Intrepid Miami journalist

Introduction: The beginning of my sixth month of free agency coincides with the spring hiring season.

Hiring managers typically get down to the serious business of adding talent to their company rosters at this time of the year. During my three-decade journalism career, I've been a spring hire on four occasions.

Can assure you I've been working diligently for five months networking and marketing myself. So maybe my unexpected journey soon will lead to the start of my next career chapter. Certainly, I'll enjoy, savor and be quite grateful to former colleagues, friends and family, if I land another desirable position inside or outside journalism before spring yields to summer.

Career management intelligence: Since we've reached this juncture of 2024 when companies accelerate hiring, thought I'd offer a few job search tips for anyone seeking a new professional opportunity. This guidance comes both from personal experiences and a few years ago interviewing for freelance articles a few of the nation's foremost talent acquisition and career coaching experts. They included Martin Yate, the international best-selling author of the Knock Em Dead series of books on the dos and don'ts of job searching, effective interviewing, resume writing and professional networking, plus other useful career management information.

From the beginning of my free agent voyage in November after the Miami Herald decided to ditch the business editor position , I've said many times the two main reasons for documenting my trek here on LinkedIn and on Substack are to keep my professional brand alive and to pay it forward providing career management takeaways. To everyone who has read even one of my 20 weekly dispatches, thank you for the encouragement and motivation. To all journalists and professionals also pushing hard to reach their next career destination, I'm rooting for you.

Job board temptation: With hiring picking up, you've probably noticed online job boards from LinkedIn to whatever your favorite board is for your industry brimming with postings for new positions. The overflow of postings can tempt one to think applying for dozens of these openings a week with a few clicks on your laptop will lead to a number of interviews and ultimately a job offer, two or three. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you will almost certainly be rejected and dejected, and your free agency will extend for many, many months -- if relying on submissions for a ton of posted positions comprises the sum total of your career management strategy.

The deeper you are in your career, you need to know the most suitable jobs posted by coveted employers seeking highly skilled veterans often attract 50 to 100 or more applicants nationwide. You get the picture -- the competition is fierce and the recruiting process for each opening often moves slowly. Put another way, your chances of getting an interview, let alone landing a job offer will be the polar opposite of the well-worn metaphor: shooting fish in a barrel, meaning the task is ridiculously easy.

Hard to get noticed: Simply applying to posted openings via online portals as a complete unknown to an employer is the toughest way to get the attention of hiring managers and to stand out from crowded fields of applicants. Tracking posted jobs, however, does offer value in seeing desirable positions, then trying to network a path inside a company to an interview via your professional contacts, as well as following which companies in your area of expertise are indeed hiring and how much they're paying for new talent in your chosen occupation.

Among my reporter and editor positions in nine newsrooms, I only snagged two of those jobs by merely replying cold to a job posting. Making one of those experiences even more rare was a California multimedia regional news outlet hired me as a business editor in the San Francisco Bay Area and paid the entire tab to relocate me across the country from Pennsylvania. As the nation's biggest state, California employers typically find talent close to home or from somewhere within the state's vast borders.

Snagging interviews and offers: Here's five far more reliable ways to position yourself to score job interviews and hopefully work offers:

1) Pinpoint companies you want to work for and then alert your professional contact or contacts working at those firms that you are on the market, so they can inform hiring managers of your availability. Sometimes this tactic enables you to learn about an opening early in a recruiting process or for a hiring manager to learn about you before posting a job and receiving a deluge of resumes.

In 2006, this is how I landed an assistant business editor position at the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, after working three years at the Palm Beach Post. Right now, I'm vying for another leadership position in journalism again deploying this maneuver. To be able to do this, it's critical during the course of your career to build a network of contacts inside and outside your employer by attending industry workshops, conferences and trade shows and by participating in virtual networking events to meet peers in your particular vocations.

2) Leverage your close network contacts who stay well-connected in your field to keep you abreast when quality companies want to add people with your skills and experiences to their employee rosters. This also gives you a way for a contact to recommend you to a hiring manager and even make an introduction for you. And it often allows you to compete with a smaller field of rivals to land a position. In 2003, I successfully used this tactic to make a pivotal move up in my career to a much bigger media market, landing a business editor role at the Palm Beach Post, after 15 years as an award-winning business reporter and editor at hometown newspaper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Then in 2015, the top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer where I was working as an assistant business editor connected me with the managing editor of the Houston Chronicle. This connection ended up leading to a job offer I accepted to become an assistant metropolitan editor in Houston.

3) Once you develop a successful track record in your profession or work in a specific region of the country, that can pay dividends for you as hiring managers gravitate toward you and find your expertise more appealing than other candidates. This is how in 2012 I landed a managing editor gig in Chicago at Crain Communications' publication Business Insurance, a global business media leader for its coverage of corporate risk management and commercial insurance. Previously, I was editor-in-chief in the Philadelphia area for one of Crain's chief rival publications covering the international risk management arena.

And in the summer of 2021, I caught the attention of a hiring manager at the Miami Herald who then was seeking a business editor. This senior editor was enticed by my earlier six years working in South Florida at two Herald competitors and acquiring valuable knowledge and insights about the regional business community and economic landscape.

4) During the course of our careers, most of us get opportunities to interact with customers, vendors, suppliers, competitors and local, state or maybe national business organizations. Professional relationships cultivated through these interactions can prove valuable to advancing your career. Sometimes they can even lead to an unexpected opportunity to compete for a fresh career.

When I got word in October 2023 that my position would be ending in two weeks at the Miami Herald, I informed a shortlist of key regional businesspeople I met and interacted with during my two years as business editor to tell them about my fate. These professional courtesy contacts led to a handful of discussions about positions and potential job openings that could ultimately provide the landing destination for my monthslong free agent journey.

One of these discussions opened the door for me to explore a different direction than journalism to compete for a senior leadership role at a respected business organization. My talks are continuing with this hiring manager and competition isn't over regarding this exciting position. Therefore, I'm going to keep further details close to the vest at this point.

5) The degree to which you remain open to returning to an office daily, a few days a week or potentially relocating to another city or state still offers an advantage in a highly competitive post-pandemic labor market. I've enjoyed the flexibility of largely remote work as an editor for four years since the pandemic emerged in the United States in March 2020. Yet, I'm willing to return to the office, make a long-distance commute or even a relocation for a meaningful position that's a strong fit for me and a respectable employer.

Thank you for reading and for your encouragement and support. Hope you'll continue this journey with me to my next career chapter. Please feel free to connect on LinkedIn or on Substack , or at [email protected] to offer your thoughts, suggestions and job leads.