How to Get a Job in Publishing Part 6

* Sales managers Work with their reps to make sure the focus is right and to train them. Sales managers often travel a lot to spend days out calling with their reps. They also provide lots of input in the office to publishing direction and company strategy. Sales managers have almost always done a few years of repping themselves.

* Sales director The boss at the top who ties it all together might have a number of regional sales managers working for them. Sometimes this role is combined with marketing director.

* Rights sales This is a specialised field selling foreign publication and translation rights. (The first is where someone takes your product and re-publishes it in their local market, possibly tweaking it a bit but still in English; the second is where you allow them to translate your product and publish in certain foreign language areas.) This is becoming a hugely important area for publishers, as securing print deals for several languages/different editions at the same time (rather than just for one market) can make the difference between printing being viable and non-viable.

Great rights sales people combine sales skills with excellent cultural awareness and an eye for detail; you'll be working with publishing people all over the world, many with English as their second language, sometimes through translators. This role is mainly office-based with stints of international travel to your key contacts and to the major book fairs (Frankfurt in October, London in March, Bologna for children's books in April, Book Expo America in June). Increasingly though, international communications make time out of the office at book fairs the chance to confirm deals made in principle through electronic media.

In small companies this is handled by the sales or publishing manager; it's only large companies that have a special person doing just this job.

Marketing Marketing is in many ways the public end of the company your work and words are what come to mind when people think about your organisation.

There are two types of marketing in publishing companies (and indeed in most of the corporate world): * Where marketing drives communications Marketing primarily looks after communications, fulfilling the strategy and drive that come out of editorial and sales departments. In this type of company, the marketing department creates direct mail, publicity, advertising, websites, sales tools and other MarComms (Marketing Communications) functions.

* Where marketing drives strategy and product decisions, as well as communications In this type of company the marketing department works closely with authors, trains the sales team and has lots of input into publishing decisions, as well as fulfilling the MarComms functions.

Either way, entry-level marketing roles tend to be about MarComms making brochures, making media releases and making tea, usually in reverse order but it's worth bearing in mind that a company where marketing is respected as a strategic function is likely to be a more dynamic and creative place to work if you're looking for a long-term career in this field.

Marketing suits people who are: 1. Creative and ideas-driven What's a great new way to get everyone's attention about this new book? What's a different, innovative, effective way to reach this audience? What copy style and design look will suit this brochure? How do I get people to wander into a bookshop, wander past the 50, 000 other books on shelf, pick up THIS book and then walk it to the till?

2. Happy in a fast-paced, demanding role Roll out a publicity campaign by tea-time please. As a marketing executive, you might be simultaneously creating a number of brochures for a direct mail shot, thinking about who to mail them to, letting the customer service and warehouse/inventory departments know that the campaign is about to go, talking to the designer about the latest corrections, liaising with the editor to make sure the copy is accurate, liaising with your manager to make sure the copy is stylish, innovative and hits your market, planning supporting point-of-sale material for bookshops, rea.s.suring an author that you're doing a great job with their book, planning a price rise for your list, reviewing compet.i.tor materials and campaigns, updating your website, rewriting a bunch of book blurbs for your next catalogue, costing a new campaign idea, taking calls from reps about product information, preparing sales tools for your upcoming rep conference, commenting on proposed front cover designs, reviewing a pile of book proposals to give feedback to the editor, planning a bookshop visit with your rep in Stockholm, proofing your colleague's new catalogue, answering a phone call asking for a suggested book list for a bookshop campaign that they need this afternoon, trying to get in a bit of lunch, and failing to do so (again). So if you fancy a quiet life, best look elsewhere ...

3. Confident Your work is often public, in the form of brochures, ads and campaigns that everyone can see, admire and critique, and boy can it get annoying when you create a huge campaign and the managing director notices the one thing you got wrong.

4. Interested in presentation, style and the written word Good promotion is all about hitting the right notes in the words you use and the image you create. If you've ever found yourself browsing dictionaries or books on language, if you have a favourite font, if you enjoy words and language for what they evoke, this could be the right job for you.

Good marketers need an eye for what looks good to other people's eyes; not as much as actually doing the design, but the capability to explain to designers how you want something to look and to work with them on a design that matches your message. Don't panic if this bit sounds foreign a lot of this is a learned skill and you pick up ideas on how good design works as you go along.

5. Good at detail This is often overlooked. But think about it: you've got to copy edit a 72-page catalogue while managing a $400,000 budget with expenditure allocations across 12 key areas and 15 types of promotions.

Marketing jobs include: * Marketing a.s.sistant/coordinator An entry-level graduate role, often involving support duties such as copying information, updating websites, events (conference and book fair) coordination, and perhaps some basic design. Many a.s.sistants work in this entry-level role for one or two years and then look to move up the chain. In a smaller company marketing a.s.sistant roles might be combined into sales and marketing a.s.sistant; in a larger company there will be a number of marketing a.s.sistants, each one working in a subject area (Literary Fiction, Secondary Schools and so on).

* Marketing executive/product manager Often graduate plus two or more years' work experience. These roles might include creating promotional plans for books, author or list support, copywriting, placing advertising, briefing sales reps, and creating campaigns in direct mail, e-mail, the Web or bookshops. Some marketing executives might also be specialists in job functions such as direct mail, e-marketing and the Web etc.

* Publicist/publicity manager A role found in large, trade-focused companies (in fact sometimes this area is so important it operates as a separate department alongside the marketing department). Publicists specialise in coordinating book and author press and public relations campaigns including media interviews, planning campaigns and writing press releases. Smaller or less trade-oriented companies often give this function to a marketing executive and hire freelance publicity when needed.

* Research manager Magazine publishing houses need to be able to muster a lot of data to show advertisers why they should choose their magazine rather than anyone else's; and they also need to understand who their readers are, what they do and what makes them tick. Enter the research manager, a cross between a maths geek (like the bloke nicknamed 'Database' in the Simpsons); a cultural anthropologist, studying the strange habits and behaviour of readers; and scriptwriter, helping shape a great story for the advertising department to sell. To get a flavour for what this role is like, listen to one talking about one of his magazines: As a researcher, you need to spend as much time on your readers' values as you do on the content. So, readers of [Australian souped-up car magazine] Street Machine love a good joke, think well of themselves, wave their flags proudly, and play their favourite CDs loudly in between drooling over '69 Mustangs and cla.s.sic Aussie Monaros and Falcons. Capture the whole picture and they'll love you for it.

(TRAVIS G.o.dFREDSON, RESEARCH MANAGER, AUSTRALIAN CONSOLIDATED PRESS).

See? Travis is talking about his readers in a way that reveals he obviously knows them intimately, and sees them as a group that can be packaged together and sold to advertisers.

* Marketing manager/director In a small company, the marketing manager does all the work listed above ... and answers the phone, too. In a large company the marketing manager may have staff who look after the detail of product and campaigns, freeing them up to create campaigns and strategy and work with editors on publishing direction.

In large companies the marketing director is the top banana, perhaps with a number of marketing managers reporting to them. They might be sales and marketing director, too.

Editorial 'Editorial' is a word that creates some confusion the difference between copy editors and commissioning editors is pretty major! For simplicity, we've split this wide field into editorial (meaning development and copy editors, who work in producing the book) and commissioning/ publishers (meaning commissioning, acquisitions editors and publishers people who find authors to write the books): see below. There's some crossover, and some companies start you in one and promote you to the other, but some don't; so if you're keen on going into editorial, make sure you know which it is you want.

In some ways editorial is the engine room of publishing the people who create the words that make the books and the magazines.

Editorial suits people who are: 1. More than a little a.n.a.l Or 'with a keen eye for detail and precision' might be a more polite way of putting that. Taking a piece of writing, moving words about, making it completely consistent in layout, structure and style, and loving it; that's editorial.

Ever submitted an essay or report and then lay awake at night worried that your bullet points had inconsistent punctuation? You're a born editor. (You're also a bit scary which, come to think of it, a lot of good editors are.) Editing is not a vague open-to-interpretation kind of skill. It's a set of rules and principles; you're being trained as a professional editor with skills to do editing, to do mark-up, and there are fundamental skills in grammar and expression and feel for words that you need. To achieve a high editorial standard is hard there are only a few people who are going to be good editors I don't see that as something you can train a ma.s.s of people in, anyway. That might sound a bit elitist but you need a temperament, to be a.n.a.l, all those things.

(MANAGING DIRECTOR OF A SMALL CONSUMER PUBLISHING HOUSE, AUSTRALIA).

2. Crazy about words and grammar And not just on a micro-level in terms of where the comma goes. A surprising amount of editorial is structural, for which your ability to grasp the whole direction and style of the story/piece/entire book you're working on and to apply your best efforts to reshaping the material is invaluable. Did you lose track of the end of that sentence? If you did, editorial might not be for you!

3. Happiest in the back room There's not much glory in editorial: best managed, your work is invisible to the untrained eye (because it's so harmonious). Only other editors are going to congratulate you on a beautifully (re)constructed sentence, and authors hate to have it pointed out to them how much you amended what they wrote; they just a.s.sume the seamless prose was theirs all along. In your career as an editor at some point you will almost certainly find yourself rewriting material to such an extent that you should really get a co-authoring credit, although of course you won't.

On the other hand, if you don't fancy the knocking-on-doors-getting-yourself-out-there-public-face-of-the-company that is sales and marketing, editorial could work out for you perfectly.

4. Clever, widely interested and tactful You're working with authors, after all, who are also clever, and giving them feedback about what they've written, so you'll need to have a mind quick enough to understand the structure and argument. And that applies to books about physics, life cycle of the earthworm and tractor parts, as well as the latest Zadie Smith (depending on where you work).

And authors are generally b.l.o.o.d.y touchy about someone messing with their precious words, so you'll need buckets of tact.

Editorial jobs include: * Copy editor Works with the author from ma.n.u.script in to book out, as the main point of contact. Has the sometimes dubious pleasure of reading the book word by word, looking for errors and inconsistencies, and going back and forth with the author over queries and new drafts of the ma.n.u.script. Copy editors may also do structural editing (see below) and prepare permission and artwork briefs.

If this is what you want to do, on top of your BA you'll need specialist training either in-house at a publishers, or (more commonly now) in a postgraduate editing course, and possibly then to get an entry-level job as an editorial a.s.sistant (see below).

* Structural editor This role usually occurs in trade/fiction publishers. Structural editors sort out the story make sure things are in the best possible order before the ma.n.u.script goes off to be tidied up by the copy editor. Structural editors don't need the eye for detail that copy editing demands but do need to understand how the story works and how it could work better. After a while they often graduate on to become commissioning/acquisitions editors.

It's worth noting that structural editors now also thrive in agencies offering their services directly to authors; helping them manage their material before it gets to the agent or publisher.

* Development editor/project editor This role is more common in educational/professional publishing. They take on a structural role, and sometimes work in partnership with a commissioning editor (see below). So the commissioning editor might sign up the author to write the book, and the development editor then works closely with the author while they do the writing, to make sure the book does exactly what the publishers want it to do. They may also be responsible for market research such as investigating areas for publishing a potential new list. They need editing skills, an eye for detail, and great structural understanding of what's needed the lot really.

* Proofreader At the end of the process, someone has to do it working through the page proofs. This is the absolutely very last no turning back final checking, looking for spelling, grammatical and typesetting errors, and probably spot-checking contents list, index and author's name (at least twice).

Most proofreaders are now freelancers, with just a few left as employees of publishing houses.

* Managing editor Organises production and briefs copy editors. Depending on the size of the company, this job might run in combination with production manager (see 'Production', below).

* Desk editor This is an outdated term for a managing editor or copy editor.

Editor jobs come in two flavours: in-house and freelance. Most editors start out working in-house for a publisher and then at some point may choose to go freelance, working for themselves, once they have the experience and contacts (and guts or lifestyle requirements) to set up on their own.

Commissioning jobs These are also often confusingly called editing or publishing jobs. They suit people who are: 1. Knowledgeable and in tune with society Publishers are product development engineers, creating products for ma.s.s or specific audiences. So you need to provide what those audiences want, or the magazines will sit in the newsagents and the books won't get bought. Commissioning publishers need to be up to date with the latest trends, half a step behind the zeitgeist, to create the books and magazines people want to read.

2. Strategic thinkers Magazine publishers are strategic thinkers, working out what the next big thing is going to be and getting a new magazine launched before anyone else is out of the starting blocks. You need to build a portfolio that blocks compet.i.tors without eating itself (ie one in which the magazines complement each other and don't steal advertising from one another).

Similarly, in book publishing, building a list can take years of careful planning by the time you've figured out what you want to publish, found the author, signed them up, given them a year or two to write something and then got it out into bookshops and done it again and again to create a list of books with a specific style and focus. And you need to do it all years in advance to figure out what will be the hot topics by the time it all publishes.

In both areas, a highly developed sense of strategy is essential.

3. Able to see the 'big picture'

For the reasons mentioned above, you need to be able to see the forest, not just the leaves. Few people can do this well, and even fewer in publishing. After all, if you've been in a job like editorial or sales where detail is king, it can be difficult to make the adjustment to a position where what really matters is not the comma, nor even the chapter (feature), nor even the book (magazine), but the range and the market. It's the difference between using a microscope and a telescope.

4. Political animals You've got to be good at taking the credit and avoiding the blame. There's big money at the top end of any business, and no-one's going to step aside and offer you the floor: you've got to take it for yourself. Many of the best people in publishing are shrinking violets who never get to fulfil their potential because they just don't like the limelight. That's fine, but it does mean you never get to have the influence you could have.

Commissioning jobs include: * Editorial/publishing a.s.sistants a.s.sistants do the really bottom-end stuff; photocopying ma.n.u.scripts, ringing authors to remind them of submission due dates, sending out questionnaires for feedback on proposals. This is a great entry point into the world of editorial and jobs can be very hard to come by. As you get more experienced you'll be given more responsibility and maybe even a small list to manage in combination with your a.s.sistant-level roles. In a trade house you might even be the one reading through the slush pile of unsolicited ma.n.u.scripts to discover the next Harry Potter, and be promoted into a great commissioning editor role.

* Commissioning/acquisitions editor This is the person who signs up authors to write books. There are a few different models for this.

In schools and higher education publishing, the acquisitions editor works on a list and identifies areas where they would like to publish a new t.i.tle: 'We have two introduction to business books, but neither of them uses the approach that the most popular compet.i.tor does'. Having identified the market gap, the acquisitions editor works with their contacts (teachers, lecturers) to find the right person to create the book. Unsolicited ma.n.u.scripts initiated by the author are rare (or rather, they are common, but rarely published).

In these two fields of publishing, publishers are often promoted out of the sales team; the on-the-ground experience of a few years out talking to the people who then become authors is invaluable.

Trade, professional and university press publishing tends to be a mix of identifying a market gap and seeking an author, working with previously successful authors and agents to secure their new projects, and working through prospective new authors to see what projects might work (much less common than you'd imagine). In these areas publishers often start as editorial a.s.sistants, and are known as commissioning editors (though not always).

There's more than one way to get to your dream job. If you want to be a commissioning editor, you don't necessarily have to start as an editorial a.s.sistant at your favourite publisher and work your way up. I started off in book clubs and then bookselling, getting an overview of all the publishers' lists and reading hundreds of new t.i.tles across all fiction genres. When I moved over into publishing proper, they wanted me for my commercial knowledge as well as any editorial skills I possess. I'd also spent years meeting people from all the publishing houses and had a very clear idea of which companies I would and wouldn't want to work for. (SUZIE DOORe, SENIOR EDITOR, HODDER & STOUGHTON, UK) My entry into magazine publishing came via a less than usual route. I started as an apprentice bookbinder all those years ago. There are more than the usual ways to end up in publishing!

(STUART JONES, CIRCULATION MANAGER, AUSTRALIAN CONSOLIDATED PRESS).

* Publisher/publishing director After a number of years as a successful commissioning or acquisitions editor, you might become a publisher. Sometimes this means getting more internal power in creating the list you want, the authors you want, creating a whole new area of publishing for the company; sometimes it means having a bunch of junior editors reporting to you while you plan the strategic direction and they fulfil it. Definitely no making cups of tea for others now.

Production Production staff are often the cement of publishing companies. Intrinsic problem-solvers, they tend to break down difficult situations into component parts and then look at how to deal with each issue in turn. In addition to being good at their jobs, they are great people to talk to!

Production suits people who are: 1. Organised, competent and calm If you can keep tabs on 200 different projects in varying stages of a long process, this is the job for you.

2. Collaborators Production depends on people responsible for all the other stages in the chain doing their bit in time, and adjusting schedules and suppliers as problems arise. Effective production people can come up with solutions as the plot thickens, not just throw their hands in the air and think 'it's all awful'.

3. Makers and doers Production people quite literally make the book, turning a ma.s.sive great long Word doc.u.ment into something that sits in your bookshelf. They need to be up to date with current technology and future trends.

Production jobs include: * Production editor/production controller Organises production and manufacturing works with printers and typesetters and copy editors and proofreaders to get a book through the process. Sometimes this job comes under the editorial banner, too.

* Production manager Does what it sounds like runs the department, making sure every project is where it should be. Might manage some projects personally as well as working with production controllers who handle most of them.

Technical jobs in production include: * Designers and ill.u.s.trators Often freelance but occasionally working as employees, these people make the books and covers look pretty.

* Multimedia Again often freelance, but sometimes employees designing CDs, DVDs and websites. Most often occurs in educational/ professional publishing houses.

Other departments in publishing There are other job opportunities within publishing too, of course, but many of these require skills that are transferable from other industries or professions, rather than being specific to publishing. For example: * Royalties, copyrights, contracts Do some kind of highly technical thing to make sure authors do what they should and get paid what they should.

* Stock control/inventory management These hugely important people make sure the books are where they should be, in the quant.i.ty they should be available. On locally published books (ie ones that originate in the home market) they'll work closely with the production and publishing departments to organise reprints; on imported books they'll work with rights and marketing to make sure they're stocking the right quant.i.ties, where and when they are needed.

* Business management Accounting types who make sure the business is on the right side of the balance sheet.

* Customer service Handle direct customer orders and ensures efficient despatch; deal with subsequent contact with customers, complaints and praise. These staff are capturing essential first-hand information from customers of all sorts (individual and bookshop buyers); their feedback on how the ordering process feels to the customer can be invaluable. Often situated away from the main offices, their input all too often goes unacknowledged.

* Warehouse Look after the books. Often warehouses and offices are separated but if you're lucky, you'll work for publishers where the warehouse is on the same site, and you'll be able to see huge piles of your books on racks, learn about how pick and pack of orders work, and dive through the box of damaged stock that's been returned to see if there's anything your mum would like. And hear and repeat amusing anecdotes about the warehouse bloke who drove a forklift into a pallet of books, lit a cigarette to calm his nerves and set off the sprinkler system.

* Accounts and finance They pay the bills and send out bills and chase cheques. They may also pay you.

* Human resources (HR) Help managers to hire, fire, train staff, create policies and manage the workplace.

Politics between the various departments In general, publishing is a collaborative industry. Most organisations have a relatively flat management structure in other words effective publishing relies on deals between different departments/individuals, rather than a hierarchical management structure where layers of management tell lower layers what to do. So an editor for a particular t.i.tle will liaise with that t.i.tle's production editor, marketing person and rights coordinator, and each staff member may subcontract to freelancers. Working relationships tend to be informal and people typically casually dressed (or downright scruffy). Susannah recalls a chap at a place she once worked who regularly used to come into the office in his pyjamas. You should however be aware that there may be long-standing tensions between various different departments; the coordination required to get a book out may not be quite as readily available as required.

Looking back, I wish I had understood more clearly the ideological divide that exists in many publishing houses between sales/marketing and publishing/editorial. It wasn't until after I had worked on both sides that I really appreciated the different concerns and viewpoints held by each.

(JESSICA, AUSTRALIA).

Senior staff are often ready and willing to give advice and mentoring to those who are starting out, and several firms offer such schemes, on a formal or informal basis. Publishing personnel often take part in industry-wide training schemes as part of a general attempt to train future publishers, whether or not they eventually end up working for them. There is a widespread and altruistic nurturing of younger members of the profession, which strikes those from other industries as remarkable.

My first job was for a direct marketing agency, but after 18 months I got a job with a publisher and it was announced in the moves section of The Bookseller. One of the first calls I got was from Liz Newland of Dent, a former client (and now compet.i.tor), who congratulated me and then told that if I ever wanted advice, I had only to ask. I can still remember what she said: 'There will be times when you don't know what to do, and don't wish to reveal this in-house. In which case, you are more than welcome to ring me.' I thought this extremely generous and her offer was hugely appreciated. (ALISON) I was fortunate to have a great mentor who trained me in so many aspects of the industry local, international, professional bodies, ISBN agencies, bibliographic providers, compet.i.tors, trends, products and customers. The best advice he ever gave me was 'don't make an enemy in the trade'. This was probably the wisest advice you can give someone in the book and publishing industry.

On a general business level, he also pa.s.sed on the 'never a.s.sume something, as to a.s.sume makes an a.s.s out of U-and-ME' and he stressed the importance of the customer, service and supply. My second mentor, a creative and dynamic woman with whom I worked for nine years, pa.s.sed on her business and marketing knowledge, and continued to build on my enthusiasm and pa.s.sion for the industry, the products and the customers.

(RACHAEL MCDIARMID, JAMES BENNETT, AUSTRALIA).

More reading Gitomer, The Sales Bible, Wiley, 2003 Gitomer, The 25 Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople, Adams Media, 1997 Bettger, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, Simon and Schuster, 2004 Baverstock, How to Market Books, 4th edn, Kogan Page, 2008 Smith and Hiam, Marketing for Dummies, Wiley, 2006 Evans, The Layers of Magazine Editing, Columbia University Press, 2004 Frost, Designing for Newspapers and Magazines, Routledge, 2003 Owen, Selling Rights, Routledge, 2006 Jones and Benson, Publishing Law, Routledge, 2006 1 Susannah managed a rep who did this once ... and 'once' is the key word. Don't be tempted: you will get caught and fired, and rightly so. It's theft of the money your employer is paying you to do your job.

Part III: How to get your job.

Chapter Ten.

Before you start . . .

Now's the bit where you pull it all together and actually get yourself that job. That job might be the job of your dreams, or the stepping stone towards the job of your dreams; not just any job, but one that you enjoy, that's rewarding and challenging, and puts you on the right career path for even more long-term success and rewards.

There are lots of ways to approach this. Some people jump headlong into recruitment agencies and interviews and work everything else out as they go along. Oddly enough, one of the hardest things about job hunting, from about your second job onwards, is not so much getting the job; instead, it's knowing whether it's the right job for you in terms of what you want and where you want to go. It's nerve-wracking to accept a job if you're not sure it's what you want, and even worse to start with a company and discover a few weeks or months in that it isn't right for you. There are some basic prep steps that can help you to avoid this.

One final thing before you get into it. Are you ready to get that job or are there other things you should do first, such as travel or more study? A lot of people find it hard to get off the full-time wagon and end up with their heads down for the next ten years so if there's something else you want to pursue, now might be a good time.

On the other hand, don't pick up a course or travel or engage in some other form of time-filling just because you're worried you won't be able to get a job you like.

Susannah once knew a guy who spent six years 'working on his portfolio' to get work as a graphic designer before actually showing any of his work to anyone, and then another two more years of work before taking a job. Instead, we encourage you to give it a whirl and see what happens! If you're not sure if you're ready, one way of finding out is to give it a go if you go through interviews and it feels wrong, or potential employers tell you that you need more skills or more study, you can always reconsider.

There are lots of ways to job hunt what works for you will depend on your own motivation and work style: * Most people read through the job ads on the day they come out, circle a few and send off CVs over the following weekend.

* Some people treat it like a full-time job clock on in the morning, spend the day browsing the Internet, ringing contacts and tweaking CVs, clock off at the end of the afternoon.

* If you're really desperate for a job and you're flexible about which job and where, try making a rule whereby you apply for, say, ten jobs each week. If you have to hit a number week in, week out, it can make you look in places you wouldn't normally, and apply for roles you might not have considered otherwise. You never know what might come up.

* Remember networking and getting proactive targeting companies you want to work for and approaching them, and letting everyone you can think of know you're job hunting and asking for their help (more on this in Chapter 13). Remember, too, that a high percentage of jobs never get advertised at all they go to friends of employees, those who had provided CVs that were on file in the HR office, and so on.

OK, let's go get that job.

Getting started The starting point is to think about which job you want and which job you can realistically get! There will be lots of advice on this in the rest of this book, but for now, let's start with what you are looking for.

You might enjoy making a list of essential/desirable attributes for your job. A great way of doing this is to think about attributes for your perfect job and how far you are prepared to compromise. So for example, if you want to be a marketing a.s.sistant at Vogue, you might consider being a marketing a.s.sistant at Wheels but not a sales rep at Vogue, or vice versa. If you know what the perfect job is, you're more likely to find it; and if not, it's good to know where you'll draw a line.