One problem that many journalist face in trying to leave newspapers mid-career is how to convince a prospective employer through your application material that you have the skills, if not the experience, to do the job. In this post, I’ll share some of the things that have worked for me. In fact, I’ve had to accomplish this task a couple of times — first when I went from designing newspaper sports pages to a job where I did scientific illustrations and designed science educational materials, then again when i went from being a designer at an ad agency to a PR position where I was hired for my writing skills. So it’s definitely doable.

Generalist, not specialist

I began my career with several years as a part-time sports correspondent while in college, and I still did some writing after I first got a full-time job as a sports designer/copy editor. These days, when I talk about my writing experience in my application letter and resume, I call myself a “writer who spent the first X years of his career as a journalist”, not “sportswriter”. See the difference? In the former, I present myself as a writer who CHOSE to apply his writing skills to journalism (note that I don’t even mention sports in that phrase), whereas in the latter I come off as someone whose skills are specifically tailored for sportswriting. I use the same concept when talking about my design experience. I don’t even call myself a former newspaper designer anymore. Instead, I’m just a graphic designer who spent some time in newspapers, among other settings. Specializing is fine if you are trying to stay within your current specialty. If you are trying to get out of that specialty, however, you want to communicate to the employer that your skills are widely applicable to a variety of fields, one of which is the one you currently occupy.

In fact, if you go to my professional site, you’ll notice that in my introduction, I’m a “graphic/Web designer, copy editor, and writer”, and I follow that sentence by pointing out that I have been heavily involved in both design and writing throughout my career. What I’m trying to do is to stress my versatility so as to avoid being pigeon-holed into one field or another. I’m not a newspaper designer or sportswriter trying to switch careers, I’m a jack-of-all-trades who spent the past few years using those skills in one field but now has decided to use those skills for another field. I’ll be the first to admit that this approach works better if you haven’t spent the last 20 years in the same field, but I think it can be an effective strategy for people who are in about the same age group and career stage as me.

Presenting your skills and experience in non-newspaper terms

While many of the tasks at newspapers are very specific to journalism, the skills required to do them effectively are widely applicable and desired. That’s why you need to focus on those skills rather than the tasks in your application material. Telling employers that you are good at writing prep gamers probably won’t mean much to them, so tell them that you are good at gathering large amounts of data and quickly analyzing them to pinpoint patterns and then presenting that information in a coherent, easy-to-understand manner. After all, that’s what writing a gamer entails — taking notes and keeping stats during the game, talking to coaches and players afterward, analyzing all the information you have to decide what your storyline is, then writing a clear, succinct story recounting what happened. On top of all that, you do it all in a span of an hour or so, and you do it three or four days a week for nine months a year.

So let’s see which one of the following is more appealing to a non-newspaper employer:

• “I have significant experience writing sports game stories, which involves keeping stats, talking to coaches, and then writing a story on deadline.”

OR

• “I have significant experience in gathering large amounts of information from a variety of sources, conducting a quick analysis of that data to determine what they reveal, and conveying that information in a succinct, clear manner. In addition, I do this with a very quick turnaround time and often while juggling several other projects at the same time.

Whether you were a newspaper writer, copy editor, or designer, you can apply this concept to your job experience.

One other piece of advice on this front: Be sure to stress your experience working under tight deadlines. In fact, just saying you’re comfortable with deadlines isn’t enough. Tell them specifically that you turned around work in a matter of hours (and sometimes minutes) every day for however many years. In my experience, when the non-newspaper world says “deadline”, it has a completely different connotation than when journalists say “deadline”. What a non-newspaper person might consider a quick turnaround likely would seem like a long-term project for a journalist. So those who are going from newspapers to other fields have that built-in advantage, and it doesn’t hurt to highlight it.

Tweak your portfolio to show versatility

As much as possible, tailor your portfolio to the job you are applying for. In my case, I have a version of my portfolio that’s primarily design samples with a few writing clips at the end. I also have another version that’s just writing clips, for when I apply for writing jobs.

When selecting your portfolio pieces, think about how they go along with the picture you are trying to paint of yourself and what you offer a prospective employer. For instance, I mentioned above that you should stress your versatility. Toward that end, if you are applying for a writing job, you should try to send clips that show you can write a variety of content rather than showing that you are really good at investigative reporting or sports gamers or movie reviews. Yes, a portfolio chock full of APSE-winning pieces might be great if you are going for a sportswriting job, but if you are trying get away from that and get into a job where there’s no sportswriting at all, it doesn’t serve you as well as a portfolio with a couple of your best sports writings and then a variety of other solid clips. Did you start out with some experience on the news side? Throw in a couple of those stories. Write movie reviews for a Web site on the side? Include one of those. These pieces don’t have to be amazing — the writing skill level needed to do most writing jobs are well below what’s required in journalism (think about those press releases you get) — as long as they are clean.

The same applies if you are a designer. Look at what kind of things you would be doing at the job you are applying for, and tweak your portfolio content accordingly. If you are going into magazine design, then more featury page layouts might be in order. If you are going into a Web design job, highlight the Web design work you’ve done, even if they are a relatively minor part of your experience. One piece of advice is that your day-to-day newspaper design generally comes off as relatively plain for people at ad/design agencies. Besides, pages that show you know how to “make a good picture the star” doesn’t do much for you if you’re going for a job where that would not be something you do frequently. It would serve you better to have just a few pieces that show that you understand the general principles of good layouts, and then include pieces that show off your skills in Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

Digitize Your Portfolio

Newspapers are about the only field I know where a significant number of hiring managers still prefer original hard copies as opposed to digital files. Yes, some of that comes from the desire to see the work as it was published (as opposed to a story that has been corrected after it went online), but a lot of that also comes from just being behind the times (repeat after me: PDFs are NOT hard to work with). Fortunately, those doing the hiring in other fields are not as technology-averse, and in fact many postings for creative jobs (writing or design) ask specifically for electronic samples. So whether you are a writer or a designer, it pays to have a digital version your portfolio.

For a designer, this is a much more common thing, just because of the nature of the job. Just make sure you get relatively high-quality output of your pages (PDFs). As for presenting the portfolio, I guess you could shell out a lot of money and have a really fancy one professionally printed on heavy paper and what not. However, in all of my job searches, I usually initiate the process by sending a screen-resolution PDF of the portfolio with my application, or if I’m applying via snail mail, I would include a copy of the portfolio that I printed out on my home photo printer on regular 8.5 x 11 paper and bound together with one of those clear plastic report covers that drove your college professors nuts (see, those are good for something). I would also include a CD with the PDF on it. I get decent quality from my photo printer, and the low cost in printing a copy allows me to apply for many jobs, and bring multiple copies with me to an interview, which is a minor plus when you find yourself in a group interview walking three or four people through your portfolio at the same time.

For writers, I would recommend finding your stories in your paper’s online archives and producing a PDF from it. Try CutePDF writer, a free download that allows you to “print” from any program to a PDF. No, the online clips might not be the original version that was printed, but that doesn’t matter too much to fields where you have a lot more time to edit and can update/correct something after you first released it. If you really want the original version, try scanning the clips and saving them as a PDF, though this generally results in larger file sizes and poorer quality since you are basically saving the clips as an image.

Make a Web site

I’ll put this very succinctly: GET A WEB SITE!! Whether you are a writer or a designer, this will help tremendously in your job search by allowing you to point the employer to an URL containing your portfolio and resume. It’s instantaneous and you don’t have to worry about sending attachments that might bust someone’s inbox size limit. It’s easier than ever to get your own Web site, and no HTML knowledge is needed. The simplest solution is to set up a blog on places like WordPress or Blogger. They are free and easy to create and edit. You can do as much or as little to the basic template, and you’ll still end up with a fairly solid and professional-looking site.

Of course, if you are a designer, it will be very beneficial to show off your design chops a bit in your Web site. After all, if you can’t design for yourself, who can you design for? There are many good, low-cost Web hosting services out there that offer more space than you will ever need for just a few bucks a month. Just Google something like “good Web hosting services” and find some lists and reviews. Most of them will also register your domain for you, and it’s usually $10 to $20 a year for that. So for well under $100 a year, you can have your very own Web site, with your own URL. As for Web design, try to design your site using xHTML and CSS, because those are the current industry standards. Need some lessons? Just Google for tutorials.