There’s something strange about the magazine business, in that the people working at magazines are very good at editing or designing or copy editing and generally very bad at the very basics of running a business. Skills like leadership, managing people, managing budgets, running meetings and conducting interviews are not why most people have the position they do at a magazine. There was no learn by example happening at the places I’ve worked and most of my job interviews amounted to a casual conversation. It wasn’t until I interviewed at a big clothing company once for a job photo editing their catalog (didn’t get it) that I got hit with serious interview questions. Luckily I had a feeling it was going to happen and found this list of common questions (here) which I used to prep all weekend.

After that experience I realized how useful good interview questions are for gaining insight into what it might be like to work with someone. I feel like the point of the questions is not what your answer is so much as it is how you go about answering it and most important is that you have some kind of game plan for your career. There’s nothing worse than someone saying they have no idea where they want to be 10 years from now. Sure, it’s impossible to know but you have some kind of plan don’t you? Here are the questions I started asking all the candidates in the face to face interview:

Tell me about yourself.
Why do you want to work here?
Why do you want to leave your current job?
What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Do you have any experience with portrait, still life, outdoor sport, documentary or lifestyle photographers?
How do you handle pressure and stress?
Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
What experience do you have working with stock photography and agencies?
What production experience do you have?
What makes you the best candidate for this job?

Pretty basic but I loved the range of answers I would get from something as simple as “what are your weaknesses.” From brutally honest to very long pause followed by disjointed thoughts to text book slick.

My weaknesses? Disdain for athority, don’t follow the rules very well, can’t stay on budget and I spend way too much time looking at pictures instead of actually working. If only they’d asked.

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16 Comments

  1. Many years back, while being interviewed for a job in television production, I was asked (quite seriously) by the station manager: “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” This caught me completely off guard, and I ended up sitting there silently for the longest ten seconds of my life. Finally, in what I thought was a moment of inspiration, I blurted out: “Deciduous!”

    I didn’t get the job.

  2. The same goes for newspapers in terms of management. I’ve been amazed at the number of people with extremely poor management skills in the industry.

    The media business is run buy writers deciding to become management and business people trying to oversee content production. Sometimes it works, but, more often not.

    And the leadership and budgets are created by people who think slap anything between the more important ads (maybe more of a newspaper business attitude, you tell me) and see cutting the quality of the content as the path to financial prosperity.

    It is amazing, as a generalization, how much better non-media companies are at hiring managers.

    Rosh
    http://www.newmediaphotographer.com

    • @Rosh, People rise to their own levels of incompetence.

  3. Ten years is an awfully long time in the future. I’d always ask what someone sees themselves doing in 3 years. The answer usually indicates to me the person’s level of confidence/ambition/grasp on reality. If they answer honestly, it might also be a good indicator of how long they plan to stay around. Even if they lie (and you can usually tell if they are kissing up) I can take that as a positive that they care enough to lie.

    I also always ask scenario-based questions, such as: Give me 3 examples of how you worked with a photographer and editor to make an interesting image for a boring story. Or: You assigned a photographer to shoot a story and the images are great. But the section editor (managing editor, etc.) hates them. What do you do?

    As often as not, the style in which they answer the question is as important as what they say.

    • @Jon Hornstein,
      Yeah the 10 years is a stretch. I was trying to allow people to say they wanted to be sitting in my chair in 10 years without it being awkward.

      • @A Photo Editor,

        That’s almost always my response, even “…in 5 years”. Even in 3 years, it shouldn’t be awkward if you answer it correctly. Unless of course the interviewee doesn’t want to be a manager.

  4. The problem with being interviewed for a magazine job is that most of the edit side are fellow creatives who also have their heads in the clouds and are probably interested in their next career move as much as the person the questions are being asked of. Now getting interviewed by the publisher, that’s a different story, yikes!

  5. Haha! You asked me these exact questions a few years back! I had nothing but disjointed thoughts! : )

  6. I went to see a pretty famous agent in NYC and i spoke to one of the booker and she asked me pointing at my portfolio …..which picture do you like?
    Sound like a joke but it’s true

  7. Perhaps it’s good that you are currently a photo editor and not a copy editor. Apparently, proofing is not your ambition within the next ten years.

    Must be that “Disdain for athority.”

    Perhaps your disdain is because you (at least) subconsciously know that every question contained here is posed by individuals (including you) that are entirely unqualified to judge or estimate the theoretical and future performance of any other person; not in three years, or ten, or even tomorrow.

    No, ten years from now, we’ll embarrassedly look back on this set of current gate keeping hurdles as we now do on “training” films that instruct model citizens as to how to be an efficient housekeeper and mother, obedient child, or faithful breadwinner in a prosperous and productive post-war world.

    These are questions composed by people who have risen above their capacity; ask Matthew G. Monroe (comment above) the whereabouts of the station manager who asked the clever tree question. Maybe he wasn’t an oak, firmly planted. But, boy, he’ll sure be remembered in the annals of local television (in Omaha, was it?) for his tough and insightful hiring techniques.

    The questions themselves demonstrate the fruition of the negative consequences originally conceived and feared to be the ultimate result of a system of meritocracy, when the phrase was given definition fifty years ago.

    Turing the mirror back on you, I guess if you would have received your four flippant answers in your own world, you would never have hired you. Quite a credible system. Irony, attempt at humor, or great advice?

    There’s a tsunami of hive talent fast approaching that will change the paradigm for not just your world, but nearly every other thing before anyone knows what hit them. None too soon. Status quo is entirely overrated, and contrary to evolution. Except for creationists, of course.

    • Fred, it’s good that you too are not a copy editor.
      Sorry, but I thought it appropriate to be
      “Turing the mirror back on you”

    • @Fred, you’ve got a few good points here, but interviews are not really designed “to judge or estimate the theoretical and future performance of any other person”. They are designed to aid the interviewer in deciding if you can think on your feet enough for the position, and to determine if you will fit into the culture.

      Interviews aren’t everything, but it’s all you’ve got. And that “hive talent” tsunami is coming, you’re right, but most will still need to learn to work with people, to be managed and to manage.

  8. Love your weakness response Rob. My kind of dude!

    Unfortunately I have been asked that question frequently so I’m forced to say things like, “Nothing that would keep me from being the best hire for this job.”

  9. Good post Rob! Like you, I think many in the creative fields do forget the business aspect whether it be the interview for a position as a PE type, or even business sense for a photographer trying to stay afloat.

    And…two points on Fred… Gotta love that the people who criticize are always the anons! And to top that off, the use of a bunch of words to try and sound smart…worked really well!

  10. I enjoyed the post, Rob. You present a good, basic breakdown of the value behind interviewing. There’s a ton more information here: http://www.firstsearch.com/RadRpts/ArtInt.htm that goes into some technical detail of what you can get out of interviews. But I think anyone would do fine to stop at the writeup you gave above.

    And it’s not just magazines that struggle with this. I’ve seen all kinds of organizations that do a poor job of managing, hiring managers, and teaching managers. It’s only when an organization really “gets” and supports that hierarchy that you see strong managers. And that disdain for authority? In some organizations, that’s a plus, not a weakness.

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