Intrepid Miami journalist
Chronicling my career journey
Introduction: Happy to report I'm gaining strong momentum on my free agent journey, as summer officially gets underway Friday.
Nearly three months of consistent networking, prudent risk-taking and determination have enabled me to approach the three-month mark of my journey to the next chapter of my career with a high level of confidence. The foundation I've built should pay dividends with more interviews and hopefully a job offer or two in the coming months.
Historically, summer has been a booming hiring season, the busiest of a year. With the uncertain course of the U.S. economy, global politics and artificial intelligence advances in business, it's no longer realistic to expect brisk summer hiring. Still, there are and will continue to be plenty of attractive professional opportunities in the pipeline for me and others diligently pursuing a new position or different career.
Boosting personal brand awareness: I've been consistently focusing on putting in the daily and weekly work on the things I can control to keep raising regional and national awareness of my successful personal brand: an award-winning editor and innovative newsroom leader with a decades-long track record of leading teams to deliver positive audience results and distinctive storytelling in Philadelphia, Miami, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Houston and Baton Rouge.
Remain laser-focused on my goal of attracting attention of hiring managers inside and outside journalism, so I can eventually score another offer for a meaningful and challenging role as a journalist or a strategic communications leader in business, academia, education or the nonprofit arena.
Valuable tactics: To illustrate what I mean by gaining momentum on my free agent journey want to share a few examples of my tactics and incremental wins. Hope others navigating their own job or career searches can pick up a helpful tip or insight. These are actual and fluid scenarios, therefore, I'm going to refrain from revealing specific names of media organizations, companies and people involved. The impact of the career management lessons are in the details I provide rather than the names, anyway.
There's a market-leading news outlet up in the Northeast that has intrigued me for years. It's in a city roughly a two-hour drive from where I grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It's a place where I've got many fond memories visiting and the news organization has a long, storied history. Since 2018, I've had productive conversations with multiple editors there and competed for a couple of editor roles. For a variety of reasons, including taking a job in another newsroom on one occasion, I've never joined this newsroom team.
Stronger leverage: Recently saw this organization is recruiting for editors. Instead of applying digitally into the dark, bottomless and anonymous well that is an online job board or a company careers site, I emailed the executive editor whom I talked with when competing for earlier roles. He sent an encouraging reply, so hopefully this interaction will yield a first interview soon.
Lesson here is if you know from previous meeting or conversation, or can figure out from your own research who the pertinent key senior leaders are, it's always helpful to attempt to contact them with your interest in particular openings to initially leapfrog human resources personnel and the no-name online job tanks. This point is even more critical these days, when often the first review of your resume sent to a company to apply for an opening will be done by artificial intelligence or some sort of computer program. Remember these AI or automated screeners can't hire you, but they can block you from getting an interview for an open position.
Gaining best position: Similarly, recently saw another highly respected news organization based up north with a growing national and international audience is looking for a veteran editor. In the past decade, also talked about various roles with this media outlet. In fact was offered an editor role in 2016. At that time, I declined the offer because it wasn't a good time for family reasons to relocate to that area. Recently sent an email expressing my strong interest in competing for the current editor opening to the media outlet's top editor in North America, a person I'd had a promising call with in early 2024. He sent a positive reply, telling me he would share my resume with the hiring editor, my interest in the role and his pleasant earlier conversation with me.
Again, positive impressions with key managers and executives can mean everything months and years later in your career, as you move along your career path. Most importantly, for me and others in the same current situation, these impressions enable getting genuine consideration for open positions from the key people actually making the hiring decisions.
Getting genuine consideration: Think about this. Today, most job applicants for white-collar or professional positions never can get their resumes in front of the hiring managers, because of the heavy volume of applicants, human and automated screeners weeding out most resumes and human resources people who often handle first interviews with select applicants before trimming the field to a small group to speak with the hiring manager or managers.
Finally, along these lines, I reconnected virtually with a senior editor I had lunch with in 2017, when both of us worked for different news publications. He's now a top editor in New York with a leading international news organization and told me he'd keep me in mind if an appropriate editor role opens.
Securing key recommendation: Another way to reinforce or bolster your pursuit of a high quality job opening is to have someone with a stellar reputation in the community where the position is based recommend you to the company. Recently, after applying for a desirable journalism leadership position here in South Florida, noticed in the job description it stated the company's recruiter would entertain nominations for the role. To enhance my chances of landing an interview for this highly desirable post, got a well-respected local business owner and marketing communications industry veteran to write and submit a nomination letter recommending me for this position.
Personal connections: Face-to-face interactions remain vital in our multilayered, digital world. The conversations are particularly valuable as part of career networking, as many of you already know. In the past couple of weeks, I've had lunch and beers with two former colleagues who worked for me and I've known for 20 years. I'm always reinvigorated by these one-on-one encounters with reporters I had collaborated with. Listening to their continuing successful career and life stories makes me proud of them and gives me an extra shot of motivation on my free agent journey.
The bonus for my free agency is these two noted contacts of mine provide extra sets of eyes and ears to learn about pertinent job openings in the coming weeks and months to share with me. And sometimes, jobs open to compete for at your contacts' employers and then they can recommend you inside and tout your valuable assets from their experiences of working with you.
Thank you for continuing to follow my career journey. Please feel free to connect with me on Substack, LinkedIn or at bombergerpaul@gmail.com. Welcome your career management suggestions and leads for pertinent full-time and contract positions inside and outside journalism.