This piece was adapted from a piece on Farrah Storr’s Substack, Things Worth Knowing.
If you were to look at my CV you would think I was relatively successfully. There is a long list of fancy-sounding job titles, plus a string of awards on there. There’s a couple of board roles too and a handful of national lists that I have no idea how I got on. (Influencer of the year?! Really?? Me? But I’ll take it..as indeed I did back in 2018).
My point is, it’s easy to look at a CV and think that’s the summation of a professional life. But the truth is, for every accolade and shiny job title, there is a long, dirty line of rejection, near-misses and balls-ups behind it.
And yet, I have always thought it best to be honest about what it takes to succeed at a job. I think it’s helpful to acknowledge the pain and sacrifice that can often accompany them. We talk so much about how fulfilling our jobs are, but rarely touch upon the difficulties. Jobs are like people- they are complex, multi-faceted and sometimes you just never connect. I adored many of the jobs I have listed below. In fact all my editorships were relatively happy periods of my life. But they also all came with their own difficulties.
I also wanted to list the sheer number of jobs I didn’t get. Trust me, there were a lot. I moved around a bunch in my early career. To the naked eye it appears that I seamlessly leap frogged from one position to another. But the truth is I simply applied for a hell of a lot of jobs. And most of those jobs I didn’t get.
Did I feel beat up by the sheer number of rejections I got? You bet. I saw it all through a simple, deeply flawed equation: if I didn’t get the job, it was because I wasn’t good enough.
But as I got older, and I started to interview others for jobs, I came to understand the complex matrixes behind why one candidate gets the gig, and another doesn’t. And it is almost never a personal judgement. (Okay, not always). There might be a better connection. And yes, I know that’s terribly old fashioned to say now, but that’s how it was back in my day. One candidate might have something on their CV that is completely unrelated to the job, but which the interviewer thinks could be useful. Maybe you got unlucky and all the shortlisted candidates just happened to have more qualifications than you on that occasion. The list goes on and on, and often it is simply beyond your control. Which, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pretty comforting thing to know.
So here you go: the CV of mine that has never made it into the hands of any employer or been seen or heard by any of my peers. Enjoy.
Farrah Storr
EDUCATION
1997-2001 Kings College BA Hons French/English 2:1
I literally scraped a 2:1. I felt way out of my depth the entirety of my degree. I could barely speak French and my English dissertation - defending Lolita as a ‘love’ story (what was I thinking?) got me the equivalent of a third.
EMPLOYMENT
Substack; Head of Writer Partnerships (Nov 2021-present)
I adore my current job, but I’m one of the oldest in the entire company. And it’s a start up that moves at an amazing pace. And most people outisde of the company don’t quite understand what I do. This results in me introduced at parties and social occasions as ‘Farrah, who used to edit magazines.”
ELLE; Hearst (April 2019-Present)
Dream job? Not exactly. I had to make two massive rounds of redundancies during my time here, the first lot of which I had to do in my first few weeks on the job. This, quite understandably made me deeply unpopular. I didn’t handle it the best and I still feel terrible for some of the wonderful people who left. The second lot of redundancies were even worse. The entire company went through a huge restructure, meaning I lost almost half of my team. Which then resulted in me having panic attacks whilst trying to something as simple as iron my shirt in the morning. Sure I posted pictures of me sat front row at fashion shows. And it is true that there were plenty of free handbags and fancy dinners. But behind the scenes I was paralysed with fear about losing my career. After Covid I saw magazine newsstands half in size. I witnessed paper costs shoot up. I could track with terrifying precision the drop in advertising revenue across the entire magazine sector. I heard people admit they no longer read magazines. I felt tired and frightened and worried that I might quickly become irrelevant. If we were doing ratios, I’d say ELLE was 65% anxiety; 25% sheer, unremitting graft and 10% glamour.
Cosmopolitan; Hearst (June 2015-April 2019)
Whilst Cosmo may have been my happiest editorship, it was no picnic. I lost almost 80 per cent of the team on my arrival. Getting cover stars was a complete and utter nightmare since no one, and I mean NO ONE, wanted to be on the cover of a ‘sex’ magazine. Whilst I had a bunch of support for putting a plus size model on the cover I had twice as much bile- including one death threat. One month a bunch of high profile women in media put their names to a list asking for my resignation after I wrote an article about choosing to dress modestly. (I’m still not sure what their point was. Perhaps they felt I was somehow asking women to wear burkas? Weird.) Every week was a PR nightmare. Like the time we starting selling Cosmopolitan cars, which had nothing to do with the UK version of the magazine, but which became headline news for a week because the car had a hook for your handbag. And so suddenly I branded a terrible sexist. It went on and on.
Women’s Health; Hearst-Rodale (November 2011- August 2015)
I had never been an editor before. In fact, the only reason they gave me this job was because the person they had previously hired had walked out, so they needed a last minute substitute. The entire project was one massive risk. Because everyone thought it was a completely mad time to launch a magazine (since so many had freshly closed) I was told, on accepting the job, that this was basically a trial, and that if we didn’t sell over 100,000 issues from issue 1, then we would probably abort the whole thing. As such I didn’t have a contract. My salary was 58k. Which may seem like a lot to some people, but was pretty much a salary cut for me. I only had two members of staff. We worked 14 hour days. I didn’t have a day off for an entire year. It was the hardest I have ever worked in my entire life. My hair started to fall out. I was crotchety and intolerant of everyone and everything.
Top Sante; Bauer Media (April 2011-Nov 2011) Deputy Editor
I only took this job because I needed an escape from the hell hole that was freelance life. I don’t know if I was any good at this job. All I know was that when the editorship came up, I summed up the courage to email the big boss to ask if we could meet to discuss the position, and they ignored me. Twice. Ha!
Freelance: Oct 2010-April 2011
Oh man, where to begin? I’d been living very happily in Australia for four years when we decided it was time to move back to the UK to start a family. (If you read this newsletter regularly, you’ll know how that ended. But if not, you can read about it here). I had no job to come back to, and so freelance life beckoned. Being freelance was a very low period for me. It wasn’t just relentless, it was diminishing. I lost count of the number of pitches I sent to features editors who simply ignored me. I had to chase for every single invoice to be paid. I wrote pieces I was proud of and that had taken weeks to write only for them to be ‘killed’ because the editor had changed their mind about the very story they had commissioned. (‘Killing’ a story is industry speak for a piece of writing that never gets published. Which in turn then means you only got half your fee, which in turn then makes you panic about paying the mortgage). I remember sitting on a bench in Crystal Palace Park in a pair of UGG boots and weeping after yet another day of ignored features pitches. I felt so worthless, so without purpose, so irrelevant to anyone’s life, that I seriously considered leaving journalism. Though to do what, I had no idea.
Madison magazine; ACP Magazines/Hearst (Oct 2008 – Oct 2011) Associate editor
This job was basically an escape hatch from the miserable job that came before it.
Marie Claire; Pacific Magazines (March 2008 – Oct 2008) Features director
I failed big time here. The job was simply too big for me and I made a hash of it. Every piece of copy I used to put through came back covered in red marks. And I was the features director! I was so embarrassed. Though I’m sure it’s not true, I started to feel like the bad smell in the room that no one wants to be near. I spent many teary nights over this job.
New Woman; Emap (May 2007 – March 2008) Features director
Glamour; Conde Nast Publications (Oct 2005 - April 2007) Deputy features editor
Eve; Haymarket (April 2005 – Oct 2005) Senior writer
Good Housekeeping; National Magazines (May 2004 - April 2005) Features writer
I’m pretty sure I tried to escape this job a couple of times by applying for every single features writer role that came up. I remember I got an interview at Instyle magazine. I wanted to work in fashion so badly. I remember I queued for about four hours to get into a Pretty Ballerinas sample sale, since I couldn’t afford their shoes at full price. I bought a pair of leopard-print ballet pumps and a DVF wrap dress I’d won on eBay . I thought I looked the part. But a few days later a friend, who worked at the same magazine, told me she overheard the editor saying my style was ‘too classic.’ The job went to a woman who wore cool scuffed leather jackets and heavy Michael Cane glasses. And I never wore ballet pumps and wrap dresses again.
Woman and Home; IPC Media (Dec 2002 - May 2004) Features assistant
I don’t think anyone would have said I was editor material when I took on this role. I pretty much almost got sacked six months in for stuffing up over al load of admin I had let languish. Stills scars me to this day.
OTHER EXPERIENCE
And by the way, here’s a list of all the jobs I didn’t get.
CommissIoning editor, GQ
I was deputy editor of Top Sante at this point, and felt so trapped in middle market magazines that I was prepared to take a job several rungs down the masthead. Except I didn’t even make it past the first interview!
Features Director, ELLE UK
Apart from Vogue, where, at that time, I knew my accent was too northern and my schooling too pedestrian to even get a foot in the door, ELLE UK was the place I wanted to be. But I was still living in Australia at the time. I remember doing an interview with Lorraine Candy, the then editor, from the other side of the world. I so desperately wanted her to see my potential but an interview down a crackly phone line did me no favours. I knew the minute I put the phone down I hadn’t got the job. In the end it went to a whip smart woman called Alice, who I then hired as my deputy editor when I went on to edit ELLE and who became a wonderful colleague and friend. But yes, for a little while I hated her for getting that job over me.
Deputy Editor, Cosmopolitan
A friend had taken pity on me and given me some office work on Fabulous magazine when I was in the depths of my freelance despair when this job came up. I was so excited to get an interview. They made me do a tonne of work for the second round, which I submitted on time and to word count. Except I never heard back from them, ever again.
Features writer, Cosmopolitan
Pretty sure I applied for this job twice. The first time I didn’t get seen. The second time I didn’t make it past the first interview.
Vogue Talent competition
Ah, The Vogue Talent competition! I lost count of the number of times I entered this. I never once got shortlisted and every year I would read the winning entry with burning envy. I remember one year I submitted a story about my relationship with my mother and was so convinced of its genius that I genuinely thought my entry had been lost in the post when I wasn’t shortlisted. To this day I still remember the name of the chap who won. I believe he works at The Telegraph now. I’m sure he’s a lovely person. But for the longest time I seethed with envy every time I saw his by-line. Thankfully, not any more….
Farrah Storr is the Head of Writer Partnerships for Substack UK. She also writes the popular-culture newsletter Things Worth Knowing