The Autopian Is Hiring. Here’s What We Ask In Our Job Application

The Autopian has been around for nearly 1.5 years, and currently receives roughly 3 Million monthly pageviews. Our team cannot thank you, dear readers, enough for supporting us from the beginning, when you led us to a miraculous 1 million pageviews in our very first month. But we’ve still got so much potential we still need to uncork, and to do so, our handful of sleepless, calloused staffers are going to need help. So we’re hiring. And, as you might imagine, the application is anything but normal. Here, have a look.

Things are getting a little tough around here as we’ve grown to a size that requires a lot of administrative work/leadership, but we really don’t have enough brains to tackle it all. On top of that, as I see my own articles perform well, I’m frustrated by the fact that I cannot produce more. I’ve come up with about 1,000 story ideas, but haven’t had enough time to execute them since I’m steering a ship with one hand and trying to blog with the other. (Do you want to know why white paint tends to fade/flake more than other paints? I badly want to talk with PPG engineers about this. Do you want to know why European trailer hitches look like penises? So do I! Do you want to know what the crash test implications are of having an anvil in a frunk? Do you want full reviews of Chinese EVs sold in Germany? Do you want more wrenching content? I sure as hell do). Anyway, it’s become clear that we need to expand; Autopian cofounders Jason and Beau agree.

What we’re really looking for is a deputy editor (or managing editor, depending upon experience) who will be my right-hand person to help execute our vision. This person, who will ideally have journalism and automotive industry experience, will be running day-to-day operations; plus, we’re always keeping an eye out for the next great full-time writer (who ideally has writing or auto industry experience, ideally both — but honestly a great writer who loves cars will go a long way), and we’re definitely in need of a weekend editor. You may have noticed that Saturdays and Sundays are a little slow around here. The Autopian doesn’t like slow unless we’re talking about microcars or vintage Jeeps.

Anyway, here are some of the questions we’re asking on our application. Note: We don’t expect any single applicant to have all the experience mentioned here — the application is meant to capture as many skillsets as possible from a broad variety of applicants.

Basic Questions About Experience And Motive

We ask some basic things about motivation to work here, writing experience, and leadership chops — kinda boring but necessary stuff:

• Why are you applying to work at The Autopian?
• Do you have experience as a professional writer? If so, please list how long you’ve worked at each employer/publication.
• Do you have experience working for a blog that requires multiple article submissions per day?
• What do you consider your best five pieces of written work? (Please provide links). Note: If you don’t have published work, please provide some other form of writing sample(s) in an attachment.
• Do you have video experience? If so, what do you consider your best three pieces of video-work? (Please provide links; social media is OK).
• How well versed are you with spreadsheets/task organization? (scale of 1 to 5)
• What experiences do you have managing a team or organizing a project?

What Do You Know?

Then we ask about industry experience and expertise, as we care about what you know above all. Having journalists who understand what they’re talking about and bring unique skills to the table has historically been the key to successful website growth:

• Do you have experience working in the automotive industry? (For a major OEM, supplier, or related).
• How well do you understand how cars work/the engineering behind cars? (scale of 1 to 5)
• What non-journalism-related work experience can you leverage to make your articles stand out? (ex: a background in comedy, art, engineering, business, etc.). And how, specifically, would you use those experiences to create compelling content?
• How would you rate your ability to fix cars?
• What do you consider your area of expertise as it relates to cars, and why are you qualified to write about it?
• Let’s say you wanted to write a story about why some traffic signals are horizontal and why some are vertical. Walk us through the steps you’d take to go about producing this article, and how you’d structure your piece. (Don’t overthink this; we’d just like to understand your thought process)

We are interested in knowing about your fleet, though we understand that circumstances often dictate which cars you cruise in, and thus this isn’t a perfect depiction of your knowledge or passion for cars:

• Which cars do you currently drive? And formerly?

Jason’s Weird Question

And then finally there’s this gem from Jason:

• You’ve gotten mixed up with some very strange, sinister people. It seems like a combination of the mob and some sort of dark wizards. It’s not clear, and they dress pretty ambiguously.
  You need to extract yourself from the group, but the only way is to perform one more job. An important member of the group had their soul placed in an AMC Gremlin as the result of an accident. The group needs you to convince the now-deceased person’s lover to keep the Gremlin as their car, but you may not reveal the truth that the vehicle bears the soul of the lover’s former partner. So, you have to convince a person in 2023 to drive a Gremlin.

  As a reward, not only will you be freed from your obligations, you’ll be given the opportunity to have YOUR soul placed into a car upon your death. What car do you choose?

Obviously, this application is just step one in the process. We’ll be interviewing talented writers and editors and seeing which ones best fit our mission here at The Autopian. That mission is, of course:

The Autopian exists to serve the car enthusiast community by creating content that informs and entertains, while celebrating the unifying quality of automobiles.

If you know talented folks interested in perhaps joining our crew, you’re welcome to forward them the application, which you’ll find linked at the bottom of each of the full listings linked below:

The Autopian_ Editor (Full-Time) (FINAL)

• The Autopian’s priority: 1

The Autopian_ Weekend Editor (FINAL)

• The Autopian’s priority: 2