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Preparing for job interviews, what to research and watch

This summer I have had both experienced journalists and soon to be grads asking how to prepare for a job interview. As great as we journalists are about researching issues, we sometimes fall short when it comes to job interviews. In fact, several times when I was asked to interview people, I was struck by how little information they seemed to know about the prospective city and the station. You have to do your homework! You are providing a first impression of what kind of skills you will provide the station. If you come across as thinking, “I’m here and my work on my reel stands for itself.” you are letting management know you are not dedicated to research. Why does this matter? It makes you look sloppy, self indulgent and therefore a potential liability. You want to let your potential new bosses know that you are genuinely interested in the area you may soon call home.

So how do you this? For starters you must catch up on current events in the city where you will interview. The internet and Twitter are great places to see what’s happening. Next, watch the station’s newscasts online. Get a feel for the news philosophy and what skills you might be able to bring to the shows. If you are a producer, look for ways you could improve the show you are interviewing for. If you are a reporter, look for the type of perspective that might be missing in the newscasts that you can then offer. This will also entail researching the news director and Assistant News Director to see what their news philosophies are. ( See “When the interview really counts” and “Interview the station” for more on how to do that.) Have some ideas on how you would help cover a local event at the station where you are interviewing. Be prepared for the question, “So what would you bring to this story today if you worked here.”

It is not uncommon to be given a pop quiz on the movers and shakers in the city where you will interview. I was given tests like this many times. Stay current on where you are living also. ND’s gave me pop quizzes on stories from where I currently lived to make sure I stayed on top of issues even when out of town.

You can also give a sort of pop quiz to the ND. ND’s especially like to tell you “war stories” while in an interview. They like to check out your reactions and they are trying to see if they relate to you. A great way to facilitate a connection is to research the ND and bring up a story he/she once covered and ask for more details. This also helps you get a moment to catch your breath, while the ND tells you all about covering that event.

Another interesting question you should prepare for: “What are you reading right now?” This is trickier than it may seem. The ND probably doesn’t want to hear about a trashy romance novel. A super highbrow book may not actually impress either. Again, the ND wants to see how curious you are as a person. (Read “Reality check” for more on the reasoning behind this.) Do you research things besides news? What subjects are you passionate about? This not only helps the ND get a feel for you as a person, it also helps him/her figure out if there’s a “beat” available that fits you well.

Finally, be prepared to get a little personal. I had many deep conversations about “life” with prospective ND’s and GM’s. They might go there and ask you if your spouse is ok with a move or if you can find a church to get fulfillment. We’ve talked kids, insecurities that drove us and also about bad decisions made that motivated us to be better. Covering news is voyeuristic. It can be intensely personal. There are a lot of issues that need rational minds to really delve into. Your ND will do whatever she/he can to see if you are a good fit. Get ready to get real. Stay true to who you are. After all, many journalists give a piece of themselves in every story: Might as well in the job interview too.

I got my first gig, and can’t pay my bills…

To be honest, I think J-schools should offer personal finance seminars on this subject. You are warned that money will be tight at first, but it doesn’t prepare you for the grim reality. Even with a roommate, I struggled badly. I had student loans and a car payment. (My car engine blew up on the way home from the interview for my first job… got stranded on the interstate… fun story!) Dealing with that and the stress of figuring out the job entailed was tough. From what I’m hearing from some of you, this hasn’t changed. Sometimes even after the first job!

Recently I asked for input on ways to help save money during that first gig. Many savings pro’s sent great ideas. Here they are.

Coupon

There are great websites that spell out how to do this (Southernsavers.com is a great example). The key: match up coupons with items that are also on sale at a store.

Consign

As in buy clothes at a consignment shop. Speaking of clothes, remember you can get great clothes without spending a bundle. If you plan to splurge, do it to have the clothes you buy fitted (see Dress for success). I actually was surprised at the deals some of you mentioned finding.

Drive an old car

As I mentioned earlier, my engine blew up on the way home from the interview. Having to lease a car was debilitating for me. It frankly forced me to move to another job more quickly because I needed money desperately. If you have an older car that still runs and the repairs cost less than a car payment, run that baby into the ground. The savings truly is worth the trouble.

Pack lunch

This may sound silly, but it makes a huge difference. Huge! The other great part, you probably will eat healthier and take fewer sick days and that will be a great reason to ask for a raise in a year or so.

Happy Hour

Many people mentioned this as a great way to blow off steam without spending a bundle. Cheap drinks are often paired with cheap or free food. Bottom line, you are young and need/deserve to have some fun. Why not go for it when you can spend less?

Now a few more ideas that may take a little more research, but could really pay off.

Save up for first job

Yes, this is for interns, college students. If at all possible work summer jobs or a part time gig and save the money while you are in school. Use it to supplement once you get that first gig. This is where I wish J-schools provided an elective course on personal finance. By the time many realize how little you truly make, you are a summer away from working. So please, tell any underclassmen you know who want to work in news: Save now.

See if you can defer student loans

Check this idea out. Some people have had luck at this. Call Sallie Mae and see if you qualify. Just know it can take 10 years to pay loans off, so don’t hold off too long.

Avoid credit cards

This may seem obvious to great journalistic minds, but I know many who are still desperately trying to pay off the debts from those first few years working. Credit card debt is a beast! You write stories about it. Remember them.

Go in with a financial plan

How do you plan with no money? There are ways. If your family has a great financial planner, go in and ask what you can do with your earnings. If you don’t have a planner you trust, start by reading “Automatic Millionaire.” Don’t chuckle. Some of the examples in there are from people who likely never earned what you will. They were smart with their money from day one, and ended up very secure. If you can take a financial planning course of some sort, do it. Because starting salaries are low, we have less of a chance to make it right. So start off on a smart path if you possibly can.

Finally, remember it does get better. The sacrifices should pay off, even nowadays with salaries on the down side.

What you are worth, a closer look at the RTNDA salary survey.

Last week, I was sent a copy of the RTNDA/Hofstra University 2012 TV and Radio News Staffing and Profitability Survey. I tweeted it out and placed it on Facebook so journalists could see what the median salaries are, and how salaries compare to the rate of inflation. (If your bills go up, you need more cash!) Knowledge is power. You may not realize it, but this survey is a gold mine of a resource for journalists.

Several journalists sent me DM’s on Twitter and Facebook saying the survey seemed off. They said the median was too high in many market sizes. And some of you said the low range under television news salaries was too high. These comments came from several market ranges in everything from management jobs, to producers, reporters and anchors. So I contacted the person behind the survey, Bob Papper, to ask how the survey works and what the takeaway is for journalists.

First, he stands by his numbers. The biggest reason: the surveys are sent directly to news directors. He says he contacts every news director in the country. Papper says, “I have a complete list.” The news director is almost always the person who fills the survey out. There is one market where it’s the AND who fills it out. In a few cases the station’s business manager fills it out. Papper says “I get more than 75 percent participation,” because he contacts news directors several times to make sure the surveys are completed. He also checks every television station in the country to make sure they have not added news departments, without him knowing.

Second, he looks at trends over the short and long term. You may remember me mentioning on Facebook, that you should take a look at the 5 and 10 year comparisons, based on inflation. Papper has been doing this survey for 19 years. That’s how he can confidently lay out comparisons like this one. He is seeing consistency in the numbers. That is a way to gauge if the survey is on target. There should not be huge swings, except in extreme cases like the recent housing collapse. Papper says since then the numbers have “normed out” a bit.

Now let’s explain what the median number means. After all, we journalists are not exactly known for our higher math skills. A “median” salary means half make below that number, half earn above it. A median salary is considered a typical salary. For example, when I asked him about producer pay in a top 5 market he said, “If you are a show producer in a top five market and you are not making at least 50 to 60 thousand minimum, you are being screwed.”

But here is where that median salary can get interesting, and why some of you are saying your pay is nowhere near the median. There are three other factors to consider, that no survey can completely counter: Growth markets, individual market differences, and lastly how replaceable you are.

Let’s consider growth markets, and individual market differences. Papper explained that Dallas has just entered into the top 5 markets. It historically is known for paying less anyway, and now it’s a growing market. Papper says, “If your market is a growth market the pay may not match up (to markets of similar size). It will tend to lag. A market that’s growing really fast, it may lag a good bit.” There are other markets that pay more than their typical size as well. Papper says an example is Baton Rouge, LA. “It typically pays above its market size.” That’s why understanding the term median is so important. Median is typical, but not absolute. Half of the salaries can be, and often are, lower. The other half are higher. Working for a station with a major affiliate also comes into play. (FYI, FOX stations are now keeping up with the major affiliates. Except in some tiny markets where Papper says, “people probably qualify for food stamps.”)

Now the big X factor: Your viewed importance in the newsroom. How replaceable are you? Remember the economy comes into play: Simple supply and demand. There are a lot of unemployed newsies looking for work, no matter the pay. Papper says if your pay is way below the median, you have to ask yourself if you are considered a valuable resource at that station. “You can always test the theory by applying for other jobs.” Papper says, “Talk to the boss or shop around.” And, he says, the numbers for anchors can be a little off, “because everyone is considered an anchor nowadays.” This can make it harder to gauge, especially when it comes to salaries for main anchors.

There is one more large factor to consider when looking at this survey. Take into account how many employees work in your newsroom. When considering your own salary, Papper explains you must look at market size, and staff size. (He breaks salaries down by newsroom staff size as well.) And, remember, network affiliates generally pay higher than independents.

So once you look at these factors, does your salary still seem too low? If so, here’s the big takeaway: Ask your ND about it. Again, news directors fill out these surveys. They have a good idea you will be wondering about it. After all, as Papper says, “A news director has no impetus to inflate the salaries they are paying, if anything the news director has an impetus to low ball what they are paying because employees are going to see this stuff.” Some stations post the surveys. News directors who want to show the pay at the station is fair hang them up on the wall. Employees who think the numbers are way off, also hang them up as a message to management. So go get your answers. I hope you can use this new knowledge, as power.

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Thank you to Bob Papper, for taking the time to explain all of this. He is a professor, and chairs the Department of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations at Hofstra University. He also is a former producer and news manager. Again, he has done this salary survey for 19 years.

What’s lacking in training for TV news? Ask us (that means you too)!

“Rules are made to be broken, but first you have to know the rules.”

By now you have probably read that J-schools were called on to change the way they teach by the Knight Foundation. In its “Open Letter to American University Presidents” the group calls for a “teaching hospital” style curriculum. (Basically you work alongside professionals to really learn the craft.) When I asked journalists about this, and what they would like to see change, I got a lot of kudos for universities that had producing classes and ran “newsrooms” where students put on the news. Glad to hear you are happy with your educations overall. But, I think this call to action goes beyond that.

So, I threw together some ideas on what journalists really need to know from the get go. Now I’m asking you to add to it. After all, we live it. We know what’s there and what’s missing.

Understanding subjects to handle a beat.

Think back to your first job. Did you know military lingo? Did you understand cop speak so you could decode it for viewers to understand? Could you clearly explain how the election process really works (Heck that’s a valid question on 4^th job.)? Let’s be honest, phrases like “firefighters responded to a three alarm fire” happen a lot in news copy because many journalists don’t truly know what it means. So instead of potentially screwing it up, journalists just repeat the information the information they are given by the officials. Reporting classes should decipher systems and lingo so you have a clue what’s going on from the moment you get in the TV news job force. I mean they need to teach the things we tend to cover most: fires, murders, crashes, elections, school millage rates, the GNP (do you at least know what that acronym means?) and unemployment stats. Is your head spinning yet? Then focus on how to break those types of story elements down in layman’s terms. That way viewers know what the heck your point is. It goes back to the simple idea that rules are made to be broken, but first you have to know the rules. Now think about your first economics story (or even your last one because that subject is a real bugger) and the first time you had to take a campaign ad and break down the true and false elements on various issues. It’s hard if you don’t understand the basic principles. It can take several attempts to get it right. Some of you may be thinking, “Well, I took an economics class.” or “I’m a poly sci minor.” Sometimes even that isn’t enough to break it down for TV viewers. A lot of those classes are theory. This is real world application stuff. You need the systems explained clearly, not a discussion on theories. If you understand those systems and the lingo, you can write about it clearly in news stories and school essays. Know the rules, then you can move past them.

Source building

This, to me, is one of the biggest problems in newsrooms today. So few people truly “get” how to source build. There are a lot of techniques involved, ethical issues, people and networking skills. We’ve dedicated articles under the cloud tag “source”. But they just scratch the surface. If you really sit and think about it, in the majority of TV newsrooms there are 1 or 2 reporters (besides the investigative team) and an assignment editor that have incredible sources. The rest, well, not so much. Source building does not come as naturally as it may seem, even in the age of social media. That’s why it needs to be taught in college journalism programs.

Social media interaction

When I asked what J-Schools should improve on, a few journalists mentioned social media. What writing style do you use on the social web, “newspaper” or “broadcast”? What is proper etiquette? What potential legal pitfalls could you run into? Heck, many of us “veteran journalists” would go back to school to take these sorts of classes, if we could. Again, we need to know the basic rules, before we can break them and begin to evolve.

Cross training

The most common suggestion I heard from journalists? Cross training. That even came from some newsies who went to the universities that taught reporting, producing and photojournalism classes. I am going to confess to one of the largest reasons I launched survivetvnewsjobs.com: Too often, journalists are disconnected in newsrooms. The reporter does not get what the producer needs. The producer doesn’t get what the anchor needs. No one seems to understand what the assignment editor needs. And reporters and photojournalists sit in the same news vehicle all day, and often are not recognizing the challenges the other faces. Simply put, few know the rules their teammates live under. There are two whole categories on the website relating to these issues: “Getting along with Peers” and “Smart Alliances.” “Getting along with Peers” is one of the most searched for and read sections. The reason: journalists want to understand why other key players in the newsroom act like they do. That’s crucial because we journalists waste time trying to explain things that we should not have to explain. It can hamper the product each day. It prohibits open discussions in news editorial meetings. Then people get “human” and start demanding “just trust me.” This is not a trust issue. This is a productivity issue. This is the cog in the wheel that prevents us from breaking the rules and evolving. Turning a few newscasts as a producer; turning a few packages one semester as a reporter and shooting a few pieces as a photojournalist does not make you an expert. It simply is not enough to allow you to really understand the daily pressures of these jobs. But it might be enough if you combine doing these things, in a newsroom setting, with talking about real world scenarios with veteran journalists. Let longtime producers explain why they start snapping at reporters three hours before the show. Let them explain why not turning in the tease video earlier than the pkg creates a multilevel nightmare. They can also hash out why missing slot is really bad for the entire newscast. Let veteran reporters explain why holding off on script approval can really screw over a field crew. How about hearing from a well-seasoned pro why sending an anchor to the set 10 minutes before air, with no a-block scripts (because they aren’t written yet!) will potentially wreak havoc for the next two blocks of news, if not the entire newscast. Then let’s discuss the reporter driving the live truck while the photojournalist sits in the back slam editing the pkg desperately trying to make slot, because of equipment failure or bad weather. Real life scenarios do not always play out in these university “newsrooms.” Discussion groups involving veteran journalists, in every newsroom role, can help fill in the gaps.

There are many more issues we could bring up. Please, FB with more of your ideas. If we get enough, we’ll send them and this article to the Knight Foundation. After all, it’s our vocation. We deserve to lay out the rules, so we can help break them and evolve our profession.