COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR ASSISTANT: Job Applicant

COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR: ROLE-PLAYING SCRIPT FOR JOB APPLICANT,
Ms. Schindler, Hollins University, SPRING 2008

It is Spring, 2008. You will soon graduate with a BS in Communication Studies from Hollins University with a 3.5 GPA reflecting your outstanding commitment to your studies.

Your father owns a publishing company in Asheville, NC and you worked for his company during summer vacations and school breaks all through high school and college. You also got interested in the food industry as your mother is a food editor for the Asheville, NC Citizen Times, and you often interviewed cookbook writers and tested recipes together. You have become keenly interested in working with both publishing and food as a career.

When you worked for your father, you started in the mail room, and ended up helping with editing, layout and artwork preparation. You got a great overview of what it takes to put out publications. Your mother also recognized your writing abilities and began to let you ghost write some paragraphs, especially those dealing with food preparation.

You applied to Hollins University because of its wonderful writing programs and its close proximity to the famous Tinker Institute for Culinary Studies where you also took courses. You majored in Communication Studies, because you felt that it would give you a good overview of the communication process in a wide variety of contexts. Your advisor at Hollins suggested you take related offerings in film and photography. You took classes in Media Law and Policy to learn online legal research techniques, and were chosen to take a trip to Washington, D.C., for an exclusive F.C.C. briefing on current communication regulatory issues. You also took Writing for Print Media I and II, hands-on journalism courses and Writing for Electronic Media.

For your January Short Term, you did an Internship in Print Media with Cooking Light Magazine in New York. That whetted your appetite for food writing and you availed yourself of Hollins’ and Ticker’s collaborative class exchange. You also want to return to NYC!

Every year, Fine Cooking hires graduating seniors into various positions to meet the needs of the ever-growing demands of their publications. These positions are highly sought after, and competition is fierce. This year they are in the process of hiring an Assistant Communications Editor for Web Design, a new position for the company in their New York City office. In 2007 the company decided to make archived issues available to subscribers on the web, and because Ms. Breckenridge, who has interviewed you, has been chosen to head up this new endeavor. She has just introduced online membership for subscribers to enjoy total access to all of the trusted recipes on their Web site. Public response has been so incredible, she is .

ASSISTANT COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR APPLICANT (2)

Seeking an assistant. This is exactly what you want to be doing, and it is in New York where you want to be!

You’ve done your homework. Www.wageproject.org tells you that the entry level Assistant Communications Editor, close to the position that you’ve been offered, has a salary range of $51,000- $66,500 with a median salary of $59,000 for New York City. The benefits package for this position is worth another $25,000.

You’ve determined that your target salary is $59,000 which you firmly believe, given your unusual work experience, your education, your summer jobs and your internships have given you valuable skills.

You know that living in the New York will be expensive. You have hefty student loans to pay off. Travel back home to Asheville will be expensive, and you want to be able to go skiing on winter weekends and enjoy the night life the city offers. The minimum salary you can possibly accept is $54,000 and that would mean living VERY modestly.

You were thrilled yesterday when Ms. Breckenridge, Managing Editor for Web Design at Fine Cooking Magazine, offered you a job. She asked you to come back today just to settle a couple details like salary and starting date and then sign a contract.

You have the last appointment of the day. Ms. Breckenridge must leave in 15 minutes to get to a company wide meeting in which she is the featured speaker.

Can you and Ms. Breckenridge come to an agreement about a starting salary which you accept? Can you get her to agree to your target salary figure? Make notes on what you consider your persuasive points. Decide the sequence in which you will present these points. Make notes about the language you will use. Make notes about her likely objections and what you will say.

Use every minute of that time to get her to your target salary. It’s your last chance to start out with the best salary you can get. Remember, $59,000 is what you believe you’re worth in that job.

Go for it!