Joe Grimm's News Jobs Café: Ask the recruiter

Selling My Comic Strips?

Q: I'm a 17-year-old senior in high school without a job. The only thing I think I'm good at is drawing my little own individual comic strip. I'll like to publish it and make little money off it as a job but where do I start?

Jay

A: This is hard to do, especially while you're still a senior in high school.

I would keep doing the strip, especially if people tell you that you have talent, but I would get a job, too. That will start to give you the income and security you'll need. I bet you'll find that you're good at more things.

Keep drawing and try to get published closest to home -- the school paper, papers in the area. Those can be steppingstones to bigger venues.

If you haven't already, learn to do your work digitally. This will open whole worlds for you as it will let you e-mail your strips anywhere.

I'd definitely go to college and I'd take art courese and content courses that will feed your strip. They could be in politics, pop culture, history -- whatever subject area you'd like to comment on in your strips. The art courses might show you other areas, such as page or Web design, illustration or informational graphics, that will sustain you as you go down that long, tough road toward syndication.

Even some of the best-known artists had a very tough time breaking in. You've got to be tenacious as well as good.

Note: "Ask the Recruiter" is moving to Poynter's new Career Center. The new home is here. Don't forget to change your bookmark.

We're Moving to Poynter's new Career Center

I think you're going to like this. Ask the Recruiter will be moving to a new home in Poynter's Career Center, launching now.

We'll move your questions and my answers -- as well as a three-year archive of more than a thousand items -- over there.

It'll be convenient to find this, as well as all that Poynter has in its new Career Center and the rest of its site in one location.

Don't worry about losing track of "Ask the Recruiter." We'll keep everything posted in both places for a little while. And I will keep this page up with a redirect to the new home.

Take a peek. And then bookmark it.

Where are the Jobs?

When we confront an unkind job market, we wonder whether it can help to look in another place.

Bizjournals.com has rated job markets top to bottom and shows these 10 as the hottest:

• Cape Coral-Ft. Myers, Fla.
• Las Vegas
• Phoenix
• Sarasota-Bradenton, Fla.
• Orlando
• Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.
• Lakeland, Fla.
• Boise, Idaho
• Washington, D.C.
• Miami-Ft. Lauderdale

Hiding the Job Interview

A column in the Sun-Sentinel has some hilarious stories about the lnegths to which people go to hide the fact that they're interviewing for another job.

My favorite was the person who changed into their interview clothes in the car -- while the car was going through a car wash.

Treat the Receptionist Right

Be nice to secretaries is not just the name of a holiday.

It is a good thing to keep in mind as you go for a job.

I invariably ask my assistant what she thinks of the people we bring in to interview. After all, she has helped set up flight and hotel arrangements with them and is more likely to see the the side the candidate might try to hide.

An Associated Press article makes the point well.

Read any good books lately?

The New York Daily News has some sound advice -- and some titles -- for answering interviewers who ask, "What have you been reading lately?"

I saw a couple books that I've read (The Tipping Point and The World is Flat) on the list. Funny. I bought Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point because of the buzz about it (See? It works.) but let it gather dust until the follow-up buzz for his Blink made me read that first and then I went back and picked up Tipping. I got to The World is Flat about two years after the rest of the world, so, I'm probably screwed. Still, I think I'll have something coming up on Poynter.org that grew out of the ideas in there.

It's always good for journalists to have a couple of good books going to keep us plugged in and to recharge our writing batteries.

Obviously, don't claim to read a book that you haven't. An editor once told a job-seeker that he should read a particular book, it was so related to his interest area. She even told us a little about it. Maybe my mean streak was acting up that day, but I asked whether she had actually read the book. She hadn't. You guessed it, she had read a review of it.

Read books, but don't be a phony and choose books that you're interested in, not books you otherwise wouldn't read and that you'll be straining to get into the interview.

How many typos in a resume?

How many typos does it take to get your résumé trashed?

One, right?

Well, that may be the case in journalism, but not everywhere.

OfficeTeam, which provides specialized administrative staff, surveyed employers and found out juist how many typos employers will stand. The tally:

• One typo: 47 percent
• Two typos : 37 percent
• Three typos: seven percent
• Four or more typos: six percent
• The remaining three percent did not answer or said they just don't know how many typos it would take.

Who or whom?

Q: Usually, I am up to the task of "who" or "whom" but sometimes it seems as if it is more of a "sounds right" rather than "is right."

I had a couple of designers working with me who/whom I loved and who/whom I am still very good friends with today.

Lucy

A: I see this pronoun in some of my mail. As in, "To Whom it May Concern."

Before we get to answers, a lecturette: We don't do grammar or punctuation by ear. We follow the rules. Know the rules; write with confidence.

On who and whom, the rule is that "who" is the subject form of this pronoun and "whom" is the object form.

The AP Stylebook's "Ask the Editor" blog says: "Who" is grammatically the subject -- never the object -- of a sentence or phrase: The woman who rented the room left the window open. Who is there? "Whom" is used when someone is the object of a verb or preposition: The woman to whom ...

Even if we know the rule, we can run into some tricky situations, as when it is hard to tell whether the pronoun is the object of a verb or part of a noun clause.

Whom seems to be on its way out, people say. But then, people have been saying that -- praying that -- for decades. It has become such a distraction that journalists seldom use it. We don't simply plug in who everywhere, we write sentences that don't require the objective form of that pronoun.

My guess on your sample sentence was whom in the first case and who in the second. Our chief of copy desks, Alex Cruden, agrees with whom in the first place, but says experts disagree on the second. The disagreement seems to have to do with whether the pronoun is the object of "with" or part of a noun phrase that is the subject. Get me rewrite!

Mad about being fired?

So mad about being fired that you could spit -- or worse?

That can hurt your efforts to land a new job says an article in the Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal.com.

The article helps talk you in off the ledge -- and maybe into that next job.

Stress testing job candidates

CNNMoney.com reports on new frontiers in screening out ill-tempered job-seekers.

One way, they say, is "a company might call you knowing it's a bad time - think dinner time with crying kids in high chairs. You'll raise a red flag if you confess your house is chaotic and you're stuck with double-duty because your spouse is always working. Why? Home life is a top distraction at work."

Another is to ignore you for several days during the interview process to see if you'll flame them in an e-mail.

When newspapers do this -- and we do -- it is not part of a larger plan -- sadly.

Group interviews

Group interviews -- those in which more than one candidate is present -- are unusual and there is not much advice on how to handle them.

But an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune says they may be increasing in number and offers some strategies.

Digital dirt

Recruiting firm ExecuNet reports that a third of 100 employers surveyed say they have tossed candidates who had something untoward about themselves on the Web.

That material was in blogs, journals and e-mailed comments.

Among the strategies ExecuNet suggests are to plug your own name into search engines and to have counter-explanations ready.

You won't get to use them if the company that tosses your name aside never tells you what went awry.

Business idea: A company that cleans up on-line images.

Nepotism

The Baltimore Sun's Hanah Cho writes about nepotism -- the practice of hiring people who are related to each other.

The article focuses on Southwest Airlines, but the same issue comes up at newspapers, too, of course. I like the version in the Jackson Hole (Wyo.) Star Tribune because it includes the "Begin optional trim" and "End optional trim" notations that editors insert to help each other out.

We're not really supposed to leave those in and few readers know we do that!

First impressions

How much time do you have to make a first impression?

Not to scare you, but the latest word is that interviewers and others make up a substantial part of their mind in less than a tenth of a second.

The Observer, magazine for the Association for Psychological Science, reports on Princeton research that says job candidates -- and speed daters, I guess -- have less than the blink of an eye to make a good impression.

Hobbies on resume

Reporter Joy Davia's article in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle lists the pluses and minuses of putting hobbies on your résumé.

Some that have worked with me: long dedication to music or dance and the practice they required, top performances in competitive sports and rock climbing by someone who had to overcome physical difficulties to do it.

The main reason for omitting hobbies, according to the article? No room on the résumé.

Weaknesses in a job interview

Michael Kinsman, a syndicated columnist with Copley News Service, has some good advice in the California Job Journal for handling the inevitable tough questions about your weaknesses.

He writes, "Go ahead and tell the interviewer you are a loser and you will be. But tell the interviewer you lack experience, need that opportunity to show your talent and understand that everyone has had to take that first step into the business world and you’ll be just fine. Just don’t paint yourself as perfection." Too many people try to skate around this one by painting saying obvious strengths -- which they might not have -- are their weaknesses. One is working too hard. Another is being a perfectionist. Is that my B.S. Detector going off? Take a tip from Kinsman.

Internships for sale

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating and troubling article today on how some companies have been putting internship slots up in charity auctions.

The article and its timing have got to be pretty frustrating to those of you who worked hard to land internships through merit.

Overtime and undertime

As an early bird, this distresses me somewhat.

Management Recruiters International advises that you get more notice and credit for hours put in after the quitting bell than hours put in before others get to work.

MRI president and CEP Bill Olson says: "It's simply true that more notice is taken of people who work late than of people who come in early and as the nation's workforce continues to be reachable 24/7 on their blackberries and cell phones, employees can tend forget the importance of putting in face time at the office."

In newsrooms, work tends to stack up toward the end of shifts and late work is appreciated. However, on assignment desks where stories need to be assigned as soon as the editor gets in, I have seen some reporters get plum opportunities by being the first ones available.

MRI has some tips for early birds. Among them: E-mail bosses to apprise them of situations you have handled or questions that arise as they happen, not just during normal hours, as the e-mail will carry a time stamp.

I would only add, be careful how you do that so you don't give editors the impression that you come to work early so you can bother them with e-mails.

 

Which fork next?

I loved this: In a piece distributed by the Scripps Howard News Service, job search consultant Marvin Walberg writes about job-hunting table manners and gives us a link to a "Did You Know?" page on what all those multiple forks and spoons are for! It does glassware, too. It's sort of like MapQuest for mealtimes.

(Memorize. Do not take a place-setting map to dinner and keep it in your lap.)

Dress -- and interview -- for success

Forbes.com posted two useful articles by Scott Reaves this week.

In one about dressing for success, he gives three basic tips about shopping for office-wear and some suggestions for men and women. I liked this: "Here's a gentle reminder, gentlemen, brought to you by a seasoned interviewer: If you borrow a jacket for an interview, make sure it fits. If it's three sizes too large, you'll look like a miniature person; if it's too small, you'll look lost without your mother."

Then, in Acing the Job Interview, he writes: "Some job candidates wrongly assume that being critical of their current employer underscores their keen insight into corporate America. It's a huge mistake. The interviewer will assume that you're a malcontent and conclude that if you're unhappy in your current job, you'll soon be unhappy in a new job—and no one wants to hire trouble."

Dow Jones Newspaper Fund test

Over at the JobsPage, we've just posted the test that people took to qualify for 2006 Dow Jones Newspaper Fund internships.

Check it out.

Getting noticed

In the Kansas City Star, workplace columnist Diane Stafford writes about the best way to capture a corporate recruiter's notice. the findings:

• Work for a highly regarded company, 36 percent
• Initiate relationships with recruiters in your industry or region, 29 percent
• Be the highest performer in your department or function, 20 percent
• “Personal branding,” 11 percent
• Take on high-profile, risky assignments, 2 percent
• Acquire international experience, 2 percent
• Educational background, 1 percent

The survey was by Korn/Ferry International, an executive recruiting company.

How to choose a good boss

What questions do you ask a prospective boss?

An article on Forbes.com suggests a number of questions -- and how you can interpret the answers.

An example from the web site: "Ask a few open-ended questions such as "What makes a good employee?" or "What did you learn from your biggest mistake?" If your prospective boss offers a by-the-numbers response, bet on a rote, top-down manager"

Chutzpah and the job hunt

Do you wonder how much chutzpah you should use in your pursuit of a job?

Do you wonder what chutzpah even is?

This Business Week Online article will tell you.

How to tell if it's an interview or a party

In a lengthy interview with Entrepreneur.com. Martha Stewart apprentice winner Dawna Stone (left) says, "I was interviewing for a job, and there's a difference between how I act when I'm interviewing for a job and when I'm going out to dinner with 16 people that I really like."

Work the holidays

Observation from a young reporter who wrote some good stuff after working over the holidays: "the lesson I learned from this is, make sure to be in the newsroom -- with story ideas -- when everyone else is out sick or on vacation!"

Extreme applications

In an Indianapolis Star article, Staci Hupp writes about college applicants' over-the-top techniques.

She writes, "One student wrapped his University of Notre Dame application in a leprechaun made of balloons. Another sent Indiana University photographs of herself as a toddler in a crimson cheerleading skirt to show a lifelong passion for all things Hoosier. Others include résumés, videotaped pleas for acceptance and newspaper clippings of high school highlights."

Do these tricks work?

One admissions gatekeeper told Hupp, "Is that a good way to get our attention? No. ... You realize there must be something wrong with this applicant, because he's trying to wow us with something we don't need. The best way to get our attention is with an application that's compelling."

Unique calling cards

We recently invited a grad student to visit the Free Press and to sit on for a shift with the copy desk to see what editing is like.

Afterward, she sent thank-you notes with memorable calling cards. The front looked like a regular business card, though in color. The back of one had a tiny tear-out graphic of the story she had worked on with the copy chief -- complete with headline and a word of thanks.

The back of the calling card she sent me had an itty-bitty printout of the MapQuest directions to the newspaper. When she had asked me how to get here, I had said that most editors would expect her to figure that out herself. She did.

How did she make these impression-making little cards? Adobe Photoshop.

Leave it to a non-journalist to introduce a new wrinkle to the job hunt.

Openings follow buyouts

Have you ever noticed how the paper that was doing buyouts last month often winds up posting job openings this month?

That's because the buyouts take the paper down to minimally budgeted staffing -- and then someone quits and must be replaced.

When you see a good paper paying people to leave, it might be a good time to apply.

Facebook and job hunting

The Harvard Crimson has a good article on how recruiters may be looking you up in facebook.com.

The article quotes William Wright-Swadel, director of the Office of Career Services: “We began to get feedback from recruiters and folks who were contacts of ours across the country, that employers were monitoring [facebook.com] information.”

The article says an Office of Career Services e-mail warned that “employers, professors, graduate school admissions committees, or even the media in certain circumstances” may be viewing facebook profiles in the near future."

Newspaper career secret: balance

Chris Kanemura, online content manager at the Honolulu Advertiser, is one of "20 under 40" leaders chosen by the Newspaper Association of America and announced in Presstime magazine. This is the contest's 13th year. All award winners are profiled and asked to answer several questions. One was "What’s the best career advice anyone ever gave you?"

Kanemura answered, "Strive to live a balanced life. Work, play, and in relationships, there needs to be balance between and within them. I’m still just a beginner in learning to balance life. I have also been told to have faith and learn to let things go. Applying this has helped me to become more balanced. "

Check out the article to see who said, “Remember, dead reporters can’t file.”

Dow Jones Newspaper Fund selection days

If you applied for a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund internship, MAKE SURE you are reachable this Thursday and Friday, Dec. 8 and 9. That's when the Dow Jones "selectoral college" in Princeton, N.J., will be making its calls. If they can't reach you, they'll move on.

So, have the phone you put on your application form all warmed up and be ready to accept. You'll have to make your decision right away.

E-mail receipts

I am at Columbia University today. (I didn't put that in "Where's Joe?" in the lefthand rail because this is mostly a personal trip.)

However, I couldn't resist a visit to the great career services guy here, Ernie Sotomayor.

While we were talking, a student came into his office, concerned because she didn't know whether her e-mail for a magazine internship had gone through.

Just so you know, you can send e-mails with receipts so you'll get some indication of whether they made it.

I use Microsoft Outlook. To get a receipt, after I create a new message I click "options" in the top toolbar. This gives you a window with choices for setting your e-mail's important and for tracking settings. The tracking choices are:

• Request a delivery receipt for this message
• Request a read receipt for this message.

Please don't attach receipts to all your mail! Just the important stuff.

I'll be back in the office Monday, reading internship applications.

What is a four-letter word for job?

The California Job Journal asks, "Are you ready to play Job-pardy?"

Cute game.

Early internship offers

In 15 years, I have never seen internship offers made as early as I have seen them this season.

Bloomberg made one offer in first week week of August, 2005, for the summer of 2006.

Then, I saw them make a second offer later that same month. Both were accepted.

In September, the St. Petersbug Times secured a summer intern.

There are still a lot of spots for next summer left, but I wonder when recruiters will be signing their summer interns in junior high?View this photo

Lessons from the Apprentice

What lessons can job-seekers learn from Donald Trump's The Apprentice?

Black Enterprise has been offering some insights.

Life imitating art imitating life?

Generation Y goes to work

An interesting article on what Generaton Y brings to work -- and what the expectations are.

Would be good reading for everyone who is NOT in Gen Y.

How to e-mail recruiters

ComputerWorld has posted some helpful Career Journal tips on what to do -- or not do -- when e-mailing recruiters.

What not to take to an interview

About.com's page of advice on interviewing recommends that you leave these items at home:

• Cell phone
• iPod
• Gum
• Cigarettes
• Candy
• Soda or coffee
• Scuffed shoes, messy and/or not-so-clean clothes

So, like, why was that interview so annoying?

This is funny.

Would you believe?

Judy Bowman provides etiquette training to corporate executives and has written a point-by-point rundown of interviewing etiquette.

Newsday has an interesting piece about on-line recruiting in the Web 2.0 era. It comes out of the Electronic Recruiters Exchange conference.

Newspaper journalism can be tough, but is it dangerous?

The jobs blog BostonWorks gives us a pictorial rundown of what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says are the 10 most dangerous jobs in America.

The Vault, which prints rankings and other inside information on a lot of career fields, has just added a guide to careers in media and entertainment. These tend not to be newspaper careers, but it still is worth a look.

There is an interesting piece on behavior-based interviews -- those that tell a story -- on the Ball State University web site.

It addresses the issue of what to say in an interview, how to prepare and how to show, rather than tell, what you can do.

Check it out.

It's, like, about your interview

So, like, why was that interview so annoying?

This is funny.

Interview etiquette

Would you believe?

Judy Bowman provides etiquette training to corporate executives and has written a point-by-point rundown of interviewing etiquette.

On-line recruiting

Newsday has an interesting piece about on-line recruiting in the Web 2.0 era. It comes out of the Electronic Recruiters Exchange conference.

Most dangerous jobs

Newspaper journalism can be tough, but is it dangerous?

The jobs blog BostonWorks gives us a pictorial rundown of what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says are the 10 most dangerous jobs in America.

New guide to media careers

The Vault, which prints rankings and other inside information on a lot of career fields, has just added a guide to careers in media and entertainment. These tend not to be newspaper careers, but it still is worth a look.

Story-telling interviews

There is an interesting piece on behavior-based interviews -- those that tell a story -- on the Ball State University web site.

It addresses the issue of what to say in an interview, how to prepare and how to show, rather than tell, what you can do.

Check it out.