Since finishing lectures I have been industriously applying for a number of roles, mainly within publishing, with most of those in London. I thought it might be helpful to people to share my experiences - not so much dos and don'ts, because I am nowhere near experienced (or employed) enough for that, more my general observations. Perhaps they'll be helpful to someone in a similar position! Firstly, the main thing that I've found, and it's by far the most frustrating, is that people in publishing take an absolute age to get back to you after an interview. It's ironic that in an industry built around the commodification of communication, they are so bad at, well, communicating, at least with applicants. I've been to a few interviews now, and of those I would say perhaps 20% of interviewers have got back to me when they said they would. The remainder have needed prodding and prompting to give me a response, in some cases immediately getting back to me with a somewhat contrite - but no less crushing - rejection. This really does seem to be down to the individual, as I have had timely responses from some and massive delays from others within the same company. Perhaps the reputation that publishing has for being somewhat warm and fuzzy extends to interviewers who don't want to disappoint people, but leaving them in limbo is really no better. If anything, it's worse. So interviewers, if any of you should ever read this: if you need someone to remind you of these pesky little administrative tasks (you know, like an editorial assistant would), I'm your guy! It's hard to wait and wait and wait only to be told you haven't got your dream job, but just think of it as interview practice. They don't mean it personally, it's just business. What I've always found helpful is instantly applying for something else, and at the time of most rejections I already have multiple other applications in the pipeline, either being prepared, having been sent or waiting to hear back from a different interview. Don't put all your eggs in one basket by applying for jobs one at a time and waiting to hear back before going onto the next one. Yeah, you might end up in the situation I've found myself in a couple of times where you get multiple rejections in one day, which can be tough, but I got through that by reminding myself that I had other irons in the fire and that there were other jobs out there. Pinning all your hopes on one can leave you feeling like there's nothing else out there, and there is.
Secondly, and anyone else who has been to a number of interviews will have noticed this too, is that a lot of interviews go the same way. They have the same format, the interviewers ask the same (or at least very similar) questions, etc. You really can practice for interviews, and it will help. I tend to cope well with stress during interviews, but not everybody does. I probably wouldn't cope as well if I didn't prepare meticulously for every interview. I make a point of researching the company, so if it's a publisher, I will have a list of things I need to find out about them, such as: 1. What sort of titles do they publish? 2. What are some of their biggest titles/authors? 3. What's the history of the company? This doesn't have to be massively extensive, but you should at least know where they sit within their parent organisation in relation to other imprints and so on, what their heritage is, any interesting facts about their history and so on. 4. What have they made a splash with recently? It always looks good if you can talk about a campaign you might have seen for one of their recent titles, what you liked about it, whether it made you buy the book and so on. One of my most repeated phrases to myself is that if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. It sounds trite, but it really is true. A lot of the time, I have read up extensively on a company and researched them in detail, only for none of this new knowledge to be called upon in the interview. But the fact that I knew it at all gave me one less thing to worry about. I knew that if they asked me what I knew about the company, I could give an answer that made me sound like I knew what I was talking about. This meant that even if I didn't have to call on that knowledge, I was glad that I knew it, because it calmed me down. If ever anyone has asked you "You ready for your interview?" and you've felt like the answer is "No" (even if you told them you were!), perhaps you could calm those nerves with some trawling of the "About our Company" section. Thirdly, and I've mentioned this above, the questions in the interview themselves. These can also be prepared for. Although the questions themselves won't always be exactly the same, the chances are they will be similar enough that you can have prepared responses that will fit. As I have mostly been going for editorial roles, these questions might be slightly more geared up to that kind of work, but given that most entry-level jobs will have the word "assistant" in them, there is a reasonable chance that there'll be quite a lot of crossover. It's worth having responses ready for the following, as I have been asked these or some variation of them in pretty much every interview: 1. Can you give an example of a time when you've overcome a challenge as part of a team? 2. Can you think of an example of a time when you've had to work under pressure? What strategies did you use to cope with that? 3. What do you understand the main responsibilities of this role to be? It's always worth screenshotting the job description when you apply for a role. It takes no time whatsoever, and will give you ample opportunity to study it at your leisure and identify the key competencies interviewers will be looking for in the candidates, what the values of the company are and how best to answer to show that you align with those values. 4. What would you say are your areas for improvement? I cannot overstate the importance of having an answer for this, and pitching it very carefully. Whatever you do, DO NOT SAY YOU'RE A PERFECTIONIST. Your interviewers know that the vast majority of people find it easier to talk about things they're bad at rather than things they're good at, so if you can't think of at least one thing to improve, you'll just make it look like you're unprepared or worse, arrogant. 5. Do you have any questions for us? Always have questions. It's probably best (at least from what I've found) to try and think of at least three, as there's a good chance that they might answer some questions just in the course of telling you about the role or the company. Where this gets trickier is in second or subsequent interviews. Keep away from asking more fundamental questions at this stage lest you look out of your depth, and be on the lookout for things that they allude to vaguely in the rest of the interview that you can probe them on at the end. They should also offer you a drink before the interview commences, but bring a bottle of water in case they forget or their water cooler is broken or something. Even if you aren't thirsty, accept the glass of water, or take your bottle out and have it to hand. You might find you talk a lot during the interview and get a dry throat, but it's not really for that. Having a glass of water to hand can give you thinking time on a tricky question or act as a displacement activity if you're a bit nervous. Obviously don't slowly down the entire thing with theatrically loud gulps if they ask something you really don't know the answer to though. You don't want to look like a maniac. One final thing that I've found is that they sometimes like to give you a task to complete in certain interview processes. Sometimes it'll be a small thing as part of the interview, other times it might be something a bit more in-depth between stages of an interview. For the kind of roles I've been going for, I've been asked to edit text, for example (never within the interview itself, that really would be intense!). In a non-editorial role, I was asked to complete a short task at the end of the interview, which was actually very informal and lighthearted. It always looks good if, when discussing the task afterwards, you can compare it to similar things you might have had to do before. Finally, revise your own skills and experiences. There have been times when I've come out of interviews and thought "Damn it, why didn't I think of example x when they asked me that question?" It is surprisingly easy to forget what relevant skills you have under pressure. Remind yourself of them beforehand - I like to keep a list of skills as I acquire them or get given the chance to demonstrate them, usually whilst on a work experience placement or similar. This ever expanding list also has the added bonus of increasing your self-confidence and hopefully excising that pesky impostor syndrome! I'll sign off now, but before I do, an anecdote. The other day, I turned up for an interview with a London-based publisher. Twenty minutes before the interview was due to start, I finally received word from another company I'd interviewed with that I hadn't got the job. On checking my emails last minute, I realised that there had been a slight miscommunication, and the interview I was about to go into wasn't a face to face one - I was pretty sure it was supposed to be a phone interview. I walked into the visitor's reception anyway, hoping I hadn't just spent several hours on a coach for nothing, only to be told that they had no record of my appointment. Sure enough, at bang on the appointed hour, my interviewer rang me. I felt like a fool as I explained that I was downstairs, which she responded to with some surprise, understandably. She very graciously offered to conduct the interview face to face, and we proceeded to a room she had managed to hurriedly reserve. I felt like the interview went well, all things considered, then on the way out I accidentally followed her through the staff entrance and got my legs slammed in a steel gate, triggering flashing red security lights. A perfect end to an interview that hadn't exactly begun in the best circumstances! Mulling over my chances on the coach on the way home, I received another email from a different company I'd interviewed with. Another rejection. All in all, it hadn't been the best day. But the next day, I got up, had breakfast, then started right on applying for more jobs. Yes, that had been a bad day. But every bad day ends at midnight. Incredibly, I was right about how the should-have-been-a-phone-interview had gone too - I'm through to the next stage! Sometimes things really aren't as bad as you think! Keep your fingers crossedfor me, and I'll do the same for you reader. Currently reading: Three Women, Lisa Taddeo Currently listening: True North, Borknagar Currently playing: Resident Evil 4
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AuthorOllie - BA English and Creative Writing, MA Publishing. Archives
April 2020
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