The Front Page News Technique

This technique works well for those in the publishing and creative fields. Create a one-page newspaper with yourself as the headline and sideline stories. It requires a great deal of creativity and technical expertise; otherwise it can come off as a sappy stunt. Your objective is to create a page of professional copy, just as you might on the job. Your headline story could be your pending graduation with sideline stories including reporter interviews with your key references, and possibly even a reference to the targeted employer in the "business section" of the paper.

A journalism major used this technique and recreated the exact format and headlines of the paper she was applying to. They were naturally quite impressed and granted her the interview over very heavy competition.

A spin on this technique: a graduate who was seeking a job in desktop publishing was asked by a prospective employer if she had experience with PageMaker (which was the in-house product of choice). She replied that she had extensive experience with Quark (on a Mac) and that she was confident she could pick up PageMaker in a very short amount of time. She trained herself on the product and developed the "Front Page News" sheet with PageMaker as proof of her new expertise, including practical illustrations of some of the more complex formatting techniques. She presented the page as a "show and tell" item at her interview--and had a job offer in hand before the day was over!

You are welcome to browse this material as a visitor of our site, but please do not violate the copyright by making copies of this material, either electronic, paper or any other type, with the exception of one paper copy of each page permitted for your own personal use and reference.