Career Opportunities!

Here are some entry-level job opportunities I’ve come across recently:

• Endeavour Press, a leading independent digital publisher of fiction and non-fiction based in London, is looking for a full-time Editorial Assistant. The role involves proofreading and formatting manuscripts, writing copy, and commissioning titles. The ideal candidate will be able to start immediately.
• Are you a fan of contemporary literary fiction and classics? Alma Books, an award-winning trade publisher, is looking for a Marketing Assistant to help develop digital and print campaigns. Their offices are based in Richmond, Greater London and the closing date for applications is Friday 17th July.
• If you’re interested in the contracts and rights side of publishing, Thames & Hudson has a great opportunity for a Contracts Assistant to support their Legal & Business Affairs department. Their offices are based in Holborn, London and the deadline for applications is Monday 13th July.

• BioMed Central, a scientific publisher who is owned by Springer and specialises in open access journal publishing, is seeking an Editorial Assistant to join their Journal Editorial Office. The role will involve tasks such as managing the peer-review process and communicating with authors, reviewers and editors. The position is based in London.

• Macmillan Science and Education is looking for an Editorial Assistant to join their Nature Reviews Department. The role will involve providing support to authors, reviewers and editors, as well as other administrative tasks. The position is based at their new King’s Cross offices and the deadline for applications is Wednesday 8th July.

5 Questions Likely to Come Up in a Publishing Interview

After spending the last month applying for editorial assistant job vacancies, I’m pleased to say that a lot of my time recently has been taken up by interviews at a few (pretty big) academic publishing houses.

During these interviews I obviously met a wide variety of professionals in the industry (editors, assistant editors and publishers) from all different publishing houses, but there was one thing I noticed that didn’t vary quite so much: the interview questions.

I found that certain questions just kept reappearing; some I’d envisaged (thankfully) and pre-prepared answers to, others completely stumped me the first time round. So to help you prepare (and preparation is key), here are five questions that I think are extremely likely to come up in a publishing interview and my advice on how to answer them:

1.      What led you to wanting a career in publishing?

This is an obvious question that is bound to come up, but an impressive and original answer needs preparation. Try to come up with something that isn’t just, “I love reading” – that’s not enough. Think about the type of publishing you’re trying to enter into. Why does that particular area interest you? For me, academic publishing became an interest at university after researching lots of literature essays. I got a real buzz out of finding useful, up to date and high-quality scholarly titles, so being a part of the publication process for cutting-edge academic research genuinely excites me. If, alternatively, you’re interested in trade publishing, where, when and why did that interest start? An influential book in your childhood? Or maybe there was one book that changed your outlook on life. The point here is to be original – this is much easier than you think when you’re pursuing a goal you feel really passionate about.

2.     Why do you want to work for this particular publishing house?

When answering this question, make sure you show off all the research you’ve done on the publishing house. Find their mission statement, browse their website, see if they’ve been in the news recently, read a couple of their recently released titles. After carrying out this research, what did you find that particularly excites you about the publisher? For me personally, a career at Palgrave Macmillan interested me not only because they’re a prestigious and highly-regarded academic publisher, but also because they’re extremely innovative and forward-thinking with projects like Palgrave Pivot, Palgrave Open and Palgrave Connect. So find something specific that attracts you to this particular publishing house and use it to show your genuine excitement at the possibility of a career there.

3.     What do you think are the main job responsibilities for this editorial assistant position and what skills do you possess which will allow you to carry out these responsibilities successfully?

This was a question I actually quite liked as it gave me the chance to demonstrate two things. First, that I had a clear understanding of what the role would involve (publishers like this), and second, how suitable I was for the position. When preparing for your interview it really is worth going through the job description and finding the main responsibilities you will be tasked with. Once you’ve picked out the main ones, ask yourself what skills will each of these responsibilities require? Then come up with examples of where you’ve previously used each of these skills. So, for example, one of the job responsibilities for an editorial assistant at Palgrave Macmillan was managing editorial processes and the peer review process. A task like this obviously requires great organisation and time management skills, so I took examples from my time as an editorial intern when I often had to juggle a variety of tasks given to me by project editors. So approach this question logically; make sure you know exactly what the role will involve, think about the skills needed to carry out these responsibilities, and have examples ready to demonstrate these skills.

4.     Which publishing houses are our main competitors and are any of them doing something you think we should be doing?

The competitors question came up during my interviews at Cambridge University Press and Palgrave Macmillan. Although I was aware of their main competitors and could easily list them, the second part of the question gave me a slight panic attack. But after taking a few moments to actually think, I came up with a pretty good answer. I knew from my research that academic publishing is currently undergoing immense change because publishers are making the conscious effort to become more digitally focused. This reminded me of the competing eBook digital platforms that numerous academic publishers now offer to universities (Palgrave Connect from Palgrave Macmillan and University Publishing Online from Cambridge University Press). So I based my answers around comparisons of these platforms and came up with some good areas for improvement. Remember, publishers ask questions like this one to test your knowledge of the industry, so it’s a great way to show you’re keeping up with current trends. My advice is to not only research the publishing house you’re interviewing at, but also one or two of their main competitors. Make sure you have an idea of how competing publishers are trying to outdo each other!

5.     Do you have any areas of weakness? If so, what are they?

This is a pretty standard question for any interview, but it was one I’d completely forgotten to prepare for. First off, make sure you actually give them a weakness – we all have more than one. Then, try to emphasise that it is a weakness, but a weakness you’re working on. Give an example of how you’ve recently made an effort to improve in this area. This says a lot about you as an individual.

Ace these likely questions and you might just ace the interview! There’s really no excuse not to have an impressive answer to each of these questions. Preparation really is key!

Career Opportunities for You...

Here are some exciting career opportunities I’ve come across this week that might interest you:

• Are you an avid reader of non-fiction? Profile Books, an award-winning non-fiction publisher based in Central London, has a vacancy for a Marketing, Publicity and Digital Sales Assistant. The deadline for applications is Friday 26th June.
• If you’re interested in academic publishing, Palgrave Macmillan is looking for an Editorial Assistant to support their Language and Linguistics book programme. The position is based at their new King’s Cross offices and the deadline for applications is Monday 29th June.
• A new vacancy at Bloomsbury appeared on their website today for an Editorial Assistant within their academic division. The position involves providing support to editors working on the Classical Studies & Archaeology and Religious Studies lists. The deadline for applications is Thursday 27th June.
• SAGE Publications is looking for a Marketing Assistant to work in their journals marketing team. The position is based in London and the deadline for applications is Friday 26th June. (To see the details of this position click on the link above, then just scroll down and click on the ‘view all open job positions’ link.)
• Are you interested in open access publishing? Oxford University Press has an opening for a Publishing Assistant who will work on their open access monographs and law journals. The deadline for applications is Monday 29th June.

Dealing with Failure: My First Publishing Interview

Friday. Four days after my interview for an editorial assistant vacancy at Bloomsbury, and I was curled up in bed replaying the interview over and over in my mind after hearing the news that I’d been unsuccessful. ‘Gutted’ was an understatement. Had it really gone that badly? What did I do wrong? With all these thoughts running through my head, I was starting to doubt whether I was capable of ever achieving my goal of a career in publishing.

Then I realised two things. First, that it was time to stop being so harsh on myself and give myself a bit of credit. Applications for the role would definitely have been in the hundreds, so my covering letter and CV must have been pretty impressive to even get me to the interview stage in the first place. Second, that having a meltdown was really not benefiting me at all, so it was time to deal with my interview failure in a more constructive way. This meant being honest with myself about how I felt the interview really went, and led me to writing this blog post.

So, as you’re not always going to get the first publishing job you apply for, here are some steps I took that helped me deal with my interview failure in a more productive way:

Replaying the interview

I got out of bed (eventually) and decided to replay the interview back in my mind – just one more time. This time though, I wrote two lists: one with everything I thought went well, and the other with things that didn’t go so well. I decided to be brutally honest with myself. This meant stopping my tendency to erase the bad bits from my mind and confronting them head on. Unsurprisingly, this process gave me an indication of where I went wrong. On my ‘good’ list I had lots of things relating to the research I’d carried out on the publishing house itself and I was impressed with how I’d been able to talk about some of the titles Bloomsbury’s academic division had recently published. I came to realise, however, that on my ‘good’ list there wasn’t all that much about ME. This quickly gave me the first item for my ‘bad’ list: I didn’t sell myself nearly as well as I could have done.  Although showing my knowledge of the publishing house was great, what I should have done more of was demonstrating my undeniable suitability for the role. The listing process therefore taught me a fundamental lesson about how to better prepare for interviews in the future: practise selling myself!

Moving forward
There’s this great quote from Kamal Ravikant that says, ‘we, as human beings, think we’re thinking. Not true. Most of the time, we’re remembering. We’re re-living memories.’ After all the remembering involved in the previous step, I wanted to stop dwelling on the past and start thinking forward. How could I make myself stand out from all the other candidates I would be up against in my next interview? It was time to try something new. This made me think of a meeting I’d had during one of my editorial internships with the publishing house’s managing director. When given this opportunity I’d decided to ask for some future interview advice, and this was his response: 

“Don’t just research the publishing house on their website. It does show initiative and a certain degree of interest in the company, but it’s also what every other applicant will do. Instead, buy one of their books physically off the shelves, read it, and be prepared to talk about it. Perhaps even bring it along with you to the interview!” 

Ideas like this one really changed my mental approach to interviews; I felt less nervous, more confident, and couldn’t wait to see how interviewers would react to me trying something different. (I actually tested this idea out recently and have just been invited to a second interview – so having the courage to try something different definitely pays off!)

Reminding myself of my worth 
‘Your value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.’ I actually came across this quote the day after I found out I’d been unsuccessful and it definitely put a smile back on my face. Receiving a rejection when you’re pursuing a career you feel passionate about can often make you doubt yourself and your abilities, knock your confidence, and make you want to give up on your dream altogether by running in the other direction. Trust me, I’ve experienced this. But the quotation above reminded me not to do this. It reminded me that as long as I believe in myself, remember my worth, and recognise my value, I will, without doubt, achieve my goal. So what if Bloomsbury couldn’t see my value? I still recognise it, and I will make other publishers recognise it too.

So what have I taken from my first publishing interview experience? Not only have I learnt that the interview process is also very much a learning process, the experience has also made me understand the importance of failing. Although I was no doubt aiming to succeed, experiencing failure has actually taught me a lot about myself, shown me what I need to work on, and fuelled my desire to improve in the future. Perhaps the experience wasn’t such a failure after all!