Lee Enterprises Interview Questions
& Process

I went through an interview process for a technical writer role with TownNews. It seemed okay at first, with a developer and the hiring manager asking standard questions about my background. They said they had more interviews and would decide. I followed up a week later, and now I've been ghosted. It's okay not to hire someone, but ghosting is disrespectful and doesn't reflect well on the company. At least this shows me who I don't want to work for. TownNews, do better.

I got a call for an interview and I accepted. I went in and felt like the interview went really well. The interviewer and I had really good conversation and she told me I should hear back from her the following Monday. That Monday came and went and no phone call or email. I tried contacting her and she didn’t answer. I wrote a thank you letter and left a voicemail and received NOTHING back. I found this highly unprofessional. It takes 1 minute to write a rejection email but I never heard anything back from them and it has been a month and a half now. Very disappointed and unprofessional.

I sent in my application online and then a person from HR gave me a call in just a couple of days. She actually wanted to do the phone interview right then and there, but I asked to reschedule it for the next day because I was busy. (It struck me as odd that they would want to do the interview immediately without setting it up ahead of time...) The phone interview itself was pretty straightforward, and the questions just kept coming and coming. It wasn't really a conversation, more like a Q and A session. Since it was with HR, it wasn't a technical interview, but more focused on customer service, managing multiple deadlines, client interactions, project work, past employment, and general background. It's pretty basic stuff, and you'll be fine if you have prior work experience to pull examples from. However, there were a couple of things to consider: the job pays hourly and is for the second shift, meaning you'd work from 3 PM to 11 PM or 4 PM to 12 AM, and it also involves working weekends. They do try to give you two consecutive days off, though. This might not be ideal for everyone. After the phone interview, the design director was supposed to reach out to set up an on-site interview. This ended up taking over a week, and by that point, I had already accepted another job offer with better working hours. Everyone I spoke with seemed really nice, and the work appeared interesting, but the hours would have been a significant issue, making it tough to maintain a social life.

I applied online and they reached out the same day. Two weeks later, I had a phone interview with the circulation director and the publisher. It was pretty straightforward, mostly talking about my experience and how it fit what they were looking for. After that, they flew me out for a more formal interview process, covering the costs and putting me up in a nice hotel for two days. The first day was pretty relaxed, just meeting with the circulation director, seeing the market, and having dinner. The second day was more intensive, meeting with department heads like the editor, advertising manager, niche products manager, marketing manager, and customer service manager. They made me an offer the day after I got home. We spent about a week negotiating salary and bonuses before agreeing on terms.