Tips From the Class of 2006

Trust your gut; be realistic; be assertive and persistent; don't be afraid to freelance. Grads from Class of 2006 offer tips on a job search.

Think outside the box of a traditional newspaper job and get yourself new media and other skills that will make you more marketable in the Internet sphere.

Defend your decision to go to J-school strongly. You will always meet people who don't think highly of J-schools so you should let them know about the skills you got at Columbia.

Be realistic about the salary. It's always below your expectation. Choose the job at give your a lot of freedom to report.

Explore every single lead and contact and be patient. Practice freelancing as well; don't just sit around waiting for someone to call -- go out and report and pitch. Never be afraid to pitch.

Network incessantly and don't be afraid to freelance.

I'd say that, for radio students, if you don't have any radio experience, your masters and/or workshop pieces are your calling cards. My master’s doc was invaluable in helping me land a job and has since been licensed twice on PRI. So pay attention to those and keep good copies of clips, intros, scripts, etc. Also, don't underestimate the value of alumni and those connections. And finally, don't be afraid of life outside of New York City! Wyoming, where I am, may seem far and foreign, but there are great stories everywhere, and we're now fully staffed in the newsroom with 3 JSchool grads, from '05, '06, and this month '07.

Take the "new media" workshop because those skills will pay off. Both my internships that sustained me before my book sold were in the online departments of newspapers, the Courier-Journal in Louisville and the NY Times.

Have an open mind. I was sure I wanted to be in magazines, but after an internship at a great magazine and a job at an online media outfit, I now now that I'm much happier with the pace of online journalism.

Trust your gut

There is more to this world than New York City and The New York Times.

After J-school, take time off if you can. Forget about work. Ride a bicycle. Then dig in hard and put all your job-hunting energy into finding the exact kind of job you want. Work it from all angles. Write cover letters proposing a beat. Design freelance plans. Send editors lists of story ideas. Apply to open positions and tell them what you REALLY want to do. Eventually, something will give and you'll be doing what you want. Use personal connections and geographic ties as much as possible. This is a genuinely difficult time to get into the media. Take the best job you can get; get as much out of it as possible; keep your eyes on the job market all the time.

Open yourself up to the possibilities and, if possible, be willing to move. If a job doesn't work out, you can always come back to where you came from. And it really is possible to do almost anything for a year.

Try as hard as possible to line up a paying journalism job before graduation. It really helps keep you connected so you can get that next job.

Freelance.Craigslist has plenty of people looking for writers. Submit pieces there. I didn't know where to look for freelancing, and ended up having to start from scratch when I graduated. CraigsList is a great source of finding jobs and freelance opportunities for writing.

Don't freak out, despite all the doom and gloom you hear about the industry. There's still news, and lots of it. But hedge your bets by learning as much about online news presentation and multimedia as possible.

Finding work requires choosing from among options, not ideals.

Stay connected to your friends at journalism school - all of them. You never know who will have a good job lead for you. Talk to them constantly and be open to lots of different kinds of job.

If seeking stability, this may not be the right profession.

Good things don't come to those who only stand and wait for employers beg for their services. Good things happen if you target a select few resumes to a select few outlets rather than blanket the globe with generic cover letters extolling your virtues.

Know the paper or magazine's audience, learn about their coverage and be persistent.

It's the same advice that other J-school graduates have told me: It will take 3-5 years after graduation to find a position that you like and/or that pays the bills.

Be persistent and be genuine.

Be realistic, but never let a job strip you off of your idealism; that dream job that made you go the j-school in the first place is attainable!

Work all the connections you have, stay in touch with people; things come up where and when you might not expect.

Try to get know professors at the J school. Many of them have connections and can help if they like your work. Try to get published and/or develop a good reel in school. Do an internship in school, if possible. Also, keep in touch with old employers. That's how I found my current job.

Take the criteria of your ideal job-- location, medium, salary, subject matter, setup (freelance/intern/full-time) and rank them in terms of your priorities. Pursue what's most important to you and be willing to compromise on the rest, at least at first. My top priorities were to stay in NYC and work full-time and that's what I'm doing.

Don't just send out packets and wait for them to contact you.Call and follow up, drop by the paper (if you can), try to meet the editors and reporters. Be aggressive. I found out quickly that by the time a job is posted most editors already have eight to 10 people in mind for interviews.

I have advice for those currently enrolled at Columbia: try to work with a publication during your time there. Everyone will tell you Columbia is the priority and you shouldn't do anything else, but if you don't have previous experience and you don't do any outside work while at Columbia, you are in trouble on the job market, particularly in New York.

To try and not be discouraged about the journalism crisis and all the poo-bahs that are freaked out about it. Change is hard but there will always be a need for journalism. It's an important field, it's a difficult field, but it's ultimately very rewarding and if you stick with it, great things can happen.

If even an organization is not offering a job, ask to meet one of the editors in person. It's worth it to be on friendly terms with everyone in a given news market.

It's important to be open to jobs that may not seem like what you want but may actually be very rewarding. Also, don't listen to the idea that you have to leave NY - if you want to stay here, stay. You may have to readjust your expectations on another level, but you don't have to move. That said, if you're open to moving, it can be a rich experience.

Remember that you probably aren't going to get your dream job right away. I'm not writing quite as much as I'd like to be writing, but I can see that I'm on a job path that will allow me to get where I want and do the kind of writing I'd like to do. I guess my main advice would be to do the best you can even in a less than ideal job situation because people really notice when you work hard and make an effort. As a result they want to keep you on and are more likely to promote you or move you into an area of the company where you'd be happier.

Don't stress too much, or narrow your options too much-you may find a great job where you least expect it! Also, know that workshops in J-school don't necessarily predict your experience in a real work environment.

Don't be too set on one medium of journalism. In the end it's all about telling stories and it doesn't matter whether you're writing that story, blogging about it, telling it in photos, illustrations, or video. Learn to express yourself in different ways.

Get a part time or temp job to sustain yourself and pay your bills and hold out for the job you want.

Your best bet is probably to freelance as a fact-checker for as many publications as possible. Disregard what they write about and thinking only about accumulating experience (i.e., experience that can go in the "experience" section of your resume), and dollars. Fact-checking should pay $25-30/hour. Once you've fact-checked anywhere at all, you can leverage the "experience" and start looking for fact-checking jobs at places you like. You should also call random places you like and say you're a freelance fact-checker, even if you've never done it before, because j-school + enthusiasm are often enough to get you in, and we all know how to fact-check (all it is is making sure stuff is true, and we know how to do that). Once you've checked a couple of stories, ask if the publication accepts freelance pitches. (Everyone does). Then go for it. In the meantime, pitch to a range of publications in your area of interest, and use ANY connections you have to get actual stories published. Take any chance you have to be published, even if the pay is terrible, because the only way to be published is to have been published, so (nearly) any clip is good. Also, it's fine to use GOOD samples from school to round out your clips when you're asked for clips. J-school grads are in the difficult position of having very high standards - unrealistically high, for many publications. This is why it's better, at first, to work for places you don't feel passionate about, so you don't feel you're compromising yourself, and earn some money so you can be choosey and ambitious when it comes to working in the subject area that excites you most. One further note about freelancing: make sure everything is written down and there are contracts in place for everything you do, and make sure that everyone you work for is explicit about their payment practices, how they want your invoice to look, and how long they will take to pay you. Keep records of your work and communicate often about what you're doing (in terms of quantity). Don't rely on oral contracts! Keep copies of all emails regarding your work in case the magazine's finance department vanishes one day or their files spontaneously combust or something.

My biggest piece of advice is to keep in touch with Columbia instructors and the career services office and to be willing to do just about anything--you never know where it might lead.

I'm honestly a little bit jaded about working in this field, though the more people I talk to, the better I feel about the kind of experience I'm getting just one year out of J-school. I'm very burnt out from having started my internship immediately after graduation and then moved to my current job, so my suggestion is, if you can afford it, take a few months off before starting to work!

Chin up.

Unless you're very young and willing to work for very little money as an editorial assistant, you most likely won't get an editing job at a national magazine. Ever.

Don't decide you won't take a job that pays less than $X. And don't apply only to prestige jobs. Having a foot in the door doing what you want to do is better than standing on the sidelines, even if the job you get isn't the one you ultimately want.

Keep your head up.

My advice for the job search is to shoot a lot of baskets -- one is bound to go in. I picked a general area where I wanted to live (Southern California), and then sent my resume and clips to almost every publication I could find. Even if newspapers didn't post openings, the editors and recruiters I contacted were always happy to meet with me, and they continue to be contacts today. A willingness to live anywhere will help.

Take time off. Travel. Don't kill your own dreams.

Don't freak out. It's just life, and the most important thing is that you enjoy what you are doing and derive meaning from it. Try not to get caught up in the one-upping, competitive part of the field.

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Tips From the Class of 2006