continuing education publishing program could help familiarize you with the Canadian industry and some of it's major players. You'll also meet other people in the field (instructors and classmates) who may be able to advise you on other resources or aid you in your search.

You'll also want to work on getting some Canadian clippings to add to your portfolio. Pitch stories to any magazines and newspapers that interest you, and don't discount ethnic community publications. You have the distinct qualifications to write for such a magazine or newspaper. Think about how your unique experience could be a benefit for a company and highlight that in your application.

Like any job seeker, you'll have to clearly communicate how you can benefit the publication to which you're applying to. If you do that well, you should have no problem getting the interview.


*Question has been edited for length and identifying details.