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

Hiring Tatra (1)
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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

Jt Handbook

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
The Autopian_ Writer (Full-Time) -FINAL
  • The Autopian’s priority: 3

About the Author

Jason Torchinsky

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100 thoughts on “The Autopian Is Hiring. Here’s What We Ask In Our Job Application”

  1. Not related to the job but you guys have really come a long way. At this point not only do you have more content but better quality content than the site you guys left to form this one. Bravo and here is to a great future!

  3. I have neither the time nor the background to work here, but just for fun:

    Why are you applying to work at The Autopian?

    The free membership. The job does come with a free Rich Corinthian Leather membership, right?

    Do you have experience as a professional writer? If so, please list how long you’ve worked at each employer/publication.

    Only if you count writing documentation for software, which you definitely shouldn’t.

    Do you have experience working for a blog that requires multiple article submissions per day?

    No, that sounds like a lot of work. 😛

    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.

    /me carefully does not look at the folder labelled “FanFic”.

    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).

    I do, enough to know that my place is emphatically not in front of the camera.

    How well versed are you with spreadsheets/task organization? (scale of 1 to 5)

    I wish they’d still let us use spreadsheets for tracking. Somehow, primitive as it was, it was still better than Jira. I guess I’ll rate myself a 4.5 out of 5 since I have enough experience with task tracking to know that I hate it. 😉

    What experiences do you have managing a team or organizing a project?

    I’m a team lead. For a team of two. Do with that what you will.
    (skipping a few because I have a day job I need to get back to)

    How would you rate your ability to fix cars?

    YouTube Certified Automotive Technician

    What do you consider your area of expertise as it relates to cars, and why are you qualified to write about it?

    I can tell you all about why you don’t want more software in your car because years in the software industry have made me incrediby jaded about software “quality”.

    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)

    I read that article, I don’t think I can give an unbiased answer to this. 😉

  4. “Tell you what: don’t drive the Gremlin. They’re a little weird and outdated. But for reasons I can’t go into and I promise they’re worthwhile and not evil, do me a favor and keep the car in your name.

    “And let me use it.

    “I’ll pay everything: fuel, maintenance, repairs. Insurance and registration. All of it. Just sign a letter that we can notarize saying that it is absolutely and unequivocally your car, but I have permission to operate it, I’m the only person allowed to operate it.

    “Anything bad happens with it – and I promise it won’t – then the quivering finger of accusation points first at me, right?”

    “Why should I do any of this,” Sheila sighed. Eli seemed sincere, but the request was just so…weird. “The quivering finger always points first at the owner of record. That’d be me.”

    “I know, but keep a copy of the letter. If you like you can even attach a tracker to the car, I’m not going to do anything with it.” He groped, mentally, for something plausible. “I just…kinda always wanted a Gremlin.”

    “Why don’t I just sell it to you, then?”

    “Um, for reasons.”

    “…that you can’t go into.”

    “Yeah.” He dropped back to punt. “If the money is an issue, I’ll rent the car from you if you like. It stays under your ownership but goes home with me.”

    “You know what, you appear to be serious so what the hell.”

    “How much per month,” Eli asked, doing rapid mental math. The Trust paid him well, but not lavishly.

    “Nothing. Cover the costs like you said. My car, your ride.” She gathered her purse and phone. “We done?”

    “Yes. Almost. Let me draw up those papers.”

    Eli fired up his laptop and rattled off a quick letter, including sufficient legalese to keep most authorities satisfied that, on even more-than-casual inspection, he wasn’t riding in a stolen car. As the papers slid out of the printer, he wondered how he was going to satisfy all the terms of the agreement, knowing the reward of ensoulment in a car of his own would be the confounding element.

    Eli had no soul.

    He closed his laptop.

  5. I cannoot right gud but I’ve got plenty of experience hosting highly available websites with ability to scale horizontally to adapt to varying traffic levels while keeping hosting prices low along with email/DNS/DBs and all the other associated IT gubbins and know-hows and I even have a couple of AWS certificates laying around here somewhere. Is that a run-on sentence? See, that’s why come you do not want me writin but let me know when you guys are looking for a sysadmin/devops/cloud architect.

    1. You seem confused about what you want. You write a lot about handling admin details and then also talk about writing articles. I wonder which is more important.
    2. When they were new, I briefly drove a Gremlin as a company car. The Gremlin in question did not have A/C. It was very much like driving a pizza oven. I don’t think I want this job.

  7. Wish I could apply but 1) I don’t think my blogs about my old van with tens of views really count, and 2) I’m staying with government work for at least 5 more years to get PSLF.
    Love what this site is doing though, hope you find the right person

  9. There’s a loophole in Jason’s language.

    > The group needs you to convince the now-deceased person’s lover to keep the Gremlin as their car

    “Keep” …

    > you have to convince a person in 2023 to drive a Gremlin.

    … doesn’t mean “drive,” even if it says “as their car.”

    So an easy workaround is to tell the lover the dead person loved the car so much s/he wanted it to live forever in her possession, so you’re handing the lover the title and putting the car on a farm somewhere (also gifted to her). Or you can give her a plot of land to keep the car. If it must be her only car, offer to get her a paid-for 24/7 chauffeur while the car remains on her farm upstate.

    CHECKMATE

  11. The Managing Editor position was quite tempting. I am already an editor for a technology magazine (10+ years as a side role), and can herd cats manage people while exhorting adherence to the relevant style guide. Frankly it would be great just to be on the team. 🙂

    However, I don’t have the extensive car background that would make sense for the role (only ~15 cars and have wrenched only on the older stuff). I would tend to veer off into motorcycle-related content and no one – except possibly Mercedes – would want that. 😀

    1. Same, same – 12+ years as a paid writer, 2-3 managing a writing staff at another website, very little wrenching experience beyond basic stuff but would you like to hear about my dirt bikes and quads? A dream job for sure (and DT even told me once he liked a story I wrote about buying and repairing auction cars), just not quite the right fit…

    2. With good experience and the skills to manage people, you might be a better fit than you think. Apply. Get your name in the mix. It’s relatively easy to pick up more car knowledge and experience as you go.

      When I have hired folks, I’d always prioritize organizational and people skills. People pick up the knowledge.

      I had been considering a move back to writing (even started a graduate program in technical communication), but I’ve been out of it for too long and making too much money where I am now. But if I were in a position to realistically go for the writer slot, I’d apply. Worst result leaves you in the same place you are now.

  13. Damn.

    I know I could answer Jason’s question straight out of the ballpark. I’ve owned well over 60 cars and wrenched on all of them. I’ve got an English degree with a minor in Composition. I spend so much time here (and Oppo) that my wife has filed a missing person report. Unfortunately, the extent of my body of published works online consists of a review of Doom 3 and some college academic articles.

    Damn…

        1. I would seriously almost certainly stop going anywhere else if that were to happen. I still utilize the drive frequently as they have more coverage, and about once or twice a month I trip and fall into the old lighting site and just think, wow this place sucks now. Add the last two of my favorite lighting writers, which would significantly increase the coverage here, and I am done with anywhere else.

  16. I would like to express my desire to see Raph Orlove poached from whatever job he is currently doing. I need some “These are the [adjective] cars of [adverb] [adjective]” content back in my life.

  18. Before anyone new gets hired I would like to pre-emptively say that I liked the site before they got hired. They have really changed the tone of this site. I prefer the old Autopian.

      2. Minor point: there can be some slight sauce absorption, but most of what we see is the sauce adhering to the exterior surface of the pasta, as with a spaghetti or a pappardelle, and to a lesser extent adhering to the interior of the larger diameter penne and rigatoni.

        Ideally the viscosity of the sauce should be too high to allow any migration via capillary action, but some people make thinner sauces so I suppose it could happen.

        1. Somewhere out there, perhaps deep in the Barilla labs, lays a binder of graphs plotting every combination of ideal inside diameter, outside diameter, sauce viscosity, and pasta absorptivity.

          1. Oh man, Alex the French cooking guy on YouTube has a whole obsessive series on how dried pastas work. It’s kind of incredible.

            (Also, mad props to him for declaring mayonnaise as a true mother sauce and actually backing it up with research. It’s my favorite pre-dinner snack.)

  20. motivation to work here

    I like money.

    writing experience

    I have written for money.

    leadership chops

    I DON’T LIKE IT WHEN ANYONE THREATENS THE THING THAT SENDS MONEY.

      1. Stef is obviously qualified, so maybe there’s some interpersonal weirdness, the compensation terms aren’t right, or any number of reasons.

            2. Nah I don’t know anything and you haven’t been publicly weird. I just don’t want to make any assumptions about your rapport with these folks, your job search, etc because it’s not my place and tbh I think it’s kinda crass for others to do that.

    4. @DT, @JT, @BB

      Dear Sirs and/or Madams,

      I am writing to recommend Stef Schrader for the job of Autopian RV House Mom. I have know Ms. Schrader since reading her articles at Jalopnik, reading her articles at The Drive, and reading her miscellaneous ramblings in the comments section of the present site. I feel 87% confident in assessing her as a sentient human with the capacity to type with fewer misspellings than an average garden mole. Accordingly, I believe she would be a priceless asset to The Autopian. Not “priceless” as in “invaluable,” but “priceless” in the sense that it is currently illegal to sell human beings in most parts of the world. However, sports teams trade human beings all the time. So maybe you could get a slightly rusty Type 4 Volkswagon in trade for her. I believe that a Type 4 VW would prove to be the missing link to The Autopian’s grand scheme of world conquest celebration of slightly weird vehicular transportation. Accordingly, I do not see how you pass on the opportunity to bring Ms. Schrader into The Autopian’s editorial family.

      Sincerely,
      “Mad” Maximillian Meen, Esq.

      2. Stef has the chops: see her article about pooping at various tracks. Seriously, if you can read it and not involuntarily bark laughter, then, imo, you’re a lizard-person.

        I’m meh about the Puffalumps (sorry, Stef!), but everyone has their shtick, and I certainly appreciate how far she sometimes took it. Stef doubles down on the weird.

    6. Reader strike if they don’t hire Stef. Or is that a boycott? Whatever it is, we’re doing it

      But seriously, who is a bigger car loving doofus? And what do we really want from the Autopian if not giggle ridden car mad nutjobbery?

    10. You better be applying! You have always been one of my favorites to read and you’re obviously invested in the success of this weird corner of the internet with how much you comment here, just make it official!

  22. I have joined up hoping for answers on Euro trailer hitches and similar issues that only the Autopian dares handle, and consider my membership well worth the cost. Hire away!

    1. I just want to know how strong those trailer-schlongs are. Does it bend at the curve if a trailer exceeds its max capacity, or does it just break? Why this shape? Who came up with it? Did they know it was very donglike when they designed it, or did the ensuing jokes break their innocent brain? Has anyone paired one with truck nuts for the full effect? Why are they always farting around the left lane of the Autobahn? Why are the plates usually Dutch? Why are we here? Why are any of us here? What is the meaning of life?

      So many questions.

  24. Hi, I’m writing with concerns. I noticed in your recent ad, there is not a listing for Chief BMW propagandist. Without a CBMWP, your community risks making good financial decisions. It would be a shame to see this community torn apart by the scourge of fiscal responsibility. Please consider making the advised change. Thank you, and happy motoring!

    2. I may be wrong, but I think the only way to get that job is to fight Thomas to the death for it. Your weapons would be only the contents of the emergency tool kit in a 1985 528e. It may sound easy, but Thomas is DEADLY with a safety triangle.

        1. Oh this might end up like Royal Rumble, but all weapons come from e28! I can’t wait for spirit debate though the language of Sports Entertainment!

  25. Came here for a weird hypothetical from Jason and did not leave disappointed, good job!

    That being said, who wouldn’t want to try out a Gremlin these days? It’s been so long the nostalgia factor will seal the deal. My offer would be a date of sneaking Schnapps into our milkshakes at Big Boys, then going to a drive-in double creature feature and making out the whole time.

    As for car to possess… I might go with a brand new Prius, so I could warm butts until the heat death of the universe.

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