- Self-confidence, knowledge of the humanities, interest in business.
- Sincerity-the candidate's desire to learn from the bottom up.
- Ability to manage time.
- Brainpower and intellect.
- Candor.
- Crystal-clear and orderly speech, suggesting an orderly mind.
- Ability to listen, as well as converse.
- Demeanor and dress.
- The gray matter he/she has, an eagerness to learn.
- The questions he/she asks.
- Evidence of intelligence and motivation.
- The preparation the candidates have made for the interviews.
The media specialist Roger Bumstead contributes these additional thoughts on what turns him off in an interview:
Candidates without a career focus; candidates who want me to do the talking; candidates who "laze" in the chair across from me; candidates who are either boring or arrogant; candidates who don't dress properly because they think it doesn't matter when they're seeing a recruiter. Wow, are they wrong!
Wise Words from Industry Leader Richard Curtis
Richard Curtis has been in book publishing for more than twenty- five years, joining the noted Scott Meredith Literary Agency right after graduation, where he was foreign rights manager for seven years. He launched a freelance writing career in 1967 and has had some fifty of his books published by many major houses. Today, Richard Curtis represents close to two hundred authors in all fields and reports more than $6 million in annual sales for his authors.
He is a member of many industry groups and is the agent for the Science Fiction Writers of America and a member of the National Writers Union. Here are some of Curtis's random thoughts on book publishing today:
The traditional book industry and its publishers are losing ground to television, movies, and computerized entertainment such as video games. Interestingly enough, it is also to those fields that publishers are looking for their salvation.
Because the surviving publishers are all vying for a small number of potentially best-selling books and star authors, the number of trade books (general interest fiction and nonfiction) published annually is definitely shrinking.
There are still good entry-level jobs in publishing, and enough fluidity so that a young editor can advance to a senior position relatively quickly. If you're willing to think beyond the limitations of the conventional publishing and bookselling fields, you may be able to help the industry expand again in some very exciting ways.
The most interesting book-related activity is now in the field of electronic media. Books that can be delivered to readers or "viewers" on disk or over phone or cable lines will, I confidently predict, become the principal way that future generations will access information and "edutainment. "
Traditional publishers realize this and have begun to develop multimedia capability or join forces with companies that produce it.
Therefore, young people must steep themselves in computer technology and electronic media. They can get jobs in those media. But if they are keen to be in publishing, they will be armed with skills that are useful and desirable to an industry that must go electronic if it is to survive.
In other words, an editor with a grammar book, dictionary, and blue pencil will be at a distinct disadvantage against one who knows how to operate a computer or CD-ROM and communicate over an on-line network
Cogent thoughts indeed from an industry leader.
