Feeling Perk-y?

By: Randy Dotinga Just a few decades ago, the biggest perk you'd get out of your publisher was a turkey at Thanksgiving. Now, newspaper applicants find themselves pushing for everything from flexible schedules and domestic-partner benefits to extra vacation days and signing bonuses.

"Everything is negotiable," confided a prominent newsroom recruiter who, for obvious reasons, didn't want to be identified in this column.

But getting what you want takes some finesse and planning. If a newspaper is considering you for a job, the first thing to do is figure out which benefits you'd like to have and what your chances are of getting them.

Extra vacation time may be the easiest perk to get. While its strict union rules prevent it from being flexible in other areas, The Philadelphia Inquirer is willing to talk about that topic, said newsroom recruiter Oscar Miller. "If a person's coming in and had 10 or 15 years at a previous newspaper and three weeks of vacation, we would generally honor the same amount."

Requests for flexible schedules are also common, both during the application process and later in an employee's career. At the Detroit Free Press, for example, reporter Pat Anstett negotiated a Tuesday-Saturday schedule for eight years while she was raising her children in order to cut down on baby-sitting time. "I suggest going to an editor and not a corporate H.R. person who might not know you," she said.

But make sure any request is reasonable. Advertising reps and circulation managers generally can't telecommute from home in the comfort of their pajamas. And reporters aren't likely to be able to pick up their kids at school every day at 3 p.m., especially if that's deadline time.

On another front, it's difficult but not necessarily impossible to get an employer to budge on benefits like health insurance and pension or 401(k) plans. When he applied for a job at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, former reporter Steve Friess convinced the newspaper to pay him $100 extra a month to pay for health insurance for his partner. (The newspaper now offers domestic-partner benefits.)

Once you know which perks you want, figure out where they fit into the big picture of a job offer. Would you accept them in lieu of salary? "You need to prioritize and put some dollar value on them if you can," said Janice Roughton, a former executive recruiter and current vice president of human resources at the jointly operated Tucson Citizen and Arizona Daily Star. "Most original offers are going to be in dollar amounts. If you're willing to trade -- for example, you'll take every other Friday off instead of $5,000 in base salary -- you need to put some dollar value to make that reasonable to the person you're negotiating with."

If the employer doesn't seem to be in a hurry to talk about salary and benefits, don't jump in with comments about how you absolutely must have every Tuesday afternoon off. Whether they're in advertising or circulation or the newsroom, newspaper bosses like to think applicants are in it for more than the salary and benefits. Do your best to humor them.

"If I'm interviewing someone, and they happen to be one of the top candidates, one of the things I hope I don't hear is, 'What's in it for me?'" said Trish McConnell, director of human resources at the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune. "You want to make sure they've got passion" for more than money.

Along those lines, remember to be polite about the perks you want. Think of them as "requests," not "demands," and you'll be on the right track. "You don't want to hold them over somebody or make it sound like you're blackmailing them," the anonymous newsroom recruiter said.

Of course, you might not get what you want. But at some papers, you might find you get what you need. Consider The Oregonian in Portland. Everybody gets the same vacation time coming in (three weeks) and there's no negotiating about benefits or other perks. "We're pretty cookie-cutter," said Thomas Whitehouse, director of human resources.

That consistency extends to something else offered to Oregonian employees -- a guarantee that they will never be laid off because of economic difficulties or technological advances in the workplace. Perks don't get much better than that.