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Contract roles can feel like the perfect job setup: flexible hours, work-from-home perks, and a way to break into your dream company. For some, they also serve as a temporary solution until a more permanent position comes along. Yet sometimes when freelancers decide to transition to a full-time gig, their contract history can potentially come back to bite themeven when it shouldnt. In a job interview, employers might ask: Can you work effectively on a team? Can you take direction from a manager? Will you think about your work long term? Or they might not ask at all, but theyll still wonder. To be clear: Freelancing or contract work is work, of course. But if full-time employment is your goal, knowing how to address these concerns does matter in a job interview. Dont assume First, in a job interviewno matter which side of the table youre sitting onits essential not to make assumptions. Its important for hiring managers to be aware of assumptions they might have. Instead of assuming, ask very direct questions, says Phoebe Gavin, a career and leadership coach. Dont just assume they cant work a 9-to-5, or that theyre not willing to commit to a company long term. If youre a job seeker, when applying for roles and in interviews, get ahead of assumptions by addressing them head-on. If the employer is looking for a collaborative team member, share examples of how youve worked effectively with others in the past. The hiring manager may genuinely not be aware of how collaborative freelance or contract work can be. So for the person who’s being interviewed, don’t make any assumptions about what they know about your work, Gavin says. Can you work on a team? Freelancers often work more independently, but that doesnt mean you prefer to, or that you work entirely alone. After all, you probably send your work off to someone for review. If you thrive in a team environmentor even miss being part of a teamsay so. When working as a freelancer, there may have been times when your work has required working with multiple parties and collaborating with teams. Even if it was temporary for a particular project, make it really clear that that’s something you have experience with, Gavin says. Highlight specific examples from past projects where you successfully collaborated with others, showing that you can contribute effectively on a team. Career coach Patrice Williams Lindo recommends saying something like: I rebrand quickly into the teams operating model. That means understanding how decisions get made, who owns what, and where my work fits into the broader system. I dont operate in silos. I network intentionally across stakeholders so my work lands cleanly, on time, and without creating friction. Independence, for me, means high trust, not high isolation. Can you take direction? When looking for a new job, remember that youll most likely have a manager. If youre thinking, I don’t really need a manager; I can do the work without you managing me, that mindset can create challenges with the person providing direction. Showing that you can take direction demonstrates adaptability and immediately makes you a stronger candidate. Williams Lindo suggests saying something like: I dont need micromanagement, but I do respect structure, accountability, and feedback. My goal is to deliver in a way that strengthens leadership credibility, not competes with it. Can you think beyond the project at hand? Freelancers usually focus on the work in front of them and dont always have to think about long-term impact, but in a full-time role, youre expected to see the bigger picture. If thats something you do already, make sure you say that. For example, if you like to promote your work after its published, thats something worth highlighting. Williams Lindo suggests saying, Even when my engagement is project-based, my mindset is enterprise-level. I document decisions, build repeatable processes, and leave behind claritynot just deliverables. Im always thinking about how my work ladders up to longer-term outcomes, because recognition comes from impact, not just execution. Contract roles can help you land a full-time position if you want one. By addressing assumptions up front and showing that you can collaborate, take direction, and think beyond individual projects, you signal that youre ready to thrive in a full-time role. Freelance experience is real work, and it matters. When presented strategically, it can showcase your impact and position you as a strong candidate for permanent opportunities.
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E-Commerce
Whenever I tell people Im an auctioneer, there are inevitably two follow up questions: First: Do you talk really fast like those guys on TV? followed by a cartoonish imitation, complete with an imaginary microphone and a pseudo Southern accent. Second: Whats the most expensive thing youve ever sold? After two decades of auctioneering, the answer is usually something in the many millions. I typically just name the last item I sold for over a million dollars. Whether someone pictures a fast talking cattle auction or a refined British gentleman selling Picassos in black tie, auctioneers are assumed to do one thing: talk. A lot. Which is why most people are shocked to learn that the most powerful tool I like to use on stage isnt my voice at all. Its silence. When Im onstage in front of 500 people, yes, fast, energetic bidding can electrify a room. But in auctioneering, as in negotiation, the person who is comfortable with silence holds the advantage. Think about the last time you negotiated anything. The one who jumps to fill every uncomfortable silence often reveals the most. The one who sits in the quiet controls the pace. Lessons learned After years in the boardroom and on stage, here are the top three lessons Ive learned about how silence can capture the attention of any room: 1. When a room is talking, dont talk over it. Own the moment. If a crowd wont quiet down, talking louder rarely works. Instead, I smile and say, Ill wait until the room is quiet enough to hear me. The shift is immediate. People realize theyre missing something or they are being rude, and they stop. Once theyve realized Im willing to wait for them to stop talking before Ill start again the dynamic is shifted, and now they are paying attention. 2. Make your point, then stop talking. Many times when I am onstage with a new crowd I will ask the audience where I should start the bidding. Instead of throwing out a number that could intimidate half the room, I will say to the audience who wants to start the bidding? When the person raises their hand Ill ask where are we starting the bidding tonight? and then I simply wait . . . 9 out of 10 times the person will come in at a higher level simply because they dont know where I plan to start and want to be sure they dont announce a low bid. Youll be amazed how often the other side rushes to fill the space, usually revealing exactly what you need to know. 3. Silence raises more money than any speech ever could. During the paddle raise portion of a charity auction paddle raise, Im not offering a vacation home or a puppy. Im simply asking for donations. When I begin at the highest level, say, $25,000 the room gets very still. People shift in their chairs. They look at each other. They wait. But more importantly, I wait. And sometimes Ill throw in a joke to show them how at ease I am in the silence Ill wait just long enough until it starts to get really uncomfortable and then I smile and wait a little longer. Inevitably someone will raise their hand simply to break the tension. Its no concern for me; I will wait all night. Thats the power of silence: It moves people to act. The next time you are in an important meeting, giving a speech, or presenting on stage, remember the power of silence and use it to your advantage.
Category:
E-Commerce
Seasons greetings arent as cheery when its a season of layoffs. November marked the eighth time this year that job cuts were up over the same period the year before, according to research from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. To make matters worse, hiring in November was down 35% from 2024, marking the lowest year-to-date total since 2010. News about the current labor market can be unnervingeven more so when layoffs are hitting your company. Being prepared can help make it less so. And one group of people knows more about that than most. A page out of the prepper book The word prepper may bring to mind images of shows like Doomsday Preppers, in which people stockpile food, water, weapons, and supplies in anticipation of apocalyptic events. However, most preppers are simply people who want to have some basic essentials or plan in place just in case. In fact, the last Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Preparedness Report found that more than half of U.S. adults (55%) had taken 3 or more of the 12 preparedness steps, like making a plan, gathering supplies, and securing documents. It’s not that different from preparing for a layoff, says organizational psychologist Melissa Doman. Going through an unexpected layoff is a form of a temporary doomsday for some people. They didnt expect it, they cant control it, and they dont know how long its going to last, she says. If youre worried about an impending layoff, try preparing like a prepper. Know what you have When layoff rumors start circulating, if you start making plans as soon as the whispers begin, or before if possible, youll be in a much better position, says Michael McAuliffe, president and CEO of Family Credit Management, a nonprofit credit counseling agency.Personal finance expert LaChelle Johnson agrees, advising, Figure out exactly what you have in terms of cash on hand, liquid assets, and even funds you may have access to in an emergency that you can withdraw from, like retirement accounts or investment accounts. Maximize income and benefits In 2018, Michelle Arellano Martin had what she thought was her dream job. Then, she got a surprise. I had just completed a huge projectgarnered some incredible awards for my workand then my position was eliminated, she says. If she had it to do over again, she says she would have applied for unemployment benefits immediately, because the first payment took several weeks to arrive. She also advises negotiating for the best severance package you can. After her second layoff, she was able to negotiate an additional three months of severance pay. This, in part, helped her launch her business, sustainable travel site Travara. Talent strategist Brittany Dolin, CEO of the Pocketbook Agency recruitment firm, advises reviewing an expected severance package and how benefits like health insurance last after a layoff. You may also look for benefits that can give you immediate value, such as flexible spending account balances available to you.Johnson also suggests looking for items that you might be able to sell if necessaryeverything from future concert tickets to that bread maker you always wanted to use but never opened. She also advises thinking about side hustles (but be sure you understand their impact on unemployment benefits). Slash spending When Johnson was laid off years ago, she and her husband had car loans, private school bills, credit card balances, and a big mortgage. The couple decided to make serious changes, like moving in with his parents for a year, to protect what they had and get out of debt. I just felt like we were maxed out from wall to wall, she recalls. Johnson advises taking a close look at spending and eliminating what you dont need: Cut subscriptions. Pause gym memberships. Plan meals, and eat at home. Look for cheaper housing options. Follow frugal living communities on Reddit or other social media for more ideas on cutting expenses. You may pick up some good habits and find room in your budget to beef up your emergency fund over time, she says. Get your support team lined up Three of the 12 disaster preparation actions FEMA recommends involve identifying people you need for help and communication during emergencies. Similarly, Doman says you need to identify your support team if you suspect youre facing something as stressful as a layoff. Dont just default to your best friend or a family member. Instead, she says, think about the people who are going to let you feel your emotions and, when youre ready, devise an action plan if the layoff comes to pass.You dont want someone whos just going to brush off your emotions or give you a lot of toxic positivity, she says. In fact, she adds, You may need more than one person.Reach out to these trusted individuals and let them know whats going on so they can support youand perhaps even help you network to find a new job. Keep a schedule If the layoff does come to pass, you may need to wallow a bit. Doman says its okay to take a duvet day to lie in bed and watch television if you need it. But dont do that for too long, she adds. Keep structure in your dayget up at a set time, work on some tasks to find a new job, get some fresh air, talk to a friend, she says. Dolin agrees. Fear can be paralyzing, and if a layoff is pending or just happened, its time to buckle down and do your best to stay employable in an unpredictable market, she says. Preparation does not equal panic.
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E-Commerce
For the past two years, I’ve written predictions for how AI will continue to change the media industry and the business of news in the coming year. Prognosticating is a risky business even at the most tranquil of times, and media’s AI era is anything but: bots are multiplying, newsrooms are shrinking, and new business models always seem to be still developing. Last year, four of the five predictions I made came true, those being the spread of audio experiences like NotebookLM’s audio overviews, a greater emphasis on content licensing, more “legit” AI-generated content, and publishers doing more with their own summarization and chatbots. I should have probably known my one strike was going to be agentsthat was such a buzzword last year that I couldn’t avoid including it, but it turns out there were significant barriers keeping agents outside the mainstream (data privacy and complexity being the main ones). This time, the task is even more challenging. Many trends, like AI adoption in newsrooms, are further along, which you would think makes their effects easier to predict. But the reality is that the most impactful things happen when those trends slam into realities, such as Cloudflare taking a hard stance against AI ingesting publisher content without compensation or consequence. Who saw that coming? {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more, visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} With all that in mind, here are my predictions for how AI’s presence in media will evolve in the next year: 1. The copyright issue gets worse before it gets better Despite an ever-growing set of lawsuits, the copyright issue is still largely unresolved. Publishers want compensation for how their content is ingested and used by AI companies, which continue to claim fair use. Sure, there are more licensing deals between the two sides, but the fundamental tension remains. What’s changed is that more publishers have woken up to what they see as the predations of the AI industry, and they’ve gotten more aggressive at blocking AI crawlers. That prevents AI engines from bringing users the best, most up-to-date data, which makes them less competitive. This, however, doesn’t apply to Google, because it uses the same crawler for search and AI, and no publisher in their right mind would ever block Google Search. That gives Google a competitive advantage at a time where OpenAI just went into “code red” for fear of falling behind. Similarly, Perplexity is now the target for legal action from both News Corp. and The New York Times for how it summarizes their content. For any AI company in a race with Google, it’s hard to see how they can balance respecting copyright with staying competitive. If even the tremendously successful OpenAI sees the threat as existential, it’s hard to see how any of them wouldn’t see the copyright issue as secondary. My expectation: Not only will AI companies avoid making moves that broadly support content providers (such as enabling them to block user agents)they may even become more brazen about ignoring safeguards like the Robots Exclusion Protocol. 2. AI focus in newsrooms shifts to product and revenue When The New York Times opened the doors for AI use by its staff, it was an indicator that newsrooms were becoming more comfortable with using AI to improve efficiency with things like transcription and social media management. Similarly, the launch of more sophisticated AI-infused products like Times AI Agentwhich turns the publication’s vast archive into a grounded, AI-ready corpussignals a shift toward AI products that could potentially improve the bottom line. Whether that opens up real revenue is unclear, and the road is certainly longer and bumpier than deploying an AI headline writer (Politico recently got into hot water with its newsroom union over an AI tool for its lucrative Politico Pro division), but the potential rewards are great enough that we’re sure to see more publishers go this route. 3. PR’s lean renaissance The era of “go direct” PR led many to postulate that the whole industry might face a steep decline, if not become entirely obsolete. However, AI has revived PR for a new era: Since AI engines look for credibility across domains and platforms, the ability to get a story cited widely, even on lesser-known sites, is newly valuable. However, AI is also forcing the industry to rethink the basicseven more than the media. Since much of PR work involves content, and it doesn’t have the same audience relationship that has kept almost all journalism authentically human, there’s intense pressure on the client side to leverage AI in content generation to cut costs. That all translates into a strengthened PR industry, but one that’s by necessity smarter and leaner than before. 4. Authenticity reasserts itself When generative AI first arrived, there was existential dread that big chunks of journalism would end up being authored by AI. While AI has secured a place in many newsrooms, that prediction largely hasn’t come to pass. That’s not because AI isn’t capable of researching, analyzing, and writing stories, but because AI authorship alters the audience relationship. In other words, human authenticity is back in style. AI can still be an accelerant here, helping more publications adopt video formats like the Times “explain the news” vertical shorts. With AI reducing the cost of production, the choice of expanding to a new platform will have more to do with audience opportunity, as it should be. 5. Continued prioritization of owned audience Just because we’re likely not going to Google Zero, doesn’t mean media properties can relax. A world of “Google Smaller” still means publishers will need to keep divesting from strategies dependent on SEO traffic, and direct their energies toward building and nurturing direct, habitual audience relationships through proprietary apps and formats with traditionally higher engagement, like newsletters and live events. The bad news: the more who do, the harder it will be to stand out. It may still be early days for AI, but we’re well past the point of no return. More and more people are using it for information discovery (34%, up from 18% a year ago, per the Reuters Institute) and journalists continue to adopt AI as part of their workflows (more than half now use it at least once a week). The industry is clearly adapting to the new AI reality, and whether or not we get clearer answers to the big questions around copyright and business models, 2026 might be the year the media’s AI survival manual gets written. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more, visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
Is Reddit like other social media platforms? Thats the question before the High Court of Australia in light of the countrys under-16s social media ban. Last week, Reddit filed a lawsuit in Australia’s highest court seeking to overturn the country’s recently enacted social media ban for children. The San Francisco-based firm claims the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on Australias implied freedom of political communication. The lawsuit follows a case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project. Reddit is also asking the High Court to rule that even if the legislation is valid, that Reddit is not like other social media platforms. The Australian eSafety Commissioners website provides a list of criteria for social media platforms subjected to the age restrictions, as well as a flow chart to help companies work out whether their platforms fall under the scope. The regulatory agency lists the platforms that fall under its age restrictions as Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube. Sites that will not be subject to age restrictions are Discord, GitHub, Google Classroom, LEGO Play, Messenger, Pinterest, Roblox, Steam and Steam Chat, WhatsApp, and YouTube Kids. In documents filed in the High Court, Reddit argues it does not satisfy the first criteria of having the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of enabling online social interaction between two or more end-users.” Reddit brought up definitions of the word social in its filing to make its case that its users mostly do not interact in a social manner. Reddit says that for an interaction to be social, it has to happen because of a particular users relationship with or interest in another user as a person; indeed, in most cases the identity of a user on Reddit is not even known to other users. The same could be said for other social platforms. The company said it does not promote real-time presence, friend requests, or activity feeds that drive ongoing engagement. Instead, it “operates as a collection of public fora arranged by subject.” Reddit says it merely enables online interactions about the content that users post on the site. It facilitates knowledge sharing from one user to other users. In a post accompanying the filing, Reddit admin LastBluejay said they are complying with the law and they are notably not against child safety measures or regulations, or trying to retain young users for business reasons. They wrote that the law carries some serious privacy and political expression issues for everyone on the internet. Platforms now face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of those under the minimum age.
Category:
E-Commerce
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