Lucas M. Peters: Freelance Writer & Lecturer

Name: Lucas M. Peters

Age: 36

College & Majors/Minors: UW ('03, BA, English Lit), Central Washington University ('07, MA, English Lit), Goddard College ('14, MFA, Creative Writing - Novel)

Current Location: Morocco

Current Form of Employment: Freelance Writer and Lecturer

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I teach World Literature, Moroccan Literature and English Composition at Al Akhawayn University (AUI) in Ifrane, Morocco. It's a small university (college, really, but they call themselves a university) of about 2,000 students. I've also been doing quite a bit of freelancing travel writing and just a couple of months ago signed a contract with Avalon Publishing to write their guidebook for Morocco under their "Moon" brand. The book will be titled "Moon Morocco" and should be out in the fall of 2015. Which means that my mornings, weekends and vacations are spent either writing or traveling around to weird little corners of Morocco. This weekend, I'll be in Larache, a little-visited fishing village where the notorious French writer, Jean Genet, is buried.

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

My first job was selling comic books and sport cards at a little kiosk in the middle of Southcenter Mall. I was 13 at the time. It was pretty great. When there weren't any customers, I could read the latest comics. I was really into Image at the time and tore through Spawn, Gen-13, Pitt and a bunch of their other titles.

I guess my first "real" job was in 2007. I just graduated from CWU with my MA and was tired of waiting tables and bar tending (something I had been doing for the better part of a decade to pay the rent). I scoured Craigslist, applying to jobs in Seattle, NYC, SF, Boston and a bunch of other places. I ended up interviewing with Business Wire in San Francisco for a position as an editor. On my application, I lied and said that I already lived in San Francisco. At the time, I had about $200 in my bank account. I used it to fly down for the interview and slept on my cousin's couch and kept my fingers crossed. They called me back, I interviewed again, and they offered me a job.

I loved SF, but I hated the fact that I only had three weeks of vacation a year, only three weeks to really get out of the city and explore. I have an insatiable travel bug and after two years of humdrum cubicle life at Business Wire, I was like, "Man... I gotta get outta here." I started looking around for teaching jobs thinking I might land a job at a Community College somewhere in California but what I got was a series of rejections. The only sort of full-time teaching work I found were in places in the middle of nowhere, like the Aleutian Islands or North Dakota. I figured that if I was going to have to move to teach, I might as well make it interesting. I started casting a wider net, looking at Southeast Asia, Europe, et cetera. I ended up getting a couple of offers and took the teaching job here in Morocco. It seemed like the most interesting place to live, the food was supposed to be really good and, to be frank, it was really close to Europe.

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

A couple of years ago, some friends of mine who run a tour company for Morocco (Journey Beyond Travel) were looking for someone to write brief city guides for their clients. They asked me if I was interested. I said yes. It didn't pay much, but it was the first "real" sort of travel writing that I did. This ended up opening up a few more doors. It's largely because of this that I got the job with Avalon to write the guidebook for Morocco.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

I started at the UW in 1996 and I was a really bad student as an undergraduate, especially my first year or two. I rarely went to classes. I even skipped a midterm for Italian. I was too busy trying to figure out how to balance working and the social life with school. It wasn't until I figured out how to study, how to show up to class, how to really take advantage of being a student that I started to have some measure of success. In 2001, I signed up for a study abroad trip to London. This was the first time I had been out of the U.S. and it was eye-opening. I remember enjoying the classes. We went to see performances by the Royal Shakespeare Company and had a class that met at a different corner of London every week and we toured some specific part of the city. However, it wasn't the classes so much as what I was learning about myself. Being away from everything you know does that. There was a sense of independence, a sense of solitude, a sense of being lost, and a sense of discovery that was all wrapped up in the seven months or so I spent there. More than anything, this was the thing that probably has prepared me the most for post-grad life, though to be fair, I did have four different majors (Business, Music, Art and finally, English) and the ability to float from major to major aided this discovery process.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

In this economy, you can't be afraid to move. I know too many people that have wrapped their minds around living in one place and they end up struggling. They compromise career goals and take some other types of jobs just so they can continue living in a place that is comfortable, with their family or friends or whatever.

My advice is to get out of the comfort zone and start looking not so much as where you want to live, but what you want to do. In the end, I feel this is the thing that makes people happier. If you can do the thing that you love... that's the secret.

Visit Lucas M. Peters on his website & follow him on Twitter.

Nathaniel Tower: Internet Marketing Specialist

Name: Nathaniel Tower

Age: 32

College & Majors/Minors: Washington University in St. Louis; Majors in English Literature and Secondary Education; Minor in Writing

Current Location: Minneapolis

Current Form of Employment: Full-time Internet Marketing Specialist

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I'm currently an internet marketing specialist at a web design agency called First Scribe. We're a small agency with about 25 employees. I manage the accounts of 15 or so clients, which involves SEO, email marketing, content marketing, reporting, and more. The position requires a balance of verbal and written communication skills. As with any job involving clients, customer service is the key ingredient to success. All the technical skills in the world won't help if you can't adequately communicate with the client. I'm also now in charge of the company's blog, which is one of my favorite parts of the job.

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

When I graduated from college, I landed a high school teaching job in St. Charles, MO. Even though I went to college with the intent of becoming a teacher, getting a teaching job was no easy feat. I mailed an application packet (resume, transcripts, cover letter, portfolio samples, letters of recommendation) to just about every school district I could think of in the St. Louis metro area. That's right, mailed. As in stuffed papers in big envelopes, licked them shut, and slapped postage on them. No one accepted electronic applications then, so I spent a fortune on stamps. I had plenty of interviews, but it seemed almost impossible to find employment. Everyone wanted experience, but how do you get experience unless someone will hire you when you don't have experience?

When an opening at the school where I student taught popped up, I thought for sure I was going to get the job. The principal even told me I was guaranteed to get the opening unless someone with "ten years of teaching experience and a PhD" came along. When I got the phone call telling me they were hiring someone else, the conversation went something like this:

Me: So how much experience does he have?

Him: Two years.

Me: So he must have a PhD, right?

Him: No, just a Bachelor's.

Ouch. I had been bamboozled. But the principal promised he would help me get a job. A few weeks later, I called him and said I was applying for a job in another school district. Turned out he knew the associate principal there. Turned out the associate principal went to the same college as me. Are you surprised to hear I got the job?

I held that teaching job for 9 years before my wife and I decided we needed a change of scenery. So we quit our jobs and packed up and moved to Minneapolis. Because of some roadblocks with the Minnesota Department of Education, I decided to end my teaching career and look for a new career. I applied for everything that had writing in the title. It eventually paid off, and here we are.

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

In 2008, I founded a literary magazine called Bartleby Snopes. We publish 8 pieces of fiction per week, along with two print best-of issues. We also publish tiny books called flash novels. It's not a "job" in the money-making sense, but it has plenty of reward. It's made me a better writer and a better editor. I'm also much more organized and much better at marketing. I'm sure it played at least a small role in landing my current job.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

Not as much as I should have, that's for sure. I spent the first year of college skipping classes and thinking I was too smart for everything. Then I started to get serious, which meant going to class and writing all my papers at the last minute. I never spent a minute at the university's career center, and I only spoke to my advisor during the required bi-yearly sessions. The one thing I did right was get a summer job as a "teacher" in a summer school program. I had the attitude that I knew what I wanted to do and that it wouldn't be that hard to get a job. And now I'm doing something I never imagined I would do, something that barely even existed when I was in college.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

1. Don't listen to anyone who tells you an English degree is useless. The world we live in struggles with communication. An English degree has a lot of value because it tells the world you can communicate. There are many job opportunities that require some amount of writing.
2. Value your talents. There are a million freelancing opportunities that pay practically nothing. Don't accept jobs that don't pay you what you're worth.
3. Be willing to explore new opportunities. Don't assume an English major has to be a novelist, journalist, or teacher. Every business needs to have something written. An English major can write anything. Believe it or not, the biggest obstacle to launching a website isn't approving the designs. It's finding a person to write all the content.

Check out Nathaniel Tower's writing (and juggling!) blog at nathanieltower.com, visit his Amazon author page, connect with him on LinkedIn and follower him on Twitter!

Courtney Ginder: Content Manager

Name: Courtney Ginder

Age: 23

College and Majors/Minors: Purdue University, Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing, Bachelor of Science in Psychological Sciences

Current Location: Noblesville, Indiana

Current Form of Employment: Content Manager at LHP Telematics

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I currently work for LHP Telematics as the Content Manager. I’m responsible for writing all product documentation, both user guides that are customer-facing and internal documentation, such as work instructions for our warehouse. I’m also responsible for designing and writing marketing materials, such as flyers, press releases, and brochures. I also manage our company social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, as well as write our e-newsletter that goes out twice a month. I manage the company website and make sure that all the information on the website is up-to-date and relevant, and I blog about our products and services and relevant industry news. Finally, I have some testing and support roles for our web portal – I test all of our new portal version releases for usability purposes, and I also provide web portal support for our customers. 

LHP Telematics is a heavy equipment remote monitoring company, founded in 2008. When I was hired, I was the first technical writer and as such, was able to design our standard documentation formats. When I moved into the role of Content Manager as I began taking on more marketing tasks and took over our online marketing strategies, I successfully tripled the traffic to our website, as well as grew our social media presence and started an email newsletter.

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

I found my job at LHP Telematics by attending Industrial Roundtable, which the engineering and technology career fair held every year in the fall at my alma mater, Purdue University. It may seem strange to hear an English major say she found her job at an engineering fair, but I knew I wanted to pursue technical writing, so the companies I wanted to work for were not going to be at fairs held by the College of Liberal Arts (which is where my major, Professional Writing, is housed within the Department of English). I marketed myself as a strong technical writer with a unique perspective on usability since I also double-majored in Psychological Sciences. That marketing strategy worked, and I was hired as LHP Telematics’ first technical writer.

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

I had an internship with Ovar’Coming Together, Indiana’s only non-profit for ovarian cancer patients and survivors, during the fall of my senior year. During my internship, I focused on research on survivor resources around Indiana, and designed the survivor resource handout that is used in the HOPE Packets given out to ovarian cancer survivors. This internship helped me grow my design skills, which in turn helped me design the documentation formats in my job at LHP Telematics. It also gave me some insights into the world of nonprofits, which ties into my role as Publicity Chair in my community chapter of the international service organization Epsilon Sigma Alpha.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

One of the things I loved about my Professional Writing major was that the classes provided a lot of outside-the-classroom experiences. My Research in Professional Writing class worked with a food bank in Lafayette, Indiana to create a needs assessment and design a newsletter for them. In my Multimedia Writing class, we helped redesign a local coffeehouse’s website, while my Advanced Professional Writing class was responsible for the user experience of the Spring Writing Showcase. Even though I only had the one internship, I had a lot of work that I did for real clients and events through my Professional Writing classes, which really helped build up my portfolio.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

Don’t be afraid to take chances and reach out to different companies. When I originally talked to my now-employer, they weren’t sure they needed a technical writer, but here I am, a year and a half later! Also, own what you’re passionate about – I actually like to write technical documentation, which sets me a part from a lot of other people, simply because it’s something a lot of people just don’t like doing.

Connect with Courtney on LinkedIn, follower her on Twitter, and check out her personal website!

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Angeline Evans: Digital Media Manager

Rachel Wong: Content Specialist

Brittany Shelley: Director of Content Marketing

Rachel Maleady: SEO Analyst

Name: Rachel Maleady

Age: 25

College & Majors/Minors: Major: Communications with a Concentration in Public Relations, Minor: Business

Current Location: New Jersey

Current Form of Employment: SEO Analyst at a higher education company

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I currently work at a higher education company as an SEO Analyst. In this role, I get to create and apply various SEO and online marketing strategies to my company's 5+ properties. This role allows me to work in all different areas including content promotion, content strategy, keyword research, link building and more.

What was your first job? 

My first job out of college was working as a SEO Copywriter and Online Marketing Specialist at a small marketing firm near my hometown. I focused more on the writing side of SEO, which I do less of at my current role. To fill that writing "void," I am a freelance copywriter and also run my own lifestyle blog.

What was another job that was important in your career?

Honestly my blog, although not technically a "job," has opened so many doors for me. I am referred to many of my freelance clients through my blog, and it's always a great talking point. I can't stress enough how my blog has helped form my career.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

I researched companies in my area long before I graduated, hoping to spot open positions or make connections when graduation time came. I ended up transitioning from PR to more SEO/online marketing and copywriting though, so most of that didn't help. I would suggest studying and trying out all different areas of your major to see what you really like and don't like.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

I would definitely say to look into digital. Print media is dying and most magazine jobs now are terrible (long hours, intern-like tasks, no pay), so prepare yourself for other areas of writing. Start your own blog. Put together an online writing portfolio.

Check out Rachel Maleady's blog and online portfolio, and follow her on Twitter!

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READ MORE:

Rachel Wong: Content Specialist

Brittany Shelley: Director of Content Marketing

Angeline Evans: Digital Media Manager

Heike Young: Content Marketing Writer

Name: Heike Young

Age: 26

College & Majors/Minors: Anderson University, BA, English; Minor, Spanish

Current Location: Los Angeles, CA

Current Form of Employment: Content Marketing Writer at Salesforce

Where do you work and what is your current position? 

I work for Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Content Marketing & Research team as their Global Content Lead. Wha-whu-eh-huh? Yep, that’s a lot of tech and marketing jargon—but it means I work for a big tech company as a writer of multimedia content. I write everything from infographics to research reports to video scripts (and that’s my voice, too!). Everything I write and edit centers on helping digital marketers do their jobs better with content that guides marketing strategy and execution. I also interview important people in marketing and technology for our corporate blog, which sometimes lets me meet cool people like John Green.

Hypertension Cookbook For Dummies

$14.72

By Rosanne Rust, Cynthia Kleckner

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job!

Oh, boy. The short answer for English majors who prefer the Emily Dickinson poem-length story: I persevered until a publishing company finally let me edit their books.

The long answer for Infinite Jest-reading friends: Having loved books my whole life, it was my goal upon graduation to edit them. English degree in hand, I secured an interview at Wiley on the For Dummies team as a temporary editorial assistant. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the job. I was utterly disappointed, but I tried to remain gracious about it, and I continued to apply as I saw other openings at the company. I really liked the For Dummies brand and knew it would be a great experience to work on the books.

(Pictured on left: Heike Young served as the primary editor of 'Hypertension Cookbook for Dummies.') 

Several months and a temporary job at a film festival later, I earned another interview as a copyeditor, which was actually one step up from that original editorial assistant role. The interview was accompanied by a grueling three-hour editing test! It went so well that I was called back to interview for a different job as a project editor, which was a step up from the copyeditor job and two steps up from the job I initially interviewed for. It worked! I was finally a project editor for the For Dummies series, meaning I worked directly with authors on Tables of Contents and full chapters to refine and develop their books. In a strange turn of events, I ended up being pretty thankful that I didn’t get the first job, as it would’ve been less challenging and rewarding.

While I enjoyed developing content for books, I eventually wanted a more fast-paced job where projects didn’t take upwards of 8 months to complete. This led me to a job in digital marketing. At Salesforce Marketing Cloud, my new team appreciated the experience I had working on books, as well as my experience managing social media accounts while working at an agency. In this role, some of my projects are longer-term (like research reports, which can be 30+ pages and take a few months to complete) and some are quick hits (like blog posts or short slide decks). It was a great fit. My interview required me to submit several writing samples, and books I had edited were hard to fit in that mold, so I was happy for the freelance experience I’d garnered at Indianapolis Monthly and my experience at a social media agency (more on that next).

An example of Heike Young's work.

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career? 

Between my job at Wiley and my current role at Salesforce, I worked at a social media agency as a social media account executive. This was an important link in securing the job I have now, because before that, my digital copywriting experience was limited to my personal Twitter account. At the agency, I did social media writing and content marketing for national brands in the form of blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts, and more, and I learned so much about what works online vs. what works in a print book.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life? 

I tried to get as much writing and editing experience in college as I could. Editing our university yearbook, a newswriting internship at a local TV station, an on-campus job that involved social media, and freelance editing all kept me busy. 

I tried to look for writing and editing opportunities in unorthodox places—for example, my university's alumni office had an office assistant-type job that required writing event promotions, so I took the job. It wasn’t through our English department and it wasn’t exclusively a writing job, but it eventually led to more social media publishing responsibilities.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree? 

I’m no expert—I’m just a few years out of college myself. But here are two important things I’ve learned:

• First, maintain grace under pressure, like your old pal Hemingway always said. In my job-hunting tale above, you read that my first publisher interview resulted in nada—but they gave me two subsequent interviews after (even months after) that led to my first job as a project editor. I made it my goal to stay positive, friendly, and gracious with the company after they didn’t give me the job. That way, I’d be the first person to come to mind next time an opportunity arose. If you get a “no” phone call or email, try to respond gracefully, even if you’re disappointed. This positive attitude may soon work in your favor.
• Second, always be adding skills to your repertoire. I graduated with a fantastic understanding of how to write a Thomas Hardy research paper but no clue how to write a whitepaper—so I’ve slowly added to my skill set to remain marketable and give myself freedom to explore new jobs. Try a course on Codeacademy or code.org if you want a blogging job; those HTML skills will come in handy during a Wordpress snafu. Poke around on YouTube or Google Analytics if you want a social media job; social media success weighs heavily on metrics success, not just writing posts. 

Writing and editing are absolutely critical skills in our content-saturated age, and I think English majors are nicely poised to find jobs. It’s all about positioning yourself as a well-rounded professional. And that English major attention to detail and punctuation? Keep it. The world needs it.

Check out Heike Young's Author page on ExactTarget.com—she has a long list of some fantastic articles. Connect with Heike on LinkedIn and follow her on Twitter!

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READ MORE:

Katie Woodzick: External Relations Manager @ Hedgebrook

Chris Strom: Marketing Copywriter

Marisa Bunney: Immersive Journalist & Social Media Specialist

Angeline Evans: Digital Media Manager

Name: Angeline Evans

Age: 31

College & Majors/Minors: University of California, Irvine - BA in Environmental Analysis & Design; New York University - MA in Magazine Journalism

Current Location: Miami, Florida

Current Form of Employment: Digital Media Manager

Where do you work and what is your current position? 

Check out Angeline Evans' work here!

I work at Florida International University as a digital media manager, analyzing and strategizing for our digital publications and properties. I also write occasionally for the online magazine.

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different). 

My first job out of college was as a transportation planning assistant at the engineering firm where I interned my senior year of college. I sent in close to 30 cover letters and resumes for internship openings. But that's not really related to this blog, is it?

I found my first job out of grad school through a summer internship. The magazine editor left for a new job while I was interning for a city government, giving me an opportunity to step in as interim editor for a few issues while they searched for her replacement. When I graduated, that same editor was about to leave the new job, and I stepped into her role again. I still refer to her as my "career fairy godmother."

It's slightly inaccurate to say I "found" my current job, because I actually helped create it. I went through two rounds of interviews for a different position (managing editor), and when they couldn't choose between the two finalists due to our different skill sets, we worked to create a new position to fill a void they didn't know they had before (more geared toward digital content and strategy). The original position was found through friends on Facebook.

How do you find freelance clients?/How do your freelance gigs come about? 

I have freelanced as a grantwriter and copyeditor. I contract with a small strategic communications agency (met through a previous job) for grantwriting work, and my copyediting gigs come in through referrals.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

Internships, internships, internships. Write, write, write.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

Three things: 

1. Build skills or develop an expertise in a field where writing is traditionally undervalued. This has been key to my personal career journey – my boss at the engineering firm was ready to hire me back after grad school, and my current boss zeroed in on the digital publishing and web marketing skill set I had gained through years of blogging.
2. The art and skill of writing is highly underrated by most employers, but oh so important. Make sure you put your skills in the right context when you apply for a job, especially if it isn't a writing-specific job. Don't make them guess how your degree benefits them, because they probably won't get it.
3. Try your hand at all different kinds of real-world writing – marketing copy, press releases, poetry, fiction, essay writing, speechwriting, etc. – you never know if you'll enjoy it and find a new opportunity. Flexibility is crucial.

Visit Angeline Evans on her website, angeline-evans.com, and connect with her on twitter and Linkedin. Angeline is also a contributor on ProfessionGal.com.

Brandy Bauer: Communications Manager

Name: Brandy Bauer

Age: 40

College & Majors/Minors: B.A. in Women’s Studies (Smith College) and MFA in Creative Writing (Minnesota State University, Mankato)

Current Location: Washington, DC

Current Form of Employment: Communications Manager at the National Council on Aging

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I work as Communications Manager of the Economic Security division of a national nonprofit dedicated to helping older adults age well. My job means that I have a hand in writing or editing everything that my division puts out, from e-newsletters to press releases to website content to proposals and reports. I also do a bit of public speaking, at conferences and on webinars.

I’m lucky that I get to write every single day—in fact, that’s about 70% of my work. I’m also fortunate that I don’t take work home with me, so I still have a chance to do creative writing in my spare time.

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

I got my undergraduate degree when the Internet was in its infancy, so finding a career-type job was more difficult. I bounced around a bit, working at a bookstore, as a volunteer coordinator at a museum, and in an after-school program.

When I finished my MFA, I came to a crossroads. I was offered an adjunct position teaching Composition 101 at a southern state university, and also a position as an Editorial Assistant for the Cancer Information Service. I thought the latter sounded more interesting, and had better job security, so I took it and never looked back at academia.

Fifteen years later, I’ve held a variety of editorial and writing jobs, all with a health and human services focus.

What was another job that was important in your career?

I’ve learned a lot from all of my jobs, but one of the most interesting and challenging opportunities I had was the three years I spent as a Communications Editor in Kabul, Afghanistan.

I’d always wanted to live and work abroad, but wasn’t sure how to leverage my background in writing and editing into development work. In graduate school, I had a professor who told us that there was a market for literature in translation, especially in more obscure languages. Knowing that there was a rich literary tradition in Persian, I studied that language for two years here in DC. That got my foot in the door to work at a think tank in Afghanistan (where the local language, Dari, is a dialect of Persian).

Working with people from all over the world, I learned a tremendous amount about how to convey information in clear, plain language that non-native English speakers and non-technical experts can understand.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

I wish I could say I had a lot of foresight to prepare for post-grad life, but I didn’t! Networking really wasn’t a thing back then, or if it was, I didn’t know how to do it.

I did, however, take advantage of the resume writing classes offered by my college’s career office.

Also I tried to treat each day as a job, allotting specific blocks of time for class, studying, going to the library, and exercising/socializing. That helped a lot in transitioning to full work days and learning how to balance work with fun.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

Just remember: Everybody gets a break. When I finished my B.A., I worried so much that I’d be working retail/food service forever. But you don’t ever meet a 40-year-old college graduate who’s never had a real job. Your first (or second or third) job may be boring or not draw on your skill sets, but eventually you’ll find a good fit.

Connect with Brandy on LinkedIn. 

Amy Braunschweiger: Web Communications Manager @ Human Rights Watch

Name: Amy Braunschweiger

Age: 39

College & Majors/Minors: English and German major/European studies minor

Current Location: NYC

Current Form of Employment: Web Communications Manager at Human Rights Watch

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I work at Human Rights Watch as their web communications manager–I basically work as their feature writer, do a lot of editing, and I’m part of a team that oversees strategy and execution for all our digital properties, including our website, social media, e-newsletters, other digital projects, etc. What I do is storytelling, often using words together with photos and video. I work with people who are lawyers and human rights experts, so a lot of what I do is translate what I’m told or what I read from political/legalese into language that allows a piece to live and breathe. The information was already there, it was just buried.

I’ve had so many writing and editing jobs I can’t even count, as I was a freelancer for ages.

Taxi Confidential: Life, Death and 3 a.m. Revelations in New York City Cabs

By Amy Braunschweiger

• Author: Wrote the book Taxi Confidential: Life, Death and 3 a.m. Revelations in New York City Cabs.
• Freelance article writer: Had fun, fabulous articles published in awesome places like the New York Times, New York magazine, Worth, etc. At the Village Voice I lead a team of writers to create 3,000 or so nightlife listings/reviews.
• Freelance less-sexy writer: Had less fun but also sometimes interesting pieces published in steady-paying places like trade magazines for financial professionals, nonprofit newsletters, for investment banks, random financial sites, etc.
• Ghost writer: Helped ghost write an encyclopedia of American food and wine. (It was never published as the head writer entered something of a downward spiral.)
• Other odd jobs/gigs that my writing and reporting skills lead to as a freelancer: Had a gig doing background checks on corporate executives (reporting skills); Market research for an arm of Morgan Stanley (interviewing skills); researching how to build schools in Vietnam for a nonprofit (research skills).
• My only other fulltime job: Was a financial reporter at Dow Jones writing mostly breaking news stories. My feature stories (3% of the job) often made it into the Wall Street Journal. 
• Stringer at Ohio’s Toledo City Paper: Wrote about nightlife, culture and fun.
• International: I’ve also had a few fellowships that have allowed me to live in Germany and work at German-language publications. I’m not a native speaker, just lucky and strong-willed.

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different). 

I was in my early 20s when I came home to Toledo, Ohio, from a fellowship I had in Germany. I didn’t consider myself a journalist, but I really enjoyed participating in, and writing about, nightlife and the arts (at my college paper, at my internship as an MTV stringer covering Cincinnati’s music scene, at my fellowship in Leipzig, Germany where I worked at their city magazine). But I thought that I was now an adult, and adults wrote about politics and finance, so I should get a job writing about one of those two things. So I lived with my folks, waitressed, drove my mom’s car and spent months applying to “serious” jobs. Somewhere in there, I got dumped, too. It was not a happy time.

My first real full-time job was at Dow Jones Newswires, and getting hired there was crazy. I applied for it, and then called me, did a phone interview, and then asked me if I’d take a 4-hour test in their Detroit Wall Street Journal bureau (Dow Jones also owns the WSJ). I asked them for any tips, and they said brush up on your math, know how to calculate percentages. I did, drove the hour to Detroit, and took the test. It took me an extra hour, but it really wasn’t that bad. They were mostly trying to judge how logical you were—do you compare apples to apples if we give you apples, oranges and bananas? That type of thing. I easily calculated all the answers in the math section, but had I not asked about what to study ahead of time, I would have winged that entire section, and the results could have been grim. Math was never my best subject (understatement). Just as an fyi.

Then Dow Jones let me know that I passed the test and asked me to come in for a 3-day work trial in Jersey City, where they were based. I had to spring for my own plane ticket and lodgings there. Might I add I had zero money? My folks said “No way!” but I went for it anyway, buying a plane ticket and staying with my friend’s parents in a nearby suburb. There, people who were surprisingly young, fun and interesting trained me in financial newswire writing for three days–how to report on earnings, retail sales, airline figures, mergers, etc. Afterwards they had me take yet another five-hour test to see how well you absorbed the training.

You know what? I totally bombed that test. Awfully. But they still hired me. After the fact, one of my editors told me that they liked my international experience, I was smart enough, and–wait for it–I fit into the newsroom personality-wise.  

My take-away: sometimes you just have to go for it, buy your own plane ticket, and go out of your way to get something. Even if the hiring process is ridiculous.

My other take away: I came to embrace what I call the lunchroom rule. You have to have the skills to get in the door, but people really want to hire a co-worker that they can sit down and talk with over lunch with. I bombed that second test and got hired anyway. Why? The lunchroom rule. When I applied to a long-term freelance position at the Village Voice, my resume was plucked out of already short-listed bunch because of the lunchroom rule (the editor was fascinated with Berlin, and I’d lived there), and at Human Rights Watch I was hired over someone more qualified than me because they just liked me better. I’ve seen this play out over and over again both with friends and with myself.

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

Freelancing! It taught me how to write differently for different publications, how to change my tone of voice. I learned how to read publications from Elle Magazine to Inc. critically, to figure out what editors wanted or would more likely buy. I learned how to pitch myself and the articles I wanted to write—you need to be able to sell editors your ideas and yourself as an author. After I went quickly broke, I was forced to begin treating writing like a business—you do have to pay rent after all. So while I kept up the fun, fabulous articles that inspired me, I also began picking up more boring, financial work that paid much better and took much less time to write. For me, and for many freelancers, money worries will suck away your creativity and you’ll stop having fun with your writing, and I was constantly balancing my creative work with the better-paying kind. I also learned how to be flexible and mold your skills to various opportunities in ways that others can’t see. Doing corporate background checks? No problem, it’s really just reporting under a different name.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

Not much, to be honest. I had fun, made good friends, drank a lot of beer, etc. I took a couple journalism classes, but didn’t find them interesting or useful. I didn’t even declare a major until I was a junior, and my GPA was a 3.2 or something. I rowed crew for the joy of it for a year or two but quit because those 5 a.m. practices killed me.

OK, wait, now that I think harder, I did do some things. My journalism professor basically forced me to get a job at the student newspaper because “I’d never get a job” if I didn’t. I found the newspaper so boring, and I just couldn’t stomach the fact of covering city council meetings, so I did layout and design for them, which was actually fun. And it paid. I did a bit of entertainment writing for them—bands, DJs.

I did take some other summer internships, but I really only worked at them 5 hours a week or so—I was a full-time waitress in the summers, as I needed to earn money for college. So I squeezed in an internship at a tiny suburban newspaper.

This is important: My junior year I spent a summer working in a bakery in Berlin and I studied for a semester in Luxembourg. How I got to Berlin: A professor was interviewing students to work there, my friend from a German class wanted to go, she didn’t want to do the interview alone, I went to support her, and ended up being offered a job. Since I would already be living in Europe, I decided to study at Miami University’s branch campus in Luxembourg, as it cost the same as my in-state tuition.

Full disclosure—I didn’t this to gain any international experience. I did it because it sounded like a blast and I have an adventurous streak. But it changed everything for me.

I fell in love with Germany, the language, the culture and became obsessed with really learning and experiencing it all. And in learning about what an amazing place Germany is, I realized that every other country in the world could be exactly as amazing and interesting if I were open to it. Despite growing up in an area that really wasn’t very diverse, I fell in love with all things international. I went back (for the love of it) and really learned German. I cannot tell you how many doors this experience has opened up for me, both personally and professionally.

Take away: If you want to live abroad and learn a language, do it. No regrets.

OK, back to college. Senior year, something amazing happened. I was looking for a fall internship on our listservs, scrolling past opportunities to cover city hall and PTA meetings in small town Ohio (I love small town Ohio, but no way), when I saw an internship to be a stringer for MTV online. I applied to cover the music scene in nearby Cincinnati, and to my amazement, landed it. It was unpaid, but I was living the free-concert-ticket dream. It was amazing. I had a blast. And I won a writing award reserved for their top seven stringers across the U.S. (they had 100, I think).

My take away from that internship: You can get work doing what you love to do. Not always, and it won’t work out the way you foresee, but it happens. Next step: getting paid for it.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

You may hate your first job. I sure did. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t learning a lot there. And you’ll learn what you don’t want to do/deal with in your next job. I spent four years at Dow Jones Newswires, and only enjoyed six months of it. It was years after I left that job that I realized how strong a financial reporter I had become. And that job opened up so many doors, too, through connections I made, because most people couldn’t write about finance and I could, and because people automatically took you a bit more seriously—even people at glossy women’s magazines. Who knew? So even if you’re hating it, keep learning.

Take big risks if you have the stomach for it. (Say, when I quit Dow Jones to go freelnace when I had no idea how I would make anything happen). Just also make sure you can stomach the consequences if the worst happens—which for me would have been moving back in with my folks (it didn’t happen).

Figure out what you’re passionate about and stick with it, at least in part. You’re always going to do better at what excites you, and you’ll feed off the energy of it. Just prioritize it. It may not be a full-time job or even a part-time job, but it’ll make you feel good.

Keep talking to people. People, for me, are key. People sometimes know things you don’t know and have opportunities you don’t know about. Are you stuck on your novel? Do some research by talking to people who may be similar to your character, either in job or personality. Are you a journalist out of story ideas? Just start talking to people at a bar, at a party, on a plane—especially talk to people different from you—and listen to them. Story ideas will just appear.

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