Eliza Anyangwe
It’s been a challenging six weeks since my last post. We’re into the part of any transformation timeline where the old ways of working are being phased out but the new are yet to bed in. It’s also a time of bleak news: there is pain in all corners of this home of ours, but it is impossible to not feel grief and rage at the images of children starving in Gaza.
I started my formal work life at the NGO Action Against Hunger. There I learned that, whatever the circumstances, all starvation is a reflection of political choices.
Still, in the midst of all this, before we take our newsroom-wide, week-long summer break from August 4, and following the release of our 2024 Impact Report, it’s important to reflect even as we work on future proofing The Fuller Project. And to share our progress with you, our newsletter community.
Six new roles and 500 applications to work through
Since the end of June, we’ve opened up six new roles: a labor, tech and health correspondent as well as a conflict editor, a multimedia editor and a head of community and audience engagement. These jobs are a reflection of our editorial strategy that aims to build Fuller’s visibility, audiences and engagement.
As a small newsroom that prioritizes global coverage (because challenges, ideas and networks cross borders – why shouldn’t our journalism?) we cannot adequately cover the world by hiring people to work place-specific beats. Rather, we plan to cut through the media noise with subject matter expertise: focusing on a few key areas that are zeitgeist, where public understanding or accountability could benefit from a gender lens, and which are, of course, resonant around the world.
Those subject areas are labor, technology, health and (bringing us full-circle back to where The Fuller Project started ten years ago) conflict and humanitarian crises. Woven across all of these is an interest in how rights for women and gender minorities are won, protected or lost: who are the organizations and movements that shape the lives of women and gender-diverse people, whether by fighting for them or fighting against them?
We’ve staggered the recruitment drive to help my small-but-mighty team manage the workload that comes with trying to find talent. Still, we’ve been blown away – and snowed under – by the interest in our first four vacancies which have attracted some 500 applicants. While this is as much about the state of the journalism industry at the moment, it is also true that The Fuller Project’s mission to write women back into the stories that are defining our time is resonating right across the world.
It is heartening to know that there are hundreds of people who want to tell stories with us and who want to ensure those stories find their audiences in this fragmented media ecosystem.
The six new recruits will join three producers already working hard to reimagine our newsletter, produce highly engaging vertical video content and grow our communities across key social platforms.
What I learned from speaking to 45 people looking for work
Because there is plenty of evidence to show that women face “psychological hurdles” when applying for jobs, I opened up my calendar for three weeks to offer 20 minutes of my time to anyone who wished to speak about any of the vacancies.
I have since spoken to 45 people on four continents and come to a few realizations. Most, if not all, will probably not be new to you, but they are still worth naming:
Global inequities deeply shape people’s expectations: Applicants in the Global North, for example, regularly asked me what my travel budget was and how much would they be able to report from around the world if they worked for Fuller. This question didn’t come up once from applicants in the Global South. Perhaps they had simply accepted they didn’t have the passport privilege necessary to play Roving Reporter. Instead, they asked, often sheepishly, whether I was truly open to hiring someone from wherever they were from.
Recruits are as suspicious of AI as hiring managers: I have seen many a job description warning applicants against using AI tools to write their applications. But on at least three occasions I was asked whether I planned on using AI during the hiring process. Then they would wait, brow furrowed, sizing me up on screen, as I tried to explain that while we were not using any AI tools, I very much wished that we were! I pressed on, even as their eyes widened, to explain that, from my vantage point, some efficiencies would be welcome, but I recognized – and had written about – AI bias.
The more we talked, the more I learned that for many, the pressures of the job market were already overwhelming: the competition, the hoops to jump through, the applications met with silence … The thought that some algorithm that knew neither you nor your story, trained on god-knows-what data, would have a hand in determining your future visibly upset some people. They asked the question so they could make the human decision to opt out before being cut out by a machine.
Zero f**ks (sometimes) given: Someone turned up for their call with me, several minutes after I emailed them to ask if they were still joining, only to tell me they couldn’t remember why they had signed up for this session. “Why don’t we start by you telling me what this Fuller Project is,” they suggested.
Another few opened with “So, what are you looking for?” a question so directionless I often found myself reaching for something to say before settling on: “Which specific role are you interested in?” And then there were the no-shows who also provided no explanation. So dumbfounded was I by this behavior that I took to LinkedIn (as one does) to ask if ghosting in a professional context was a thing. Yes, I was told. “It’s a thing!” the worldly-wise people in my network informed me, before one offered this anecdote as consolation:
“Years ago, I had a candidate show up to one of those video calls in a bathrobe. I guess she showed up at least…”
