Joe Grimm's News Jobs Café: Ask the recruiter

No Good at Math

A journalism student was describing for me this week how good she is at math: "The only A I ever got in math was the one that comes after the M."

Life After Newspapers II

On Sept. 20, I recalled where five former Knight Ridder people who were assistant veeps or higher have landed.

Today, the California Newspaper Partenrship announced that it has hired Marshall Anstandig, who was vice president and senior labor and employment counsel for Knight Ridder.

Anstandig is now senior vice president and general counsel with the Media News-run partnership that has 33 dailies and 56 non-dailies in California. They include the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times, which were part of KR, along with Anstandig. He joins Steve Rossi, who came over from KR as chief operating officer.

Netproofing for Jobs

I love it! After endless articles about the hazards of MySPace and Facebook, Business Week has published an article about netproofing yourself so as not to squelch job opportunities.

First, we had people tripping over their own profiles.

Now, we have people netproofing their on-line selves.

Prediction I: Next, we'll have consultants who can search drown and scrub up anything detrimental about you on the Web.

Prediction II: They will be followed by a cottage industry in manufacturing spiffy on-line reputations.

On-Line Candidate Tracking

OK, this is a bit much. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a high-profile job candidate was so high profile that anonymous posters and bloggers watched and logged her every move as she tried to land a faculty job in international relations.

The Chron said, "the blog followed Ms. Hyde's nearly every move, from her interviews at the University of Virginia and George Washington University to her decision to accept the offer at Yale."

The article says that the job- and candidate-tracking on-line rumor mills began as Web sites in narrow fields such as  theoretical particle physics.

Are faculty members as concerned as journalists that exposure could be detrimental to one's career?

Here's the rumor mill for jobs in theoretical particle physics -- in case you were thinking of a career change. 

Convergence and Collaboration

One benefit of talking with people about careers and work all the time is that it opens your eyes to new things.

I had one such moment recently when talking about newsroom cultures.

It seems that some folks approach the newsroom environment as a contest. They want to be the best. Others approach it as an organism that they are part of. The first person would thrive in an individualistic culture, the second would thrive in a collective culture.

Well, guess which type of culture would seem to be best for fostering the media convergence we seem to be needing?

Life After Newspapers

While I was at the Dallas Morning News last week, helping people deal with the buyouts, one of the editors asked me, "What do journalists do when they leave the business?"

Good question.

My own experience over the past year has been to see the dissolution of Knight Ridder, a company I worked with for almost 23 years. Here's where some of its top executives went:

 

• Hilary Schneider, senior VP at KR: senior VP of classified advertising at Yahoo!
• Steve Rossi, senior VP and CFO with KR: executive VP and COO with MediaNews
• Larry Olmstead, VP of staff development and diversity at KR: founded his own consulting company, LeadingEdge
• Paula Ellis, VP of operations at KR: VP/national and new initiatives at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
• Bryan Monroe, assistant VP for news at KR: VP and editorial director of EBONY and JET magazines

Early Decisions on Internships?

Harvard has decided to end its early-admission practices, the Harvard Crimson reported last week.

It cites a lot of reasons, including inequality.

Newspaper recruiters, who in recent years have made summer internship offers as early as August of the year before, have sometimes talked about putting a moratorium on offers until sometime later in the school year.

I'm betting that competition prevents us from doing that.

I'm sticking with a Dec. 1 application deadline -- but have broken it when pressured.

Pink is the New Black

Why is it that, with newspapers contracting and television audiences fragmenting, enrollment is up in communication programs?

I wondered whether students see a great flowering in media despite the troubles in traditional communication companies.

But people on campuses are saying that journalism and communication degrees offer more skills and specificity than the old, reliable liberal arts degree.

So, with apologies to Gloria Vanderbilt, maybe commuinications is the new liberal arts.

Where do they find these people?

In a Pittsburg Post-Gazette article on how not to interview, we meet someone who, "ate -- no, dismantled -- an artichoke in full leaf-plucking, butter-dipping, teeth-scraping splendor" right in front of the interviewer.

Anyone who needs to be told to not do that wouldn't listen, anyway. Yet I don't doubt that this happened.

The article has advice about deodorant, tongue studs and swearing. In a nutshell: yes, no and no.

How to apply after being fired?

Amid some good advice about bouncing back from being fired, an article in the Acorn quotes a source who advises this answer when an application asks you to state the reason for leaving your previous job: "Mutual employment termination."

I don't know about that. It sounds rather like a mutual suicide pact.