The Question That Told Me Everything About A Writing Job Candidate

The answer to my question told us everything we needed to know about our job candidate.

We were hiring for a writer and this person was a referral. The company leadership really wanted to hire this person.

A person for a demanding writing job in our company with no professional writing or editing experience. Didn’t major in journalism, communication, writing, or English in college.

The writing examples the person sent us were college papers. Not very good ones at that. Who doesn’t have college papers to send for writing samples?

But the candidate was a “good culture fit” in the words of company leadership. I liked this person. I could see the person is thoughtful, works hard, and is someone I would say is a high-achiever.

Does all that make them a writer? Let alone a good writer?

No.

In the interview, I asked the candidate if they have a blog, have freelance writing gigs, or do their own writing. Maybe a journal or something like that.

Nope. Nothing. Doesn’t do any writing.

That’s all I needed to know

If you want to be a writer, then write. Read good writers. Learn about the craft.

Write to develop your voice and style.

Blog. Journal. Seek out freelance opportunities for local magazines or other publications.

Find out if you really love writing.

Because that’s what the candidate’s answer really revealed to me.

Why hire someone for a position if it wasn’t something they enjoyed doing on their own?

I have to write. It’s a big part of who I am. It’s why I have two personal blogs and regularly write freelance articles for magazines.

I need to write. Want to write. Love to write.

What’s writing to you?

Tell a good story. Write simply. Connect with audiences.

The goal of writing isn’t to sound smart. Don’t try and impress people with big words and fancy sentences.

Tell a story. Make it simple. Write like you talk.

The goal is connecting. You want people to read what you write.

Maybe you entertain them, or inform them and persuade them through humor or a tender story or tap into another emotion.

I learned about these things as a journalist when I developed my own brand of writing. Writing with style or flair. My editor called it “Matt Sabo style” and would ask me to write a “Sabo style” article.

I’ll give you an example. This is a story I wrote about a raid on a motorcycle repair shop in a rural Virginia community that got, well, interesting. I took an ordinary story and had fun with it.

A Virginia moonshine operation

Take the ordinary and give it your own style.

Why perseverance is one of those things that should define you

Everyone benefits from this one thing.

Have this one thing and it will be a difference maker for you. So what’s this one thing? 

Perseverance.

Perseverance sets you apart. It carries you through your professional and personal life.

I can’t stress enough how much perseverance pays off.

By definition, it’s “steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.” 

It’s believing in yourself despite seemingly endless setbacks. It’s enduring through exhaustion. It’s patience through frustration. It’s not giving up despite numerous rejections.

Don’t quit. Whatever you do, don’t quit.

Don’t be defined by rejections. Don’t let someone else determine your view of what you’ll bring to an organization. View those rejections as opportunities to learn.

After you as a job hunter, or your idea as an employee, or your pitch as an entrepreneur is turned down, take some time to self-reflect. What can you change or tweak? What can you improve?

Use those lessons to inform your next actions and help shape and guide your future applications, interviews and conversations. 

Be purposeful. Seek out expertise. Read. Study. Get to work!

So how does perseverance look for you? We’re on the cusp of a new year, a time for fresh starts, do overs, new commitments, and new goals.

If it’s not already, make “perseverance” a goal of yours. 

Try it. You have nothing to lose. And everything to gain.

The best ideas are crowdsourced. So crowdsource them.

A CEO I worked for some time ago used to chat me up fairly regularly. I remember he just filled up the room.

By that I mean he did all the talking. Never did any listening. Had all the answers. Had all the gut feelings.

There wasn’t room for anything other than his voice. His thoughts. His direction.

That sums it up. It’s frustrating. It was for me and many of my co-workers. We’re not alone.

Great organizations have leaders who listen. Not every idea that filters up to them will be great.

Some ideas will be amazing. Others should marinate, evolve, get tossed around, go through a brainstorming session.

Some simply won’t be so great.

But the strength of an organization is its voice.

It’s not just one voice. It’s not the CEO’s voice.

It’s not the loudest voice in the room. Or the voice of experience that “has all the answers.”

It’s the organization’s collective voice.

Leaders, do you hear that?

Make your company better. Make the world better.

Several years ago, a boss I worked for decided to have an end-of-year company strategy session to do some brand identity.

Figure out who we were and what we’re about as a company.

It’s all good stuff. But it struck me that this person had launched the company and was running it for five or six years and couldn’t answer that for themself. This person truly needed someone else to do it for them.

That’s not good.

What’s your company about? What’s important to your company?

It should be a big-picture statement. Like, “My company makes the world a better place because we make (products) that help other companies be successful.”

Most importantly, how does what you do help your company do that thing or those things it’s all about?

Finish this sentence: I elevate my company’s brand by _____________________________.

And this one: I make my company better because _________________________________.

Now, try this one: I could make my company better by _____________________________.

Go do it.

I knew I was in trouble when ... (And lessons learned along the way).

I knew I was in trouble when …

I hit send on that email to a faraway corporate boss, even though something inside me said don’t. (I learned not to do stupid things like that anymore.)

As a young reporter, my editor who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize told me not to write an article like that anymore. (I studied his writing style and technique.)

As a new writer, I asked my manager what kind of style we use in writing our content and she said they don’t follow any particular style in the company. (I got our writing team to adopt AP style and also made a style guide.)

At a small company, my bosses gathered our team, told us how hard things had been financially in the firm and cut everyone’s hours. Then they booked a vacation to the Caribbean. (I left that company shortly afterward for a better gig.)

I was the newspaper’s Saturday reporter and got an eyebrow-raising assignment to go to an inner-city apartment complex for a story about a recent murder victim. Fortunately, I called the regular crime beat reporter—who was incredulous someone would send me there—who referred me to a police sergeant to make sure I had company. (My instincts were right to call our crime writer and double-check the assignment.)

I was sitting in an Oregon coast funeral home covering the death of a fishing boat captain whose chartered boat went down in rough water, costing the lives of several of his passengers. The fisherman sitting next to me stared intently at me and told me twice he was going to break my nose, probably because he didn’t like the stories he read about his friend.. I walked briskly out. He followed me. My photographer across the street saw the fisherman closing in on me and turned his camera on the guy, stopping him in his tracks. I’m forever grateful to the great photographer and my friend Sol Neelman. (Always make good friends with your photographer.)

How does your brand connect with your community? What's your why?

Your company’s brand is how you connect with your community. And communities you want to connect with.

Brand and culture are closely connected. It’s simple then: Good brands connect culture with community.

Think of Patagonia. Apple. Porsche. Rolex. Amazon.

They all have such a strong brand because they connect so well with their community.

These are all thoughts my friend and branding and marketing guru/mentor Josh Rowe said to me recently. Josh is marketing director at Harvard Innovation Labs, and formerly worked in marketing at Nike and New Balance.

I called him because I was really curious about how brands connect with audiences.

He told me a brand reflects what the community expects. Great brands know what their community wants.

Maybe their community wants low environmental impact. It might be technological innovation. I mean, what will you stand in a line for five hours for? For some people it’s an iPhone.

A brand’s community may want quality. Or performance.

Longevity. Sustainability. Luxury.

Josh talked about Porsche, for example. He said “Porsche” and these words popped into my head: Performance. Sleek. Engineering. Speed.

Or a Swiss watch. You expect it to last forever.

Then he asked me a question.

“You know who might be the strongest brand in America right now?”

I said I didn’t know.

“Trump.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

“They’re all in,” he said. “So much so that they are driving a Biden bus off the highway in Texas.”

 I really wasn’t expecting that. But it’s true. Sadly?

Anyway, good brands do a great job connecting their culture with their community. Foundering brands don’t do that.

They just give you a product. There’s no identity. No affinity. No connection. Hello Reebok, Kmart or Oldsmobile.

Brands need to create ambassadors to survive. Your product then, is a medium to connect your culture to a community, often through ambassadors.

Good companies have brand values. What are your brand values? How do you deliver them to that customer base or community?

Your brand is a mirror, reflecting you, your culture and your values.

This is why it’s so important for companies and organizations to establish their brand values.

Here’s a link from Ogilvy I found super valuable to help you with that: https://www.ogilvy.com/ideas/whats-big-ideal

Establishing brand values is essential. It can’t be a shotgun approach.

Josh said something that sticks with me. He quoted marketing guru Simon Sinek: It’s all about the why, not the what.

People connect with the why.

What’s your brand’s why?

The most powerful sentence you can speak starts with "Imagine"

Imagine I am …

How do you finish that sentence? What’s on your mind? What’s in your heart?

More important, what’s holding you back as you think about finishing that sentence? Can you finish it? Can you dare to dream and give voice to something greater than you are experiencing now?

How we finish the sentence that starts, “Imagine I am” says everything about our dreams, our hopes, our station in life, our ambition, our failures, our present, our past, our perceived future.

Our faith.

Our fears.

Our value.

Our confidence.

Our desire.

It’s a sentence that either emboldens you with its potential or imprisons you if your very next sentence begins, “But…”

Try it. Say those words “Imagine I am” and finish that sentence.

Give voice to your hopes and dreams.

Then relentlessly pursue them.

Hope.

Believe.

Don’t give up.

We are what we make. So what are you making?

We are all “makers.”

At work, at home, in life, we’re making and producing.

It’s written in our DNA to make. We make food, goods, and products in our jobs and at home. We also make reports, presentations, efficiencies, or any number of things. We make DIY stuff we find on Pinterest or from YouTube videos.

We also make the big things. We make our lives and we make businesses, ideas, cultures, and legacies.

We’re largely defined by what we’re making. It’s who we are and how we’re known. In large part it’s our identity.

This hit home for me recently as I was finishing a final paper on one of my Master’s degree classes on communications research methods.

I am back in college after a long hiatus with an emphasis on acquiring new knowledge and skills in strategic and crisis communications. My thought process is with 20 years left in my career — give or take — I want to make them count and do meaningful work for great organizations.

I want to challenge myself, be stretched, and broaden my professional network. But my overarching goal remains to do great work and elevate the organization I’m partnering with.

This particular class had been a struggle for me until one of my older sons, a 2016 college graduate who is working in the management trainee program for a global company, asked me if I needed help.

What a gift. I immediately said yes.

So he sat with me and together we pored over my textbook. We talked through the areas where I was struggling. We worked through the concepts I wasn’t grasping.

He helped me walk through a software program to analyze a survey that was part of the class curriculum. He was my sounding board on my ideas for my paper.

It was illuminating. It was fun. It’s something I’ll remember.

His help was a little thing, but it changed everything for me in that class.

And as I worked alongside my son, I saw with clarity what 20-plus years of “making” can look like. It was a reminder in that moment, at the confluence of my past, present, and future as a father, professional, and student, how essential my values are in what I make.

It’s easy to get blurred vision and lose sight of the big picture in the daily grind of life and work.

We can make decisions and move in directions that seem inconsequential at the time. But they can have big implications down the road.

So I’ll share my thoughts. It’s not a manifesto, nor a mission statement. Merely observations and things I’ve learned. Here we go:

— Don’t settle.

— Don’t cheat just a little.

— Don’t just get by.

— Never let failure define you. Let resilience and grit define you.

— Character, compassion, honesty, caring, commitment, optimism, passion … they all still matter.

— Be dependable and reliable in an unstable world.

— Have faith among faithless.

— Always have hope amidst despair.

— Take initiative.

— Be kind. And respectful.

— No one is beneath you.

— Ambition is good. Just take others with you in that drive upward.

— Lead well, with conviction and humility.

— Serving is leading.

— Listen more, talk less.

— Be flexible.

— Truth and authenticity are in demand.

— Find answers instead of excuses.

— Do meaningful work.

— Be careful what you wish for.

— Being “real” and honest never belittles or maligns.

— Stretch yourself and get out of your comfort zone.

I’m sure there’s plenty of other things to add to this list. You know what they are.

And as I compiled this list, I realized how many of these things I aspire to. I’m still in “making” mold.

Now the questions are for you.

What are you making?

What’s your “making” legacy?

That time I went off to college with a typewriter

For my first go round in college, I ventured off with an electronic typewriter.

No laptop. No internet (Al Gore hadn't invented it yet*). No cell phone (I had an AT&T calling card). 

I walked across campus to all my classes, often through the relentless Portland, Oregon, drizzle. It could be quite depressing for a kid raised in the dry, sunny High Desert of Bend.

At least college was affordable back then. An athletic scholarship I earned for cross country and track paid my tuition and my folks, God bless 'em, picked up my room and board. I left college debt-free.

Things are different for me this time around as I pursue my Master of Science in Communication at Purdue University.

I take all my classes online at Purdue, a school of fine reputation that's 756 miles away. Most of my professors teach remotely far from Purdue and my fellow students are scattered across the country. California, Florida, Hawaii, New Jersey, Texas, and many other places are where they call home. I don't expect to ever set foot on campus for this go round.

I work full-time and do freelance copywriting for a side hustle. This past summer I drove across the country from Virginia to Oregon and back while still working and taking several vacation days, all while taking a class and completing coursework online. As "vacations" go, it was different.

I'm accumulating debt in my pursuit of a master's degree. No scholarship was available because I've burned up my eligibility (and possibly because my competitive days are long past, as anyone who's seen my trying to hoof it around my neighborhood can attest).

I launched this 20-month, 10-class journey because I love to learn. I want to expand my professional skills and increase my knowledge. I don't want to be afraid to try new things.

I'm so impressed by the caliber of my fellow students. I'm grateful to be along for this ride with them and appreciate gleaning from their insights and experiences. I'm looking forward to "meeting" many more students this year in my future classes.

I'm almost halfway to earning my degree and earlier today I got a letter from Purdue. It was a Graduate Certificate in Strategic Communication Management that I earned after completing my first few classes. When I showed it around the house, my wife gave me a smooch and my kids clapped. I'm so thankful for their encouragement and support.

Sometime in December, I'll graduate with a Master of Science in Communication with an emphasis on Strategic Communication.

I imagine there will be more smooching and clapping in the Sabo house. Maybe we'll have a little ceremony. I could walk across my living room to get my Purdue diploma. Maybe we'll gather all 14 kids, two daughters-in-law, and one grandson for my graduation. 

At least this time when I graduate, I already have a job and won't have to move back in with my folks until I find work. 

And I'll be able to write a blog post on my computer and post it on this thing called the internet and people will read it on their smart phones. 

* ;-) 

A Chesapeake Bay deadrise workboat and storytelling: Stories are all around us

A Chesapeake Bay deadrise workboat. The iconic boat of Chesapeake Bay.

A glance out my window this morning and I knew what I had to do.

Fog had rolled in, casting an eerie glow and shrouding the neighbor's pine trees in a misty cloud. Everything looked still, which means one thing: The water will be like glass.

Perfect for Instagram photos.

I have a "go to" spot in these situations. It's a small public landing with a rickety pier of twisted boards and precarious steps next to a decrepit marina a mile or so from my house on Sarah's Creek. 

This morning the water was indeed like glass, as I predicted. The oaks and poplars along the shoreline are shorn of their leaves in the winter chill. Looking at the reflection of their bony branches and limbs in the creek is like looking in a mirror on days like these.

I started shooting photos with my iPhone. I gingerly walked along the pier, a firm grip on my phone, steadying my feet as I went.

Tethered to the pier as it slinks along the shoreline of the Northwest Branch of the creek rests an aged Chesapeake Bay deadrise boat. The white paint is peeling. Some of the deck boards are rotting. Her best days are well past.

It's a sad sight. I'm not a boater. I've never been crabbing or oystering out on the bay, but I'm enthralled by deadrise boats. 

They're eye-catching, a combination of muscular, but lithe and sleek. Distinctive with their low profiles -- often they have V-shaped bows -- and flat bottoms, they're called the workhorses of the bay.

They're built so watermen can ply the choppy waters of the bay when the winds and storms quickly flare up and also to maneuver in the shallow waters. Every deadrise workboat has a story, as you'll see.

As I was shooting photos an older gentleman in jeans, a hoodie and black ball cap walked up. We started chatting and he told me the "Donna Jo" was his boat. 

It was built in 1988, the same year that Virginia declared the Chesapeake Bay deadrise workboat as the official state boat. He gave me the dimensions and told me he was going to repair it. But the weather abruptly turned cold, as it typically does in Virginia.

"You can't work in the cold," he said.

Instead of repairing his beloved deadrise, his wife dispatched him take care of a "honey-do" list that included replacing the bathroom floors and commodes -- his use of "commodes" instead of "toilets" kind of cracked me up -- in their house. But it would only take him about two weeks to repair his boat, he said.

He has all the lumber. He'll just have to be careful tearing off the old wood. The hull is in good shape, he said. She'll be back on the water when it warms up, he said.

He said he would spend summers on his deadrise workboat out on the bay catching blue crabs. He'd make $75,000 to $100,000 crabbing. "Some people don't think that's much money," he said.

I'm not some people.

At some point our conversation about his deadrise got derailed. Politics came up. He cussed the government -- especially Democrats -- for a good while. Every time he mentioned Democrats he included an `F'-bomb. Every single time.

He loves Trump. Really, really loves Trump. He fears for our country. He wonders what's happened to our country.

But later this spring, when the weather warms back up, he'll be giving Donna Jo a face lift. 

Look for her out on Chesapeake Bay. She'll be gleaming white beneath the broiling Virginia sun with bushels of blue crabs on her deck.

When working in chaos, find the eye of the storm and operate in that

I was asked recently how I have handled working for difficult managers or in difficult situations. I thought about it briefly, remembering one manager in particular I worked for who thrived on chaos. He continually manufactured crisis after crisis, presumably to solve problems of his own creation. It was a brutal form of management that exacted a terrible toll, leading to a revolving door of employees. I never understood how his superiors stood for it and it was an epic fail on their part that they were so uninvolved and uncaring of the business they were supposed to be leading.

As I thought about this manager, I immediately thought of living here on the mid-Atlantic coast along the western shores of Chesapeake Bay. It's a place where hurricanes occasionally barrel through, prompting residents to hunker down in the driving winds and rain. A respite occurs when the eye of the storm passes through. I thought about what it's like in the eye of the hurricane, this strange sensation of calmness and tranquility and a brief respite from what's come and what's to arrive.

I answered the question posed to me by saying that in a time of chaos I find the eye of the storm and operate in that. Essentially I shut out what's going on around me and focus on what I can control in the moment. For me, as a writer, that entails zooming in on descriptive elements of the story I'm writing. What I hear is my storytelling voice, that inner voice that dictates elements like structure and pacing.  What I see are the details that make the story, the descriptive words and phrases and word pictures that breathe life into the copy. What I don't see and hear is the noise and drama around me. That's what finding the eye of the storm and operating in it looks and feels like to me.