With the recent news of actress Charlyne Yi's recollection of an uncomfortable encounter with a fellow actor, I've been thinking a lot about those moments we often run into in a day that stay with us – and perhaps don't resonate as deeply with the other person.

Perhaps David Cross doesn’t remember. I don’t know. But what I can say is that even the most well-intentioned people will unknowingly offend, and even if they don’t remember it, their words or actions may make a lasting impact.

I’m sure the person last week who mis-identified me as two different Asian-American women in one breath, and then waved his hand and said, “Oh, whatever” when I corrected him, didn’t think he was saying anything wrong.

The best advice I've ever received comes in two parts, and both are not pieces of advice I would've thought to label as "the best" a few years ago. But lately, when I've been asked to share advice or words of wisdom, these are the two I keep coming back to:

1. You have your entire life to work, but only right now to be there for the people who need you most.
I used to be the kind of person who put work before everything. But last year, I began to make the conscious effort to unplug on weekends; to keep my phone zipped away in my purse when catching up with friends. Even up until the spring of last year, I was constantly on my phone, thinking I needed to respond RIGHT AWAY to every email I got, even if it was something that could've waited until Monday. Even when I was in Amsterdam on vacation in April, I was answering inquiries about invoices and demands to read pitches. That only contributed to what happened at the end of the year when I left New York burnt out AF.

I'm no stranger to people getting close to me because they want something. This isn't a "I'm so successful in my career, everyone wants to be me" blog post, nor do I think that at all. But I get it -- if you have the ability to talk with someone who has a career path you're interested in pursuing, then you'd want to pick their brain, ask for opportunities, etc.

But the one thing that really pisses me off is when people try to take advantage of that.

"Just get a job."

I'm sure every twentysomething is familiar with those four words, and I'm sure most of them hear it from their parents. I know I have.

Let's be real: it is hard these days to be a college graduate. I would argue this fact is undeniable, but when you're up against an older, stubborn generation who insists it's not hard, arguing is exhausting. Jobs are rare to come by. Paid internships are hard to obtain. You could sit in front of your computer and send out three applications a day for a month, and sometimes you won't hear anything in response. And the more you try to tell you parents this, the more they don't understand. "I don't understand why you can't just get a job," they cry.

The most recent New York Times Magazine had an interesting feature about this subject. They followed a group from the class of 2011 at Drew University to see what they were doing. The sample size is fairly accurate of the people I know myself: there are those who are working their asses off and still not even getting a rejection letter; they're just being ignored. There are those who are just hanging out, and barely trying...just being "comfortable" with reliving college. There are those who refuse to apply for anything but a job in their field. There are those who've lucked out and found jobs or paid internships in their field.

I recognize that I am one of the very, very, very, very lucky ones. The path was not easy, and it definitely was not met with understanding from my parents--as well-intentioned and supportive as they may have been. I finished a quarter early before walking at commencement with the intention of job searching and finding something so I wouldn't have a hiatus in the summer. I wanted to go straight into an internship, a job, something. I had Mengfei as a model for the path I should consider taking. Between March and May, I sent out cover letters and resumes regularly, while still working at the School of the Arts and New U, and freelancing on the side. I gave myself some breaks, looked at it as my own summer vacation since I didn't intend to have a "summer" come June.

I got two potential interviews out of my efforts--one I didn't get offered, but had counted on, and one I got offered, but turned it down because it was unpaid. Both were in D.C. and both strung me along for nearly a month.

I ended up heading back to Sacramento for about a month, and forced myself to apply for at least one job a day. I sent out multiple cover letters to everywhere I could find--internships, jobs, temporary work. I looked in San Francisco, Sacramento, D.C., New York. I got two interviews in San Francisco for internships that had nothing to do with my major. I got rejected from one, and the other never even responded after my interview and follow-up emails.

When I finally got a phone interview with Education Week, I was starting to give up. I got the internship offer on Fourth of July while up in Portland, and nearly fainted. It was a step in the "right" direction--to the east coast, in a field I was interested in. But moving was a headache and stressful, particularly with the questions and the "Are you sure you really thought this through?" probing from my parents. "Why can't you just get a job here?" they asked. Take a look in my "sent" folder in my inbox! Tell the dozens of employers who never even responded to me to tell me something!

Me and Jenny at the NPR News Desk hub.

After a month at Education Week, I ended up at NPR and it was a dream come true. I worked with amazing interns and gained the experience I was dying for in the "real world." But as my time at NPR began ticking to an end, I went back to sending out cover letters and resumes twice a day, and praying somebody would throw me a line.

Like before, of the dozens and dozens, I only heard from three places: one rejected me, two wanted me.  I looked at my fellow NPR interns--they were all so much more talented than me, and so many of them are still left hanging. What does it take for someone to offer us a position...anywhere? I told everyone who asked me that it was 90% luck, and 10% who you know. I'm sure my NPR application wouldn't have been looked at if the woman who interviewed me (who actually wasn't my supervisor) hadn't known one of my references personally. With Education Week and MSNBC, I feel like I really lucked out and just happened to apply at the right time. But I worked damn hard, and sometimes it's as if the older generations don't see that in the youth.
It's not uncommon to jump from internship to internship these days, which is impossible to explain as well. And it's also not uncommon to not be hired after an internship. "Why can't they just hire you?" my parents have asked on multiple occasions. Well, it doesn't work that way anymore.

Also...enough with the "unpaid internships" already, would-be employers! You could at least offer something...or call it what it really is: a volunteer position. Oh, and "entry level" doesn't mean "3-5 years of experience"...c'mon. And the least you could do is send a generic rejection letter to people who've applied or that you've interviewed. And you could do it in a timely fashion--not a month later, which is how long some people I know have waited to hear back after an interview.

"There are plenty of jobs!" some will say, pointing to coffee shops and restaurants. I don't want to disparage those industries. Yes, "someone needs to work those jobs," but it's so discouraging to go through four years of competitive undergraduate courses, and work toward one field, one career, and then be told you're not good enough for it. Also, most service industries won't hire you if they look at your resume and see you've been training for something else. Why would they want to hire someone who will just leave as soon as they get the opportunity they're "really" looking for?



To answer that, I know plenty of people who have various versions of their resume: one for those coffee shop and restaurant jobs, one for secretary work, and one for the career they really want.

So...this is my really long way of answering that all-too-familiar request of "just getting a job."

“Why, when you look at news about our communities, is it all just so negative these days?”

I'm a massive introvert. When I tell most people this, they try to tell me I'm mistaken because I seem quite extroverted. (As mentioned before on this blog, I guess I'd consider myself more of an...ambivert?)

One of the hardest things for me to do, as an introvert, is network. Walking into a room full of people I don't know makes me anxious and tired. They don't really teach you in school the "right" way to network, and I don't think there really is a "right" way to do it, to be honest. Everyone has different styles and personalities, and what might work for one person won't exactly be right for you.


That's my way of saying: these tips are not definitive, surefire ways to become a networking expert. Over the past couple of years, as I've gone through networking events and talked to other people about networking (particularly, with my friends who are also introverts), I've learned a handful of things that might be helpful.

When Charles and I started doing Dawson's Speak: A Podcast About Dawson's Creek, the first challenge we encountered was how to make the podcast sound remotely good despite being 3,000 miles apart. Charles was living in New York at the time, and I had just moved back to Los Angeles.

Now that the podcast is over (we're still blown away that we finished it!), we've joked that this period of quarantine due to COVID-19 would've been the perfect year to continue doing a podcast that's always been done from our own separate homes. But one thing that our 3 years of podcasting has done is given us the tools to talk a little about how we even did it – and as many podcasters have started tooling around with their own home set-ups, I thought it could be helpful to share what worked (and didn't work) for us!

Some background: We started working on the podcast in March 2017, it blew up about a year later thanks to this Entertainment Weekly reunion, and we just published our last episode this past Monday. I published this blog post in January 2018 about why we started the podcast, if you want to learn more about how that happened.

As the primary producer/editor of the podcast, I went through a pretty long journey to figure out the best way to make this work. When we started, I was using my Zoom H1 recorder (with a wind sock!) as a USB microphone, and we were also publishing to Soundcloud. But because Soundcloud didn't have an option for us to schedule episodes, we realized it ultimately wasn't the best option, so we switched to Libsyn and used it as our host and website for awhile. (Ultimately, we launched a full website – more on that later.)

I'm also not proud to admit it but... I couldn't get Audacity to work at first on my laptop, so I was editing the audio in FinalCut Pro. Ouch!

So if you went back to our early episodes, you can hear the quality isn't that great. We also tried once early on to record in-person together and that didn't work out. (The only success we had with an episode in-person was doing it in a professional studio, but that's not something readily available to us.)

But eventually, we grew...we learned... and here was the final set-up:

Step 1: Cutting soundbites from episodes

Each one of our episodes includes moments from the Dawson's Creek episode we're talking about. To do that, I downloaded Loopback, an audio routing software from Rogue Amoeba onto my MacBook Pro.

Note: I use two laptops (one is my old MacBook Air from college, the other is my 13-inch MacBook Pro I got in New York for video editing) in the process of producing/editing the podcast.

In Loopback, I set up two Devices that are key for the podcast. The first is a QuickTime device:



Because we were graciously gifted all of the episodes of Dawson's Creek with the original music by an anonymous listener (I originally had purchased the entire series on iTunes), I open the episode in QuickTime, and then also open a "New Audio Recording." Make sure the input source for the New Audio Recording is set to QuickTime (the device I just created in Loopback), and now it'll record anything that's playing in QuickTime.

Note: If you are watching the episodes in your browser or in iTunes, you can create Loopback devices for those so that QuickTime will record from those sources instead.

After watching an episode, I go back through and select scenes/quotes/moments to clip the audio from. I then save all of those clips into a folder and drag it into an iTunes playlist I made for the podcast. (Make sure you select all of the clips, right-click, and click "Uncheck selection" so that the clips don't automatically play one after the other.)

I make a note of each clip I recorded in a shared Google Doc Charles and I use to outline the episode. It includes a summary of the episode, links to things we want to talk about, Charles' Paula Cole facts, etc...

Step 2: Setting up to record

Charles and I both use the Blue Snowball USB Microphone. I also use this pop filter, which attaches onto the neck of the Snowball stand, to soften those harsh-sounding plosives. (If I'm not mistaken, Charles just put a sock – or two – over his Snowball and it produces a similar effect.)

In his apartment, now in LA, Charles usually sits at his desk to record. In New York, his room gave more of an echo, so he occasionally sat under his desk with a blanket over it. In my first apartment in LA, I used to sit in my walk-in closet. In my second – and current – apartment, I sit on the floor of my living room, facing sofa cushions and using a coffee table as my work station.

From my Pro and with earbuds in, I call Charles on Skype. On my Air, I plug in the Snowball, open up Quicktime to record, and make sure the recording input is set to the Snowball. (He does the same on his laptop with his Snowball.)

On Loopback, I set up a second device called PCAST setup:



In Skype, I change my audio preferences so that the input is PCAST setup. This way, Charles can not only hear me talking through my headphone mic, but he can hear when I play the audio clips off of iTunes as well.

Step 3: Recording (This is the easy part!)

...And we start! We start recording at roughly the same time and sit in silence for about 15-30 seconds. This helps us record the environments of our rooms (audio folks, you'll know it as "room tone").

Remember: I'm doing all of the talking and playing clips for us to talk about on my Pro, but I'm recording on my Air. Charles is doing everything on his one laptop.

When we're done recording, Charles uploads his audio to Dropbox and sends it to me to download. I save my recording from my Air and AirDrop it to my Pro.

Step 4: Editing (This is the hardest part!)

I use Audacity to edit. (The thing that had tripped me up in the beginning was this add-on to export the final product as an MP3, which is a smaller file size than a WAV.)

The first thing I do is import my own raw audio and adjust the audio. That means Noise Reduction (that's where the "room tone" came in handy!) and adjusting volume. I do the same with Charles' raw audio, and then I add a Label Track where I can make markers. Next, I drag in our opening theme, and use that track to put all of the Dawson's Creek clips and music throughout the episode.

Here's an example of how our final episode looks, for instance – at least how it looked about 3 and a half hours into editing. Don't be scared off by the length of the episode, this was an anomaly!



I spend the most time on editing, I think. About an hour of raw audio takes about 90-120 minutes to edit because I'm cutting out pauses, trains of thought that didn't pan out, "ums," and other things that don't make for a pleasant listening experience.

When it's done, I export it as an MP3. When we started, our episodes were under an hour, but by the end of the podcast, the episodes were averaging between an hour and an hour and a half. We definitely tried not to exceed 2 hours, with the exception of the series finale and then, of course, our final episode.

Step 5: Uploading

After I upload it to Libsyn and schedule it to go live, I grab the embed code for the player and then head over to Blogger, which I use to power our website. (It's a custom template so it makes it look less "bloggy.")

Each episode gets its own post, which includes links to anything we talked about in the episode and any extra thoughts we didn't get to during recording. I schedule that to go live and grab what will be the live link to schedule social media posts. I also take this time to try and respond to emails/comments that I didn't have time to get to throughout the week.

And that's basically it! Was the podcast time-consuming? Yes: From cutting clips from the episode to uploading, I probably spent about 8-10 hours a week working on it. And yes, there were costs associated with at the end of the day (the mics, Loopback, fees associated with Libsyn and our domain name host), but we loved doing it and we're glad we did it too.

Let me know if you have any questions, especially if you're interested in moving your podcast to a remote set-up. Good luck!

An abbreviated summary:

• Equipment: 2 Blue Snowball USB Microphones, laptops
• Software: Loopback, Skype, QuickTime, iTunes, Audacity
• Websites: Libsyn, Blogger

I was 8 or 9 the first time I got called a chink on the playground by some school bully. It was words like that – and "oriental" and "China doll," among others – that made me scared to be proud of being Asian American. I thought the definitions about who I was had already been written by others, and I just needed to fit into what those rules said I could be.

We joke in the community that May is just another month, because we're all still Asian American and Pacific Islanders on June 1. But I want to take this month, while we've got your attention (yes, you, out there) to introduce you to some of the things we are that you might not see the other 334 days of the year.

I want to introduce you to Mei Lum and her incredible story about reclaiming the narrative of Chinatown through Wing On Wo & Co. I want to introduce you to Richard Tran, who was introduced to me through our open nomination call a couple of months ago, and whose work I can't stop thinking about. I want to introduce you to Rajuju Brown, whose music through GRUMBY has been the soundtrack to my workdays the last couple of months.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are artistic and curious; we're historic and inclusive, multicultural and resisting cliches. We are tireless. We are versatile. (We are #notyourmodelminority.)

Take the time to check out "NBC Asian America Presents: A to Z," and also watch and share the video our friends at Jubilee produced to go along with our project.



Every day, we have the opportunity and the challenge to push back on the assumptions of others when they see our faces and our skin before they see us, and I hope you'll think about the ways that you too are writing and rewriting what it means to be Asian American and Pacific Islander in America today.

The first time I made a direct hire at work was in 2015 – and there's a moment during the process that I still think about a lot. 

I had been working with a wonderful recruiter at NBC who had identified the resumes and cover letters of about a dozen candidates to interview. She did some screening calls and then set up in-person interviews for me with the candidates (and phone calls with those based outside of New York).

There was one day we set aside where most of the interviews were scheduled to happen. That morning, with my makeup and hair on point, I pulled on my royal blue Calvin Klein dress I wore for my most professional encounters and a pair of nude pumps. Because here's the thing: I was 26 years old, and I knew I looked – on average – 5 years younger than that at first glance. But here I was with an important job and title and looking to hire for an important second-in-command. I wanted to make a strong first impression. 

The interviews were going well, and the recruiter and I were winding down in the conference room we had booked. There was just one person left and the recruiter went to get them from the guest area of the lobby. 

The interviewee walked in. I stood up to shake his hand and then sat down while the recruiter sat down next to me. 

I began my job interviews the way I always try to begin them: a little bit of small talk ("Did you find your way here OK?" "How's your day been?") before diving right into the interview part. 

"So let's get started with your most recent job experience," I said. "Can you walk me through what you've been doing?"

The person looked at the recruiter and then back at me. "Wait, who are you again?" he asked.

I looked at him, confused. 

He looked at me, confused.

I re-introduced myself the way I had when we first shook hands: my name, my title, the fact that I was the hiring manager. 

"Ohhhh," he responded. "So you'd be my boss?"

I didn't immediately react. But the way they had said it – "you'd be my boss?" – told me everything I think I needed to know about him. 

The recruiter jumped in and took over from there, trying to shift the focus back on the job itself – reiterating what the position was, what the expectations were, etc. But I could see that his body language had changed from when he had initially walked in and sat down. Now, he was slumping and not really making eye contact. As the actual interview went on, he didn't really give full answers. It was like he suddenly wasn't interested. 

After he left (and that was the last I heard from him), I turned to the recruiter and asked her what she thought happened. Was it my age? My gender? But we had interviewed a lot of people that day who varied in age and gender. In fact, this person wasn't that much older than me. (He may have even been my age, or just a year or two older.)

I thought about that interview for a long time, even after I ultimately hired somebody for the role. Part of me wanted to sit down with him again, ask him off the record why he checked out after he took one look at me. I wanted to call him out. 

But I also knew that wasn't productive. "I think we've just gotta let this one go," the recruiter had said to me when I ranted to her about it. "There's always going to be one in the bunch that we miss the mark with."

I got where she was coming from, but I was still mad. "We didn't miss the mark," I said. "He did!" 

There were already so many people inside the building who didn't think I deserved the job and didn't think I was capable. People I looked up to as mentors who told me I didn't "look" the part and that I didn't have the right kind of name recognition to get respect. And suddenly there was a stranger in front of me, looking at me and reminding me that I was out of place. I hated it.

And I know I've let it continue to get to me, even to this day. It's a lot easier to shake my confidence than people might think. On paper, I've got this career that people tell me is great, but I've always had a hard time seeing it that way because of moments like that interview. For every step forward I've taken, it's felt like there's been a dozen hands that have pulled me further back. (In the case of this pandemic, it's more like an entire ocean has washed me away.) 

I guess I'm putting this out there, not to give some pep talk or life-changing piece of advice about how "everything ends up working out!" – but instead to say: if you've ever felt knocked around in your career because of things out of your control, you're not alone. I'm right there with you. Let's keep trying to figure out how to get back up together.

We all have a side of us reserved for the public. For me, and for those moments when I'm very much in public, the version of "Traci" that comes out is one who makes lots of hand gestures and uses bigger or buzzier words. I don't think it's deliberate--it's just something I'm used to doing when trying to present myself as an adult or as a professional.

And now I've gone and given away my secret! But have I ever pretended to 100% know what I'm talking about? I think I can speak confidently about certain things, but I'm always happy to be told if I'm not accurate in an assumption.

Which brings me to the past few days: I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with so many people that I was starting to get intimidated at one point! To sit on a panel with colleagues I've admired for years, and to meet fellow journalists who are all incredibly talented and intelligent was daunting, and all I could hope was that I came off as someone worth listening and/or talking to.

It was a lot of fun meeting new people and seeing old friends, but I could feel my feet and voice starting to get tired halfway through day two. It's always an honor to realize that the people lining up around you are actually all people who want to talk to you. And I'll be honest: it's very strange and surreal. That's not even a humblebrag. It's a genuine: what do I do with myself while you talk to me??

That having been said: I'm humbled and flattered and will only keep trying to do my best to talk with as many of you as I can while out in the public eye. Thank you to everyone for their kind words over the last few days, and I hope you don't unfollow me on Twitter once you realize how not-very-interesting I am!

A few years ago during an internship, we were strongly encouraged to turn down requests we fetch coffee or run other errands for our managers. The reason, they said, was that we were there as interns to learn how to work in a national newsroom. Managers were encouraged to not use intern as errand-runners.

I can't speak for other interns, but I was never asked to do things like make or buy coffee. One of my managers said to me on the first day, "You're here to learn, so if there's down time, then don't be shy to ask us for something to do." The other manager said he remembered having to get coffee daily for the executives when he was an intern and he vowed not to do that to interns in the future if he was ever lucky enough to be in a position to have interns.
Once I went with another intern to help her get coffee for her department that did require her to do it as part of her internship, and it was time consuming (going to Starbucks at lunch hour in DC to pick up 15 coffee orders = at least 45 minutes) and took away time that could've been spent being useful in another work-related capacity. It was frustrating that that was what was expected of her. There were times they'd send her to get coffee during editorial meetings, and she would miss out on those meetings, which were important to production.

I've never been in favor of sending interns to get coffee, and an informal poll of a few colleagues and friends tells me that I'm not totally crazy for taking this stand. And I'm sure I'll ruffle the feathers of people who think that being sent on coffee runs is part of "paying your dues," but I don't think we should make people do the things we hated doing just because we were treated that way too. I reject the idea that "everyone's had to do it in their internship" is a valid reason to send an underpaid (or, in some cases, unpaid) student or new graduate for a Starbucks run. There are free coffee machines in the kitchen for a reason--quality, be damned. You can get your chai latte later yourself.

This is incredibly overdue, but I've been having conversations with friends and new connections about the process of job hunting, particularly in a virtual world, and it reminded me that I've been meaning to share my own experiences from last year. I don't know how helpful this will be, and my experiences aren't going to be the same as yours or anyone else's you might talk to, but hopefully this can help someone out there going through the stress of finding that next role.

When the effects of the pandemic began to set in in the U.S., I knew the job hunt I was anticipating would only become harder. My fellowship was ending in May, but I had begun applying for jobs and speaking with potential hiring managers in March – but that all came to a stop by the end of March as hiring freezes took over. All through the last 2 months of my fellowship, I continued to apply for jobs, but it was rare to hear back from anyone. I was convinced throughout the second half of 2020 that I was going to be out of luck until 2021, so I focused on freelancing instead, hoping it could keep me afloat until companies started hiring again.

Part of it is that I don't think I had a clear idea what it was what I wanted to do next. I thought I did thanks to fantastic guidance during my fellowship, but the pandemic really threw that off. I got to a point in applying for jobs last summer where I was willing to throw my hat in for anything. Looking back, I do think that was a mistake though because I wasn't really thinking about the skills on my resume as key building blocks to my career journey. I was throwing those skills into a box and shipping it to companies with a note that just said, "Hey, hire me!" But there's more to the application process than just that.

I don't need to bore you with my resume or past work (you can find all of that yourself here and here), but I don't think it's arrogant of me to say that I've worked hard and built a substantial career in the last decade. I've done a lot and I feel like I've accomplished quite a bit, but that doesn't make me immune to the struggles of job hunting. Here are some numbers, just to add context...

• Jobs I applied for between March and October: 118
• Interviews I got: 24 (that's a 20% interview rate)
• Rejections received: 51 (this includes auto-generated emails where I didn't get an interview, and there were a number of interviews I completed where I've still never heard back)
• Places that ghosted me after 1 or more interviews: 7
• Hiring processes I withdrew from for various reasons: 7

I kept track of all of this in a very detailed spreadsheet (the template for that is available on my website for free). 

Before I continue, I just want to say: I am thrilled to have landed at Sony. Throughout my entire job hunting process, Sony was one of the only companies where I felt like they had actually read my resume and cover letter before talking to me, and not once during any interviews was it unclear why they were talking to me and what their vision was for the role I ended up accepting. The entire process took about 6 weeks in total, and they were transparent every step of the way about how long it would be before I would hear from them for the next step. Sony was also one of the very few places where I got an interview where I had just applied through the website and had no other connections. 

When I say all this to people, they're surprised because that feels like a normal interview process, right? Well if you've been applying for jobs lately, you know that's not always the case. So... let's talk about what else happened, featuring 5 different interview processes...

Story #1: At the start of June, I applied for a digital role at a very well-known magazine. It was a role that I knew I fit the requirements for, as it was listed on the careers site, and 2 days after applying, the hiring manager reached out to schedule an interview. We chatted, they mentioned that they felt my experience was more senior to what the role was, but that having the magazine on my resume could also be a bonus if I was looking to grow in that area of journalism. I said I was, and I wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to be considered for a role at a company I had long admired. After our interview, they told me they would send an edit test that was expected to be returned within 48 hours. The test would take about 3 hours to complete, they estimated. I set aside a weekend to do it and the test, which had 3 parts to it, took me 4 hours. I sent the test back, they confirmed receipt and said I'd hear from them soon. After 2 weeks, I followed up with no response. The following week, I followed up again and was told they were still reviewing. I continued to follow up in 2-3 week increments, but never heard a response again. As of today, 1 year later, I still technically haven't received a "no" from them. 

Story #2: I reached a point at the end of May where I was casting an enormous net, even outside of journalism. I ended up applying for a project manager role at a company that was well-known in its industry, and the job description indicated they were searching for someone with an editorial background. Although I had no professional experience in that industry specifically, I had a deep personal interest in it and was familiar with the space. I applied and heard back a few days later to set up an interview. I did my usual research and prepared some talking points, but when I got on the phone with the person representing the company, it became very clear to me that they had misrepresented the role in their listing (they described what sounded like an executive assistant role), and then I was asked the question: "What trends have you been following in [this industry]?" I listed a few based on newsletters I was subscribed to and YouTube videos I'd been watching, and was interrupted to tell me what answer they were looking for – an answer that was, frankly, problematic and slightly racist. Before I could push back, the person on the phone said to me: "You sound very poised and experienced, but you don't have a lot of vision. So why don't you do some research, and then email me and we can reschedule and try again?" After we hung up, I thought about it for a day and then chose to withdraw my application entirely.

Story #3: Mid-June, I received a LinkedIn message from someone who was hiring for an editorial leadership role at a start-up news organization and asked if I would be interested in applying. I asked some questions about the role and the company, and decided to apply. I did an initial interview with the hiring manager, and then was asked to send a "memo" outlining my interest in the role and my vision for the organization. After sending it, I was scheduled for a 2nd interview with the hiring manager a few days later. I had a 3rd interview a couple days after that with two additional members of the hiring team, followed by a 4th interview round that consisted of two separate group interviews. (I didn't note this in my spreadsheet, but I think somewhere along that process, I was also asked to send story pitches.) Two weeks after the 4th interview round, I saw on LinkedIn that the person who had initially reached out to me had updated their LinkedIn title to reflect a promotion to the role I had been interviewing for. I sent an email inquiring about any updates, but didn't hear back. A week later (this is now August), I sent another email and was told that they were making an offer to another candidate but that it wasn't finalized, which is why they hadn't responded to me yet, but that they wanted me to apply for future editorial roles that would be coming up. I considered the job closed, and put it out of my mind, but then mid-August received an email from the hiring manager saying they were rethinking the job description and hadn't made a decision would "get back to me soon." I didn't hear from them again.

Story #4: In August, I saw two job listings at an extremely well-known (and well-funded) national media company for editorial leadership roles that I was interested in, and felt confident I fit the requirements listed in the descriptions. I applied for both, and a week later found the listings in the AAJA Careers Center portal with an email address for the recruiter who submitted the listings. I reached out to them via email, and they responded saying they would pass my resume and cover letter to the hiring managers. At the same time, I also reached out to someone who tweeted about the job openings from the company and scheduled an informational. By the start of September, I hadn't heard anything back, so I sent an email follow-up with the recruiter and didn't hear back. Mid-September, the recruiter emailed to set up an interview... but when we got on the phone, it felt like they hadn't looked at any of my materials. I had questions about both roles, but every question was met with the response: "I'm not sure. I can look into it and let you know." At the end of the "interview," they said they would pass my information along. I followed up twice by the end of September, but never heard back. In mid-October, suddenly, I received an email with an edit test for one of the roles. I emailed the recruiter to ask them for more information and ask if I could speak to the hiring manager for the role because that would help give me a better idea of what they were looking for and what the role was (especially since the recruiter hadn't actually given me information about either role when we spoke). They responded and said this was how the process was, so I did the edit test and then got an auto-generated rejection email mid-November after I had already accepted and started my current job.

Story #5: At the start of 2020, before quarantine measures began, a recruiter from a national news organization had reached out to me about an executive role. At the time, I said, "Thanks, but no thanks," because the role would've required a move and I wasn't looking to move cities at the time. By July though, I saw the job was still open and decided to give it a shot. I applied and emailed the recruiter, letting them know that my situation had changed (I was open to moving for the right role at that point), and a few days later I was scheduled for an interview. On the day of the interview, I got myself ready and clicked the video meeting link that had been emailed to me a minute before the interview was scheduled to begin, but when the video meeting popped up, the recruiter was in the middle of talking to another candidate. I quickly left the meeting and sent an email apologizing for joining early and asking them to let me know when they were available for me to join again. I waited a few minutes and they didn't respond. I joined again about 10 minutes after our interview was supposed to begin, but the video meeting was empty. I waited and sent another email letting them know I was on and ready to chat. It wasn't until about 15 minutes later that they responded to let me know they were on another call and asked to push the interview an hour and a half. I agreed, but when I was about to get on at the new agreed time, they emailed again to push another half hour. We finally spoke, but the whole thing felt rushed. In the middle of my second answer to their question, they interrupted to ask me to give them a moment, and either they forgot to mute or intended to do this, but they answered a call on their cell phone that was clearly a personal call. After they hung up, they were texting almost the entire rest of the interview. I did follow up twice throughout August with no response, and then eventually received a rejection email at the end of September.

I will say that I did have a number of positive experiences and encounters, so it's not all doom and gloom out there. But I shared those 5 stories as examples of some of the types of interviews and recruiters you might encounter during the job hunting process because, unfortunately, not every experience is going to be positive. There are going to be moments where you feel frustrated and broken and like you don't even belong in the industry you spent so much time and effort working for or working toward. You might spend hours preparing for interviews and talking to people and completing edit and pitch tests (I did so many of those), and then it might all just go...nowhere. But don't let that discourage you. It just wasn't meant to happen at that time, and I firmly believe that.

So what can you do then when it all feels like you need luck to even make it to the next round? There are things you can control – namely, how you're representing yourself online. And I do think that the pandemic has forced people to be more active and creative online when it comes to job hunting.

1. Update your LinkedIn. Although you've got your resume saved on a PDF or DOC, sometimes that won't be enough to get your info seen. But your LinkedIn profile is searchable if someone were to Google your name. Having an updated LinkedIn that reflects all of your skills and background that maybe didn't make it to your resume can also be helpful too because you never know what a hiring manager might actually be looking for. 
2. Use your networks. I used to be stubborn about this because I had this need to prove to myself that I could "make it" without connections. But throughout the last year, I was very fortunate to have former colleagues and peers put in good words for me with various companies which led to interviews. LinkedIn is a great resource when it comes to reaching out to potential recruiters or hiring managers. Don't feel shy about taking up someone's offer to DM them about open jobs. At the end of the day, the worst thing that can happen is someone just doesn't respond. But that doesn't mean you're out of the game. I know "networking" sometimes gets a bad reputation, but there's a way to do it where you're not taking advantage of someone's time or kindness. (That might be a future post though.)
3. Don't just say your skills; show them. Instead of just telling people what I could do, I did my best to put that into practice. I kept my website up-to-date, with links to my best work and a "reverse job listing" where people could learn everything about me (and see possible references) filled with stories about projects I've done. I created a video resume where I could talk directly to the camera and explain who I am and what I could bring to a role (in case a recruiter or hiring manager felt like they didn't have time to talk to me). I had multiple versions of my resume ready to go in different formats – which brings me to my last point...
4. Have multiple versions of your resume ready to go. A design-heavy resume might look great, but is it ATS-friendly? Unfortunately, many companies are using applicant tracking systems that filter out resumes at a high volume. I had moments last year where I reached out to a recruiter or hiring manager (or they reached out to me) and it turned out my resume had been filtered by an ATS. If I hadn't spoken to a recruiter directly outside of those systems, my information would never have been seen. (That's why reaching out to recruiters and hiring managers is always worth it!) I made sure to always have an ATS-friendly resume and a very-designed one that I could send directly to recruiters and hiring managers, when necessary. 

Last year, I received an email from a journalism student who had an assignment in one of her classes to interview a working journalist. The email I received explained the assignment briefly, and then a list of 8 questions she had copied and pasted from the professor (I assumed they were copied and pasted because she didn't bother to remove the professor' notes on each question).

No request asking if I was available, no offer to speak by phone – oh, and her assignment was due Tuesday morning. I got this email on a Sunday night.


It's not that I don't like helping young journalists out. What I dislike is being asked to essentially complete an assignment for them. In this case, I wasn't even asked. It felt like a command or an obligation, like an expectation that I would fulfill.

In my career, I've done informational interviews with people, and I helped a student once with one of these interview assignments (it was a student who I knew because she interned at my company, she asked me well in advance for my help, and we spoke by phone). But the more and more I get these requests from students for their classes, the less inclined I've been to do them.

Again, not because I don't want to help, but for other reasons, which include a lack of time and also something that needs to be addressed with journalism instructors everywhere:

From All-American Girl to Fresh Off the Boat.

In the 20 years between Margaret Cho's All-American Girl and the announcement that ABC has picked up Fresh Off the Boat, there's been an influx of content created by Asian Americans on new media platforms. When ABC cancelled All-American Girl, there was the implication that putting an Asian-American family on network television just wasn't going to work. "It was an idea that was good, but it didn't execute well," 8Asians blogger and co-editor Joz Wang told me over the phone last week. "Nobody wanted to touch the subject again. Why else would it have taken 20 years [for Fresh Off the Boat to happen]?"

Joz has a point: the sharp criticisms from inside and outside of the Asian-American community contributed to the downfall of All-American Girl, and the show never got a chance to fix what went wrong.

And yet, the hunger to see more Asian Americans on the small screen never went away--a desire amplified by the rise of YouTubers from comedian Ryan Higa to beauty vlogger Michelle Phan. According to a 2011 New York Times article, three of the top 20 most-subscribed-to YouTube channels belonged to Asian Americans. One look at the documentary Uploaded: The Asian American Movement, and you'll see exactly what's going on: without a space at the "mainstream media" table, a new generation of artists went to another table that was created with the goal in mind of reaching audiences directly--audiences that might not go to the movies often or subscribe to cable television. Content creators on YouTube get to stay in control of the product they put online, and that's undoubtedly appealing for the Asian-American community.

In 2012, Wong Fu Productions premiered a four-episode TV series on YouTube called Home is Where the Hans Are in which a Caucasian guy comes home after an extended period abroad to meet his new stepfamily, who turns out to be Chinese.

I don't have a mentor – which is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately as I try step back and take these "big picture" looks at my life, my career path, and my future. As someone who's desperately in need of being creative at all times, I've found myself a bit out to sea when it comes to figuring out what to do or where to go next. I've said this before to a couple of people, who all argue that I don't really "need" a mentor. But...I don't think I'm done learning yet (who is?). In fact, I've sort of found myself in this rut where I'm not learning as much anymore.

As I've been thinking about all of this, I started to wonder if I was alone in being mentor-less and wondering why (Am I too stubborn to take advice? Too arrogant to think I can get by without a mentor? Should I have worked harder to identify a mentor and keep in touch with people who could've served as mentors? The answer to that last question is most likely, yes.), I decided to take my inquiry to Facebook (like all good, serious inquiries, of course) and ask my friends about whether or not they have mentors – or if they're like me and searching for one.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about catching myself apologizing for things I shouldn't really apologize for. In a follow-up to that, I've realized that one thing I tend to do often is apologize to people for not responding to emails right away. It's a bad habit I developed during college in my need to prove I could be a reliable assistant and, eventually, freelancer (when I began to do more graphic design freelancing).

And then it just kind of continued onto my professional life, because in the era of breaking news, you have to be fast – and not just fast, but with precision and professionalism.


The problem with that is then you develop a reputation for being reliable – even on your days off. Because I can literally take my job anywhere with me, I've felt this weird sense of obligation to be responsive 24/7. There have been many moments, too, where people would get upset if I didn't respond on a Saturday night or at 10PM on a Tuesday.

Lately, in an effort to disconnect more frequently, I've tried not to respond to emails past a certain hour of the day or on weekends – not because I don't care about my job, but because I also care about my mental health too (which, let's face it, has not been in a great state these days). The exceptions have been emergencies, of course, but the people who need to reach me in a life or death situation have my phone number, and they would call if the situation was urgent (I think).

Moderating a panel is stressful. That's just a fact. When you're the one responsible for steering the ship, it requires preparation, even if the topic is one you're very familiar with. So far this year, I've moderated about a half dozen panels and most of them with anywhere from 2 to 4 panelists.

That's a lot of people to talk to in 45 minutes about a wide range of topics.

So what makes for a successful panel? I've learned the hard way (by messing up) and the easy way (by being on panels with great moderators), and I've got at least one more panel to moderate before the year's end, so here are some tips and tricks that might help you through moderating your next panel:
1. Research your panelists.
Often times, panel organizers will provide you with bios, but even if that's the case, do your own research too. Look at their social media accounts, dig back through their YouTube videos, read other interviews they may or may not have done. It's OK if you aren't 100% familiar with someone on your panel, but by the time you get to the day of the panel, you should be able to talk about this person as if they're an actual friend.

And then practice introducing the panelists. I always recite bios of people in my head while I'm getting ready for my day – making coffee, doing my makeup, etc. – so that if I'm the one introducing them before the panel kicks off, I'm not just relying on them to tell the audience who they are. A good moderator should be able to make that introduction.

I've been approaching ABC's Fresh Off the Boat with cautious optimism since last summer when the show was announced. I love Eddie Huang's book, his voice--everything that makes the story what it is. It isn't a story I personally relate to, but there are moments scattered throughout his memoir that resonate with me and reflect personal experiences too. When I heard ABC was turning it into a sitcom, I was excited, but nervous. I didn't want to see the flavor of Eddie's voice disappear.

But along the course of reporting and watching its production and development, I began to get excited. When the cast was unveiled, I got even more excited. I'd been waiting for a show like this my whole life. Last February, I wrote about never seeing a family that looked like mine on TV when I was growing up. Fresh Off the Boat was the representation I'd been craving for years.

Disclaimer: I'm not a television critic.  There was no way I would even attempt to be one. I'm an observer of the community, and I want to continue to be one for as long as my career will allow me.


On Wednesday night, I covered a watch party in New York City for the two-episode premiere of the show that was attended by the cast and crew of the show, along with more than 1,000 fans. I was watching the show, but I was also watching the faces of the people around me. Their faces reflected the excitement and emotion I felt inside. I took a breath as the second episode was ending, put down my reporter's notebook, and focused on the projectors.