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Editor Interview Questions

"Responsible for reviewing and evaluating content, editors are highly attentive to detail, organized, and collaborative. In an interview, expect to be asked about how you work with deadlines, your toolbox of editing systems, and where you get your ideas for stories. Especially desirable are candidates with strong communication skills who can work well in teams."

Top Editor Interview Questions & How to Answer

Question 1

Question #1: What's your process to maintaining deadlines?

How to answer
How to answer: When working as an editor, you'll face deadlines when you must provide the work back to the writer or project manager. Highlight any tools you use to track and manage deadlines, such as a calendar or task management system. You can also use this question to describe your work ethic and situations in which you've faced and maintained tight deadlines for clients or team members. This question also works well to discuss your prioritization skills.
Question 2

Question #2: How do you maintain focus when handling the mundane aspects of editing?

How to answer
How to answer: Editors often face tedious and monotonous tasks, such as proofreading, checking sources, and fact-checking. When answering a question about maintaining your focus, talk about any processes you have in place to stay alert as you review other people's words. For example, if you read sentences aloud when assessing grammatical correctness or use a digital tool to check facts, describe these habits.
Question 3

Question #3: Describe your approach to offering constructive feedback.

How to answer
How to answer: An editor often has to provide constructive feedback to writers and content experts. They need to be able to do so in a way that benefits the other party while maintaining a professional and positive tone. Outline your communication skills and ability to provide feedback in a way that doesn't generate a negative or defensive response.

11,602 editor interview questions shared by candidates

Describe your research experience? If you weren’t in science publishing, what would be another potential career path? Would you be comfortable with reviewing articles outside of your field of expertise? What is one thing you would change about the peer review / publishing process? What are the journals that you normally think of / enjoy reading? What is a recent article that you read that was outside of your expertise, but enjoyed, and why? What are our main competitors, and how would you rank them? How could we better promote our journal to others? Would our journal be something of interest to your field? If you were editor-in-chief, what would be the biggest change you would make for this journal? Who would you recruit for an editorial board? What would be your priorities? How would you respond to an author who had critiques about the journal or was mad about their review? What are your thoughts on double-blind review?
avatar

Associate Editor

Interviewed at Springer Nature

4★
Oct 18, 2020

Describe your research experience? If you weren’t in science publishing, what would be another potential career path? Would you be comfortable with reviewing articles outside of your field of expertise? What is one thing you would change about the peer review / publishing process? What are the journals that you normally think of / enjoy reading? What is a recent article that you read that was outside of your expertise, but enjoyed, and why? What are our main competitors, and how would you rank them? How could we better promote our journal to others? Would our journal be something of interest to your field? If you were editor-in-chief, what would be the biggest change you would make for this journal? Who would you recruit for an editorial board? What would be your priorities? How would you respond to an author who had critiques about the journal or was mad about their review? What are your thoughts on double-blind review?

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