resume

I still hate internships, but sometimes free is smart

by Marian Schembari on April 6, 2010

Last week I was quoted in TIME Magazine’s article, “Working For Free” by Eve Tahmincioglu and I wanted to share some thoughts on this new intern/free labor drama. Here’s a snippet:

Will labor activists in the U.S. ever get the intern genie back in the bottle? Not if enough people keep volunteering to work for free. Marian Schembari quit her unpaid internship at a Web-based publisher in New York City after three months of living with her parents. The 22-year-old, who graduated from college last year, reached the point where she felt that working 40-hour weeks for no pay was “degrading.” But Schembari, who is now freelancing, still thinks she got something valuable out of the internship. “I was able to write for a website with a decent readership, and I built up my clips,” she says. “My bosses were nice. They just couldn’t afford to pay. But in hindsight, that really shouldn’t be my problem.”

I’m definitely not a fan of the internship, mostly because unless your bosses are superbly awesome and let you do cool things other than getting coffee, internships are essentially assistant positions masquerading as “learning experiences”. The real difference is that assistants get paid.

Along with being quoted in TIME (which was SWEET), I wrote an Internship Series a few months ago about why you shouldn’t take one, why people take them anyway and what you can do instead of taking one. I can reiterate all the reasons why I hate internships, but I want to make an important point and distinction: sometimes, when we’re just starting out , doing work for free helps us get noticed, get that foot in the door and ultimately get more business.

Care for some elaboration? No problem.

Five important reasons you should work for free:

1. Exposure. It’s like building up writing clips. In order to snag that awesome article/story/book/whatever, you

This isn't me. But it's still funny.

usually need to already have something published. Which is that lovely Catch-22 of the Freelance Writer. To get those clips, most people start off writing for some ridiculously small amount of money. I don’t agree with this because talent is talent, but I understand that writing a few things for free now can make it easier to write what you want later.

2. Contacts. My dear friend and mentor, Michael Ellsberg, is an author, consultant, business guru and all around nice guy. He contacted me months ago and told me I should forget about getting a “real” job and start working for myself. Michael sends me long emails with 100% fabulous advice, meets with me and spoon feeds me freelance tips and hooks me up with Important People. All out of the goodness of his heart. Or not. You see, Michael knows that I know people that he doesn’t know. Michael knows I’m ridiculously awesome. And because Michael’s smart, he knows that by helping me – for free – he will get an insane return on his investment. Read his most recent blog post here – he talks about building a tribe and articulates it way better than I ever could.

3. Experience. Just starting out? Don’t have referrals or a thick portfolio? Picking a project or two can help build that portfolio (see #1) and give you the experience that will make you feel more comfortable with certain tasks. The learning process is also a great thing to look back on and use later. Half of my blog posts (which can be considered a form of free labor) come from questions people email me or some form of “wisdom” I learn along the way.

4. Making decisions. Working for free can help you decide whether or not a certain career path is right for you. Rather than just taking a job and hoping for the best, a temporarily free project can steer you in the right direction.

5. Spreading the word. “Free” may usually refer to the actual cost of something, but money doesn’t necessarily have to be a factor. In this economy a lot of people are simply unable to pay for services, which is why interns are  exploited now more than ever. But if you “charge” someone by getting them to pass on your name to potential – and paying – clients or simply asking for a glowing recommendation, it might be easier to snag that job since your employer feels they can given something back. Some people – good people – usually hesitate to take someone’s work for nothing. It’s uncomfortable. Take a contest. Say you run a Twitter contest where you have to enter by retweeting something or another. This brings priceless visibility to the company/brand and they’re paying for that visibility (via the giveaway).

NOTE: I don’t think you should do a job for free – meaning, going into an office every day and putting in that amount of time without getting paid is insane (and questionably illegal). But a project here and there, volunteering your time for a person or cause worth that time and helping out someone who may some day return the favor? Totally worth it.

Related posts:


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The Best Freelance Advice I’ve Ever Been Given

by Marian Schembari on March 19, 2010

I recently wrote an article for Digital Book World about freelancer jobs in publishing. (Take my post, Freelance Jobs in Publishing: taking advantage of publisher outsourcing, from a few months back and put it on steroids.) In order to add more content and actually provide advice,  I put out a HARO request looking to get quotes from freelancers and those who hire them. (I am the sneakiest/most awesomest person ever. I now have about a dozen names of publishing execs who hire freelancers on a regular basis. Genius? Hells yeah.)

Anyhoozey, lots of people responded, but I got a fabulous book of an email from editor Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, of KOK Edit, with a list of the most amazing advice for any freelancer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use all her tips in my article, so she is graciously letting me reprint some of them here.

So for your reading pleasure, soak up this woman’s ridiculous knowledge:

1. Hand out your business cards absolutely everywhere you go, including such places as banks and office-supply stores; you never know who’ll need your services.

2. Maintain a professional-looking web site: It’s your calling card on the Internet.

3. Keep in constant contact: Find reasons to periodically contact all of your clients so that they remember you. Frequently, the freelancer who gets the call or e-mail for a project is the one whose name is freshest in the client’s mind. Consider producing a very small periodic newsletter that you e-mail or snail-mail to clients.

4. Advertise judiciously: I advertise in the special edition of a Long Island newspaper that’s produced annually for a book fair here, and I have an ad on the web site of the Council of Science Editors.

5. Send out small gifts to regular clients: Once I’ve had a project or two with a particular contact, I send him or her a coffee mug or tote bag or other item with my company name and logo and contact info on it as a thank-you.

6. Put your name and contact info on everything you touch: Develop a signature that you can pop into place easily in each e-mail you send; it should contain at least your name, your company’s name (if you have one), your phone number, your e-mail address, and your web site URL. Every style sheet I produce (those unfamiliar with book editing should take a look at the “Style Sheet” section of this page of my web site) has my logo and contact info on it. If you do hard-copy editing, tape a business card onto the back of the last page of each ms. you edit. For onscreen edits, place your contact info in the document’s properties.

7. Investigate new clients constantly: Absolutely every single time a potential client’s name comes up on an e-mail list, in a news story, in a magazine feature, or anywhere else, search for the company’s web site online. Bookmark it. Find out everything you can about that company. And then set aside a bit of time each week to e-mail or snail-mail or call the companies you’ve checked up on. Let them know you’d like to be of service to them; never ask if they can give you work. In other words, always approach them from the perspective of their needs, not yours.

8. Buy the EFA booklet “Resumes for Freelancers.” Use it to structure your resume as that of a consultant rather than that of an employee.

There you have it. There’s advice all over the web for freelancers, but Katharine has hit the nail on the head with these little gems of knowledge. Hopefully you’ll find them as useful as I have! (And if you have any other tips, or things you wish you knew at my age… by all means, share away!)

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3 Annoying Comments Other Bloggers Made

by Marian Schembari on February 22, 2010

The Facebook ads I posted back in July resulted in a little bit of press, mostly due to the awesome Debbie Stier of HarperStudio, but also because I’m absurdly cool. Some of that press wasn’t so positive, and since another pretty negative blog post cropped up recently I want to address some of the factors other bloggers have mentioned.

Facebook ads can’t replace traditional networking.

Traditional networking is dead. Give me one person who likes to stand around awkwardly in a room full of strangers cradling the ubiquitous “classy” plastic cup and I’ll give you 1,000 who’d rather break a kneecap.

I wouldn’t consider myself a shy person, but in groups of people I pretend I have a super important call and usually stand on the sidelines until some nice person decides they feel horribly bad for me and make some form of small talk for 5 minutes until they realize I’m incredibly boring. But give me one person. Give me a blog friend or the president of a major publishing house and I can schmooze with the rest of them. I like one-on-one, but it’s hard to find that one person unless you “know a guy” (insert heavy NYC-Italian accent here) or successfully attended one of these networking events.

Social media (including, but not limited to, Facebook ads) puts you in touch with hundreds of people you might never have had the balls to approach otherwise. Social media has the ability to foster some incredibly important – and mutually beneficial – relationships. People need to stop freaking out about how the internet makes things “less personal” just because many interactions are no longer face-to-face. I have developed more personal and wonderful and important relationships in the past 6 months than I ever did doing things the “traditional” way. And I’m positive my fellow tech-savvy, social-media-at-the-ready, scared-of-groups comrades would agree.

Ads make you look desperate.

You know what? The economy sucks and it’s harder than ever to get a job, so if you’re unemployed, you’re most likely desperate. Not to mention the fact that sending out generic cover letters and cold calling is a rude and impersonal act of desperation.

Cecelia Martinez over at Dcecelia.com, Joe Grimm of Poynter Online and Caitlin McDevitt on The Big Money wrote that the ads are creepy and gimmicky. Gimmicky? Maybe. But you have to back the ads up with substance, you can’t just sit back and wait for jobs to come to you. When I think of a “gimmick” I think misrepresentation. Devious. As for creepy? Bite me. Honestly, you don’t want people targeting you on Facebook because of where you work, your age or what your interests are, don’t post them. It’s that simple.

It doesn’t work.

Let’s check out two quotes:

“But did Facebook help Schembari land her dream job? Not sure.” ~ Rachel Kaufman, Media Jobs Daily

“There hasn’t been word that any one of these ads has helped these job seekers gain anything more than a little bit of publicity on employment blogs.” ~ Cecelia Martinez, Dcecelia.com

Here’s where I brag: First of all, um, I got a job, and I’ve already bitched about Kaufman’s definition of a “dream job.” Secondly, check out my press page again. Do it. Do it now. About three of those articles came about without any help from me. Any other press I received I got through contacting journalists through HARO, finding like-minded people on Twitter and through my freelance work at Digital Book World.

Like I said earlier, you can’t just put up an ad (something that takes balls but basically zero skill, time or money) and expect shit to happen.

To summarize, here’s a snippet of my comment on Dcecelia’s blog:

[The ads] just help get your name out there, which can often be the hardest part. Applying through job boards is a supreme waste of time and ultimately, while I did leave the job I got through the ads, there were a variety of reasons behind that decision, one of which was that I’ve been getting so much freelance work I don’t need a 9 to 5.

To be honest, if you’re looking for a traditional job through a traditional company, the ads may be a waste of time and money. That’s the first mistake. But if people think you’re “innovative” (a word that makes HR managers cry like 12-year-old girls) it doesn’t really matter if the ads reek of desperation. I know so many more people because of these ads and am now able to keep those connections, get freelance work, do said work from home, make more money, not have a boss AND go to culinary school. So total lameness aside, I would call the ads a complete success.


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Teaching at Barnard: How to get a job using social media

by Marian Schembari on January 18, 2010

On the 2nd of February I will be teaching my very first workshop in Barnard’s career services department. The subject? Using social media as a job hunting tool (I know, right? Apparently I need a hobby).  You all kind of know how I feel about “traditional” job search methods, and as I’ve mentioned before, schools don’t really do the best job of teaching us anything besides the basics. So I reached out to various colleges and universities in New York (Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, Hofstra, Barnard, etc etc) saying I was available to show soon-to-be-graduates the essential social media  tools like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook as part of their job search.

Looking for work today is drastically different than it was a year ago. Yesterday, even. Here’s a very brief outline of what I will be teaching:

  • How to create an attractive and effective online resume
  • The three big social media platforms
  • The importance of personal branding and how to create a strong web presence

Through my research I’ve found that some schools have actually started programs that are keeping their students on top of their game (kind of). Gonzaga University hosted an event in October called: “Social Media: Friend or Foe“, but other than that I’ve had a hard time finding anyone even close to venturing into arena. Meaning part of me thinks I’m an utter genius for thinking of this brilliant way to earn some extra cash. Until, of course, I realize I’ve been doing my research wrong and every school has already hopped on the bandwagon. In the meantime…

It would be great to get some input before my initial presentation. What do you guys think would be useful? Anything you wish you knew before the ole job hunt? Anything you still want to know? You’re the best!

And this kind of goes without sayin,g but if you’re a school and would like me to speak (or know of a school, or went to school, or know a guy that goes to school)… shoot me an email or whatnot.

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Mediabistro’s Definition of a “Dream Job” and Why I’ve Never Been Happier

by Marian Schembari on January 14, 2010

Rachel Kaufman of Mediabistro’s Media Jobs Daily recently wrote a post on the Facebook ads I ran this past August. While flattered that Mediabistro (Mediabistro bitches!) finds the story awesome enough to write about, I took issue with the general tone of the article. The title itself reads: “Woman Buys A Facebook Job Ad And Sort Of Gets Her Wish” and Kaufman writes, “But isn’t this story kind of like wanting to be a basketball star and ending up as a sportswriter or coach? Or wanting to be a chef and ending up doing PR campaigns for other chefs?” Maybe, I guess. But if Kaufman read even a little of my blog she would know that I no longer work at Jane Wesman PR. Plus, that is just like the media world to look down at a boutique firm because it’s not a big-corporate-conglomerate-that-puts-out-hundreds-of-books-and-makes-butt-tons-of-money-and-has-a-fancy-slash-prestigious-name.

Now, I can’t argue with what she says. My dream was to work for a big publisher, but only because I didn’t really know what else was out there for someone who wanted to go into publishing. In my limited (but enthusiastic) view, a job as an editorial assistant was the Be All and End All of publishing jobs. I hadn’t even considered book publicity until my Rodale buddy suggested it. Was I dissapointed I didn’t land a “sweet” gig at a fancy publishing house? Of course. Do I regret it? Not even a little bit.

In my cockiness, I’m pretty sure that if I spent a little longer looking I would have gotten my “dream job”. But after my interview at JWPR I realized that going outside the major houses would a) paysmore and b) give me better experience. Instead of being somebody’s “publicity assistant” I was actually a publicist. That being said, after three months I realized that I actually rock out more effectively on my own. And there was that little issue with enrolling in culinary school. So maybe the job I spent $150 getting wasn’t perfect for me, but I now have first-hand experience with book publicity, met some amazing people, work for myself, make more money and have clients that include major publishers, newspapers and authors.

So take that, Mediabistro.

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