Easy video tutorial for Career Connect search

Lots of people have been asking me about how to find an internship or job. Here's your first step: a search on the  Career Services Website. 

In fact, even if you're not looking for a job or internship, Career Connect can give you some ideas about what employers are looking for so you can get the skills you need.

Check out my video tutorial , which I created on Jing, a really cool, free platform, and see if it works for you.

Read the want ads even if you're not looking for a job

I love my job, but I'm always looking for another one.

Not necessarily for me, but for any of the dozens of students and alumni I know and keep in touch with. I'm always perusing the job boards and classifieds so I know what skills employers are looking for. Lots of times I come across something that fits the needs of someone I'm either working with or I'm connected to. This is how it works. 

Yesterday I was talking with a student about his goal of travelling for awhile after he graduates. Raz and I have been talking with him over the past year about how he can use his journalism skills and other experiences to  finance this, including teaching English, working at an American school, picking up some freelance work at English language publications, and freelancing to US publications while he's traveling. 

Then I read this newsletter called Bonjour Paris, which I subscribe to (if you love Paris, go get it now. You'll love it.) It featured a story by a woman who's moving to Paris from Australia, and it explains how she did it. She found work on, get ready, Craigslist Paris. I know I'm old school, but  I hadn't even thought of Craigslist Pareee. 

Of course, there are Craigslists everywhere, including Peru, where I came across a possible job for this student. The rest is up to him.

Here's an internship in international reporting. I have another student who's really interested in this field. She might not be eligible this year, but she can read the ad and get ready to apply next year. 

Career advice from recent journalism grads

I love opening my e-mail box to see this message line: "I'm employed!"

I've been seeing a lot of those lately from recent grads, many of whom took my career prep course, Journalism 497G, the Journalism Launchpad last spring, or who I've coached during Thursday office hours. UMies always want to help their fellow UMies, so these students almost always send along advice for you guys. Here's a sampling.

From Sarah Hardy:
Sarah came to UMass Amherst from the Pacific Northwest as an exchange student, fell in love with the place (of course), and stayed to graduate.

Last week I successfully moved to Seattle without any stints living in my parents' basement. I'm still working at Starbucks, but I found out today that I was accepted for a six month internship at Seattle Business magazine, which is the top business magazine in Washington. I haven't started yet, but the magazine is a very high quality, glossy publication and the editors have worked for Business Week, the Seattle Times and the L.A. Times amongst other publications.

Lessons from the Launchpad: Join a professional organization

I'm posting this semester with tidbits from the Launchpad class, for those who couldn't take the course for one reason or another. The goal of this class is to prepare students for the job and internship hunt, to look at career options using your journalism degree, and to figure out your personal finances.

I was going over a student resume, and noticed that he had once belonged to a professional organization, but had let the membership lapse. We talked about this and took a look at the website for the organization. We found lots of resources that he could use, including a job board, a mentoring program, scholarships and lots of other information about the journalism business.

This morning he wrote to tell me that he had re-enrolled in the group and was immediately invited to a networking event this spring. By the time he graduates in two years, he'll have a network ready to help him find a job.

So this is one step that can really pay off. Join a professional organization while you're a student. The sooner the better. Get onto their blogs and Facebook pages. Link in with them. Go to their conferences and events. This is how you build your network.

Check out organizations like:

• The Society of Professional Journalists 
• The Online News Association
• Investigative Reporters and Editors, 
• The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, 
• The National Association of Black Journalists, 
• New York Women in Communications, 
• New Media Women Entrepreneurs

Or take a look at this  exhaustive list of organizations put together by the folks at the Cronkite School at Arizona State University.

You're bound to find at least one organization that would be happy to have you as a member.

Springfield Republican Entrepreneurial Journalism Internship

We're going into our second semester this fall with the Springfield Republican/MassLive Entrepreneurial Journalism Internship, designed for grads of Entrepreneurial Journalism (Take it this fall!) to use some of the tools and skills they picked up in the class.

This paid internship involves writing and management of MassLive's UMass 101 blog, along with other media management activities, like shadowing in the ad sales department and working on special projects.

Preference will be given to grads and fall enrollees of Entrepreneurial Journalism, but others will be considered. If you're 're interested, please email a resume and your Linkedin profile address to  bjroche@journ.umass.edu.

Here's a job description:

Primary responsibilities:

·       Write and coordinate contributions to the U Mass101 Blog on Mass Live. 

·       Maintain and build or re-build a group of regular contributors who will send information for blog posts.  (Because of the transient student population, recruiting new contributors is probably an ongoing activity.)

·       Use social networking, including  Facebook and Twitter, to promote the U Mass Blog and attract comments or submissions.

·       Work to expand the usefulness of Mass Live and the U Mass blog to people at U Mass and other regional colleges, particularly students.

Internship will be provided opportunities to :

·       Increase understanding of what goes into a news site’s digital presence by exposure to news and ad sales staff at the Republican and Mass Live.

·       Work on a special project to be determined jointly with intern at the beginning of each year or semester.  Examples might include (but are not limited to):

Working with Mass Live staff to create a model landing page or pages to be the online home for student submitted content, in addition to the regular blog posts.

Expanding the blog to encompass information about events or from students at other schools, particularly the 5 colleges.

Using information from online metrics, when available, to understand the needs and interests of the blog audience or potential blog audience, and incorporating that into future blogs.

Doing a social media internship? Read this first

Lots of students are getting internships doing social media for organizations this summer.

But when I ask them a few basics about social, they have no idea what I'm talking about. Not good!

Social media management is not just a matter of tweeting and posting cool stuff. You need to know the best channel for particular messages and goals, and you must be able to measure impact. You need to know who's on which channels, and how they use them.

You also need to follow the field and keep up with change. Just as paywalls are a hot topic in the newspaper business these days, social media companies--Facebook in particular--are trying to amp up their revenues.  Because these companies need to make a profit.

1. Did you know, for example, that Facebook is now charging people with subscribers (these are often reporters or organizations whose posts you'll be promoting) to get posts into those subscriber feeds?

nytimes.com Bits columnist Nick Bilton recently blogged about this:

I’ve stayed on Facebook after its repeated privacy violations partly because I foolishly believed there was some sort of democratic approach to sharing freely with others. The company persuaded us to share under that premise and is now turning it inside out by requiring us to pay for people to see what we post.

He also talked about his situation as a journalist who is using Facebook to connect with readers on WBUR's Here and Now last week.

I have noticed this with my Fiftyshift feed recently. Just to recap: Last semester, I bought Facebook advertising to get more "Likes." Now I have more than 400 Likes, and Facebook wants me to pay more money to "promote" my post with these users. So I'm now being asked to pay to reach people I've already paid to reach.

In this Forbes.com post, contributor Elan Dekel de-constructs a Facebook marketing campaign and its costs and benefits. His verdict: Facebook pages are a bad investment for small businesses. 
The comments on this post are also worth reading.

Here's another very useful post from streetfight, which covers hyperlocals, Why Mom and Pops Will No Longer Pay for Social Media Management. Interestingly enough, it comes from Julie Brooks, CEO of eCape, which advises hyperlocals on Cape Cod. 

What's this development going to mean for the organization that is hiring you to manage its Facebook page?


2. Did you know about a thing called Klout? You should.

Also: Chartbeat and Google Analytics. Get under the hood with these platforms!

 The Social Flow window on Google Analytics can tell you boatloads about how social users connect with your organization on the web and what they do once they are on your site. From measuring the social on my little web page, I can see that Pinterest users look at different content from my Facebook users. This helps me develop strategy for my social media.

3. Learn who's using social for what. There's a lot of bad information out there on this topic, mostly produced by digital marketers who profess to know everything. Those are the people you'll get when you do a Google search. But I like the Pew Internet Center,  which provides a lot of research on users. Also: Mashable, AllFacebook.

4. Keep reading! Here's Website Magazine's post on 5 Questions to Ask Your Social Media Consultant. 

5. Take my Entrepreneurial Journalism course this fall. We'll be doing all kinds of research and presenting on this topic and lots of others at the intersection of journalism, technology, entrepreneurship and awesome. Okay, maybe the awesome thing is pushing it. But it's still a great class. Sign up for it during pre-reg.

What my students learned from writing about the economy

The first day of Journalism 301: Introduction to Multimedia Reporting is always pretty much the same.

I tell students they have to produce an online news package about the economy.

Here's what happens. 

Then, something funny happens. Over the course of six weeks, we look at lots of online sources, we interview people, we talk about stories and how the economy impacts different people in different ways. We focus on the economic issues facing students: the job market, student loan debt, the cost of college, the disparities in salary levels among majors.

And by the end of that time, students have actually produced some pretty good work for beginners.

One assignment is a curated blog post entitled, "What I learned about covering the economy." Here are a few of the best ones:
       Alex Lindsay

       Michele Thorkelson 

      Samara Abramson

Cuckoo interview questions you should be ready to answer

It's Career Fair Day today at UMass, and it's a lot of fun to see so many students running around in ties and suits. Coincidentally, it's also the last day of the Journalism Launchpad Class, in which we'll be doing practice interviews and looking at our YouTube videos about "Why you should hire me."

In preparation for this class, I've been researching interview question and came across this post over at Glassdoor, entitled Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions for 2013.

Honestly, you wonder how they come up with this stuff. Like:

"How would you direct someone else on how to cook an omelet?" – view answers. Asked at PETCO. More PETCO interview questions.

And some, you probably wouldn't want to work for a company that would ask such a thing.

"Estimate how many windows are in New York." – view answers. Asked at Bain & Company. More Bain & Company interview questions.

Others, you can kind of understand what they're getting at:

"If you had turned you cell phone to silent, and it rang really loudly despite it being on silent, what would you tell me?" – view answers. Asked at Kimberly-Clark. More Kimberly-Clark interview questions.

Glassdoor also has a post entitled Most Common Interview Questions.

I'll be using a few from both lists in class today. 

Tips from Alexa: Money matters

by Guest Poster Alexa Wilansky '14

Today’s tip is based on paid internships. While I’m at school, my internship is strictly credit. When I am home, my internship is paid. That was the agreement. This isn’t really a tip, but if you’d like to establish some sort of compromise with your boss and your work ethic, then by all means sit and have a discussion with your boss.

I don’t have to tell you that money can be tricky. I always feel awkward when discussing my payment with anyone, especially someone I work for. I know from the outside-in it looks like no big deal, but no one really knows how the situation is because they don’t know your boss like you do.

If you receive payment automatically then no worries, but sometimes it’s out-of-pocket, especially if it’s someone who owns their own company.

Set up an account on an app called Venmo. It’s a free app designed to let friends, or whomever, send and receive money. It uses your account information for direct transfer and deposit. Have you and your boss (or person who pays) set it up. It also works online at Venmo.com. Venmo is great because it doesn’t charge up the nose like PayPal does (hint: they recently started deducting fees for deposits and withdrawals).

Talking about something like this can be difficult. Some bosses honestly don’t care one way or another talking about it. Either way, for your comfort, bringing it up casually is your best bet. Say something like, “I put a few hours in and sent you an invoice. Let me know if you’d like me to work a few more hours or if I’m working too often.” (Most supervisors like you to work a lot, but some prefer just enough hours a week to keep costs down and it’s not as overwhelming).

Hope this helped!

Alexa's back. With more interning tips.

From guest poster Alexa Wilansky '14:

Welcome back students! I hope you had a great break. I have returned with more internship tips, as a lot happened over winter break.

Since I was just two floors below my supervisor’s office, I saw her more often than usual, even in relation to the summer. We spoke every day about what's in the future for the company, and we met with clients. 

Yet, I did a little bit of meeting on my own. So here’s a tip, if you see an event that’s interesting and you can meet people, but will also help with your boss’s work, take matters into your own hands and go! Take notes on your phone and get as many business cards and and as much information as you can.

To refresh, I intern for a commercial real estate company called elleco inc. I was fortunate enough to have interned last summer for Bisnow, a primarily, commercial real estate company. They throw these huge networking events called “Schmoozerama.” I attended their latest event January 16.

There, I reconnected with my old friends from Bisnow and, most importantly, I even got a few new connections. Not only did I build my network, but I got my boss some new connections as well. I got information for a website designer who will also make a mobile app for her website, and information on a great contact who can help with events if she ever needed it.

Don’t be shy about being independent. It’s a win-win.