The state of newsroom recruiting

How the media recruiting process is shifting like the rest of the media business.

It’s been six months since I was on the receiving end of a pink slip. While not the greatest thing to be laid off in the midst of a pandemic, if that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have started this newsletter and started to build a connection with 3,400+ people. There have been 116 editions; I write for the pleasure and privilege of writing. All with the hope that if I write every day, I may one day actually get good at it. 

In my first edition, I laid out what I was aiming to do:

So what’s this newsletter about? Great question. It’ll be a mix of reporting and thoughtful analysis (some call this “insights” but that’s become industry jargon, so I choose not to use it. Also, you will not see the words “launch” or “utilize”). Because who doesn’t want more hot takes about the media business? 

The newsletter will get down and dirty into the mechanics of the media business, how it makes money (the buy-side; the sell-side; print, digital, tv, streaming; ad tech; you’ll get it all here, folks), but also lean on my academic background to bring some media criticism to the table. 

Plus you get some good music. 

Six months in, I think I’ve done this to varying success. Some days are good; some not as much. And while the newsletter helps keep my brain from atrophying, it’s also, perhaps, a pathway to getting back into a newsroom.

But maybe it’s not working as well as I’d like, as over the last six months, when it comes to job offers, I’m batting .000. My average for actually getting an interview is below the Mendoza line. 

It’s a tough pill to swallow, the constant rejection. But the reality is that this is a seller’s market, with more than 30,000 media professionals getting laid off or furloughed over the last seven months. And it’s not like newsrooms were expanding before the pandemic hit. As one HR rep told me, “There are so many people qualified to work, and few positions.” 

The media recruiting process, like everything else in our business, is shifting. Part of it is due to the pandemic, part of it is due to newsrooms trying to systematically address the decades of inequality in hiring. But one thing is clear: newsrooms are working hard to find the right applicant for the right role at the right time, and it’s constantly a moving target.

The “who you know” network is giving way to foundational systems that try to address diversity and inclusion. Having processes in place to help applicants navigate these waters, but also find and hire the best possible candidates are vital to any company. 

And when there are so many qualified applicants gunning for the same job, the communication between the recruiter (or, most likely the system the recruiter uses) and the applicant can often become non-existent, which serves no one any good. The common refrain applicants get: “we’re going in a different direction.”

One recruiter, who was recently laid off from a digital publication, told me that “sometimes it’s hard if not impossible to say exactly why ‘we’re going in a different direction’...I’ve been asked for feedback as to why we didn’t hire them and had to be vague. I've kept candidates in mind and even hired them for other jobs. [Companies] might also continue to post & promote a role even as they already have finalists just to be on the safe side.”

I spoke with talent acquisition personnel (fka recruiters) at a few media companies. Most asked to be anonymous, as they weren’t given permission to speak about their outlet’s recruiting and hiring tactics.

“We don't have—and I’ve asked if we could set up, because we have such high volume—an auto response for candidates,” said one recruiter at a large magazine company. “And it's always a hard no, for no reason at all.” 

The recruiter continued, “We’re the middle man from HR director to hiring manager, where there could be a lot of differences. And that’s where the process looks different across the board. We have a layered process with so many formal approvals. And especially at a time when a lot of qualified people are looking for work, I want to be mindful of people's time, but that’s not always the case.”

Every company has its own hiring system; some formal, others not as much. 

For example, when I hired reporters at Adweek, I’d put a job description on social platforms and with LinkedIn, chose the “Easy Apply” option. It was a nightmare, as my inbox would get flooded with applicants. One role crossed the 1,000 application mark. And this is at a small trade publication. 

From there, if there was a resume or recommendation that caught my eye, I’d grab coffee with the reporter to see what they were like in a neutral setting. We’d just talk. Crazy, I know. If I liked what they had to say, I’d bring them in to meet the team, who would pepper the applicant with questions, but also field questions that perhaps the hopeful reporter couldn’t ask me. 

My philosophy is that, when possible, applicants should meet the people they’re potentially going to work with; and vice versa. And if THAT went well, I’d send a writing test. This worked for me because Adweek is a small company, but I understand that would not work at a larger company. 

Of the dozen reporters I hired, only one came through the “formal” application process of filling out an application. (I did interview many who came in through this door, but the recommendation of a reporter’s network wound up being a stronger signal for us.)

“In this moment, the newsroom is also trying to get away from hiring from their network,” said Gloria Clark, senior manager of talent acquisition at The New York Times. “Our team does proactive outreach, sourcing, and uncover candidates not on their radar. Some of that is reviewing incoming applicants. There was a time before where [the newsroom] didn’t know there were applicants for a role; they didn't know to access the system.”

The NYT, you can imagine, is highly selective when it comes to hiring. One example: for its 52 Places reporter gig, it received 14,000 applications. 

It has a talent acquisition team of about 30, and Clark and Stacey Olive, the company’s vice president of talent acquisition, told me that it took some time to educate the newsroom on how to work with the recruiting team.

Clark did say that if an applicant gets called for a phone interview or makes it to a panel interview, they will get a response on whether or not they’re getting the role. 

“We have a commitment to get back to all candidates,” Clark told me. “if we are to decline someone after looking at their application, you’ll receive an application that we’re moving forward with other candidates.”

The paper has a process, divided into four recruiting principles it implemented three years ago: 

1. It posts all open roles, at least internally;

2. It tracks all recruiting in its tracking system so they can look at data;

3. For every open role, it has a commitment, before extending an offer, to talk to multiple candidates of race and gender;

4. The panel of NYT staffers that interview candidates (after a candidate is screened, both by phone and in person [well, by video now], the candidate is interviewed by a panel) must also be diverse. 

Olive said this has been a mandate from A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of the NYT. She also noted that if a team or hiring manager felt compelled to make an offer and hadn't met those requirements, they must get an exception approval from Carolyn Ryan, the paper’s assistant managing editor and, according to Olive and Clark, an advocate for a strong relationship between the two teams. 

Recruiting and newsrooms have to work hand-in-hand. Especially when trying to address the systemic inequality embedded across newsrooms. This summer, as we’ve discussed quite a few times, newsrooms across the board began to implement solutions and systems to decades of structural racism. 

“It’s a weird process,” said the magazine recruiter. “It’s dysfunctional. I’ve seen where it's highly dedicated work stuff to the functioning of the software; and it’s important that we invest there. It doesn’t always reflect in our system, but it does in the email threads between us and editors. That's why it's good when we can train hiring managers on the system. Then they can see who’s in the pool.”

The New York Times hasn’t jumped into the artificial intelligence recruiting waters to help with addressing these challenges. Olive told me she believes the systems are “not advanced yet to combat against potential damage of bias…to me the danger of bias outweighs the benefit of all applications.” 

Finally, the pandemic has also upended the intangibles of recruiting. Much like sales teams, recruiters are a press-the-flesh business, meeting with candidates in person to get a sense of everything from non-verbal communication to how they represent themselves. 

Olive told me that the Times has had to come up with creative solutions for video interviewing to give sense of the company culture. 

“It’s created space for more empathy, and we’re building that into every approach we take,” she said. 

It can be as simple as starting each conversation by acknowledging the nonsense that we all live with and not pretending it doesn't exist.

“Strangely with everyone working remotely, it’s made us a bit more human,” Clark said. “More babies and toddlers on the screen, or ‘hold on making my lunch’ or ‘someone’s at the door.’ I’ve enjoyed seeing the more human side.”

Thank you for allowing me in your inbox, today and every day. If you have tips, thoughts on the newsletter, or want to interview me for a job in your newsroom, drop me a line. Or you can follow me on Twitter. If you appreciated this edition, please consider sharing across your social networks and get your colleagues to sign up. Have a relaxing, safe, and healthy weekend. See you on Monday. And thank you for reading!

The Silhouettes “Get a Job”

Some interesting links:

For a related story but for advertising recruitment:

• ‘Powerful for industry networking’: With in-person meetings still on hold, ad talent job hunters turn to Twitter (Digiday)

For the industry shuffle:

• Ad Council Announces New Members to its Board of Directors (Ad Council)

For the media Jans of the world:

• Hulu Gets Sidelined in Disney’s Global Streaming Ambitions (Bloomberg)

For ad-tech success story:

• How an advertising minnow outgrew the big beasts (FT)

For optics:

• Magazine covers in 2020 have featured Black subjects three times more than the previous 90 year (Poynter)

• Stan Richards steps down (Ad Age)

For end of times:

• For Trump's 'rigged' election claims, an online megaphone awaits (NBC News)

For publishers:

• ‘More of an acceptable concept’: Publishers test more frequent ad price changes (Digiday)

• How Mark Zuckerberg learned politics (WSJ)