13. Chapter 13 #2
The most exciting thing at the moment wasn’t this agency per se.
It was the job. Literary agent. I’d spent the last 24 hours researching what agents do—and what their assistants do—and I was enthralled, to say the least. It was everything I never knew I wanted.
I was born for this job. I just knew I had to do this.
Now I just had to sell myself to some strangers. I was pretty good at that.
“Thank you, Rainn. This means a lot.” I smiled and gave him a partial hug. “Now go. I’ve got it from here.”
No sooner did he walk away than the door opened, and a tall, athletic-looking woman opened the door. “Annie York?”
“I am she,” I said, smiling.
“We’re ready for you. Come on in,” said the woman. “I’m just going to pop down to the kitchen for a moment.”
“Oh … sure,” I said, maintaining my smile. Odd, but OK. I walked into the room, and before me sat eight people on one side of a long rectangular table, all staring at me.
“Wow, OK. A lot of you today. I mean …” I said. Foot in mouth. Foot in mouth. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m not normally this eloquent.” Pause, blank stares, dead silence. “Hi, I’m Annie York.”
“Hi, Annie” and “Nice to meet you” came a chorus of voices and polite smiles, even a few laughs .
Whew, not a total bomb yet.
An older woman stuck out her hand. “Hello, I’m D’Elaina, but people just call me Laina. I’m the senior agent on the team.” She pointed to her left. “This here is Sofia Jackson. We’re the two agents who recently lost our assistant, so the open position will be working closely with us.”
Sofia smiled at me. “Please, have a seat. We’ll get started soon, when Jardin returns.”
I returned the smile. My face was going to hurt by the end of this interview. Why were there nine people in the room? I wasn’t applying to become the CEO, after all.
The tall woman returned, a Gatorade and a pack of wheat crackers in hand. “Ms. York, sorry about the wait. I’m Jardin Floquet, HR director. We spoke on the phone after Robin passed along the referral.”
After I stood to shake her hand, I carefully smoothed my skirt and sat back down. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Ms. Floquet, and all of you.”
“Call me Jardin,” she said, sitting in the vacant seat to the right of Laina across from me.
“It’s nice to meet you too, Annie. I want to explain first why you’re going to be grilled by a nine-person interview panel.
We do tend to accelerate the interview process for referrals and of course internal candidates, when applicable.
Perhaps just as important in this case, though, is that we are looking to fill a vacant seat rather quickly.
The man holding this particular assistant position had to relocate very suddenly, and the person we were looking to replace him with did not pass the background checks, leaving us in a tough spot where poor Sofia and Laina have been without an assistant for close to two months now. ”
“To their credit, our other agents’ assistants have helped fill the gap in the meantime, and they’ve been amazing in doing as much as they can,” Sofia offered.
“But they have their own busy workloads, including some co-agenting, so everyone’s been stretched thin.
Work–life balance is impossible to guarantee in a business like this, but we do try to set up our team for success,” said Jardin.
And then she smiled widely before taking a long drink of her purple sports drink.
“I sound like an HR handbook, don’t I? I’m actually going to be quiet and let the agent team take over most of the interview from here. ”
Everyone looked at me for a response, so I smiled graciously. “I appreciate the explanation. It is great to meet all of your agents and to get a sense of the makeup of your team.”
So far, so good . I could fit in here. And they need someone ASAP—I just need to seal the deal .
I considered telling them I’d start tomorrow if that would help, but … no. That sounded desperate.
“So, Annie,” Laina said, “I do want to introduce you to the rest of the team first. Starting from that end is Jessa, then Caroline …” I tried to mentally associate the names with faces quickly, but I found myself forgetting many of the names as soon as I heard them.
When Laina finished, I said, “It’s great to meet you all,” hating how cliché that sounded but knowing it was the normal response.
“We do our interviews a little differently here. We’re going to mostly avoid the typical ‘why do you want this job’ and ‘tell me about yourself’ questions and jump to some more specific but perhaps nontraditional ones, because we want to get to know you and because, as you know, we already asked the generic ones when you submitted your application.
So, with that said, we’re going to do a round robin of questions, like a typical panel, if that works for you,” Laina said.
As if I have a choice.
I nodded, almost giggling at the absurdity. Did anyone ever say “No, that doesn’t work for me?” Probably someone did; Rainn’s HR friend had said some people were just completely clueless about interview etiquette or even just common sense.
Near the far end of the table, an agent named Abi asked me the first question. “Who are your top three favorite authors?”
I blinked in surprise. “That is specific, but I’m happy to answer. I’ll admit to some recency bias here, but I’m going with Ali Hazelwood, Charles Dickens, and Sally Rooney. ”
“By recency bias, do you mean that they’re your favorites because you read them recently or because they’re relatively recent authors (compared to, say, Dante or Aristotle)?” Abi asked.
I smiled. “Ah, they’ve been recent favorites. I change favorites fairly often because I become very passionate and engaged in the books I read.”
Laina spoke up. “Do you think that’s a good skill for an agent or assistant to have? Or could it set a person back, becoming too emotionally involved in what you’re reading?”
I tilted my head slightly as I gave this some thought.
“Good question. I think it could go either way, and a person needs balance. Too much emotional involvement in a book could make it difficult if not impossible to notice fatal flaws that would be crucial for an agent to spot, but too much emotional distance would mean we couldn’t get into the minds of our readers and couldn’t do a good job of anticipating what would sell. ”
I scanned all their faces anxiously. It was a good, safe, and maybe smart answer, but it was perhaps a risky one since it could be, well, wrong.
Most panelists smiled, except for Laina and one other agent whose name I’d already forgotten.
Laina hadn’t smiled much, actually. She did not appear to be the overly smiling type.
Abi nodded in thanks at my answer, and the woman next to him took her turn.
The next few questions were fairly straightforward, not requiring particularly difficult or controversial answers.
They asked about my favorite and least favorite genres, the novel I’d hated most in college, the current author I’d most like to sign as an agent, what kind of book I’d write if I ever wrote a book, and so on.
When it was her turn, Laina asked a bigger-picture question, with a shrewd look in her eye.
“The agent assistant role is ideal for developing talented individuals to become agents, and we like to hire assistants who are interested in that career trajectory so we can promote from within. So I’m going to ask you bluntly: is it your career goal to become a literary agent?
” A couple of the agents glanced at Laina with raised eyebrows, as though they weren’t quite prepared for her blunt words or sharp tone.
Jardin merely continued eating crackers while looking intently at me for a response.
After a brief moment of hesitation, I smiled and looked at Laina first and then around the room at the others.
“That’s a great question, and I’ll answer it honestly.
My answer is yes, I want to be an agent.
But I only discovered this recently. Just a few weeks ago, I was a freelance copyeditor for a small nonfiction publisher, and I had no notion of wanting to be an agent.
I realized though, long overdue, that the solitary and often dull work of nonfiction editing wasn’t for me.
I didn’t belong in that world. I don’t hate editing, but on its own, it wasn’t fulfilling.
I love reading, I love fiction, I love variety and new challenges, and I love people .
I’m an extrovert who adores books. Learning about what a literary agent does, I felt like …
it was love at first sight. I fell in love with the job description.
As cheesy as that sounds. I want to work hard and learn this business and make it my life. ”
Everyone stared at me, mostly with what seemed like respect in their eyes. They all seemed to be waiting for Laina to respond. Laina cracked a small smile, finally. “Thank you, Annie.”
“On that note,” Sofia said, running her hand over her shiny, black styled hair, “we do also want applicants to be aware that a substantial portion of the assistant job is administrative support. We do have a full-time office manager, Ernesto, but most of the support specific to agents comes from the agent assistant role. So, for example, if we ran out of staples or needed brochures printed, we’d probably contact Ernesto, but we’d rely on you to take care of meeting planning, royalty payments, social media, that sort of thing. ”
I nodded. “I did assume that would be the case, and I’m eager to take on any and all responsibilities that will give me more insight into the whole process from start to finish.
I do like a variety of tasks too, so I think juggling all of these different kinds of things will be perfect for me.
I think you mentioned co-agenting as well? ”
“Yes, that doesn’t happen right away, but as you get more experience, you may be able to take on clients of your own in collaboration with an agent.” Sofia smiled and added, “It’s sort of a stepping stone to a full agent position.”
“That sounds wonderful,” I said. My cheek muscles were starting to feel tired.
When they asked whether I was currently employed and when I would be able to start if offered the position, I debated on whether to tell them about my Bookshop internship.
Should I continue doing the internship if I become an agent assistant?
Would that be taking on too much? I would look like a flake to Hakeem if I quit already, and that was a terrible start to my new career path.
Plus, I wanted to do it—the internship was kind of my baby, and I wanted it, almost as much as this agent position.
And I should be open about it with any prospective employer.
With that in mind, I told them about the internship and my plans to continue doing it, on the side.
Clearly, the agency would be my first priority; the unpaid work at the bookstore would have to work around important agency business.
If it became too difficult to manage both, I’d quit the bookstore role or delegate more of it to Sai or someone else.
Sai, despite her initial frosty reception, seemed surprisingly interested in hearing more about my book club ideas lately.
After nearly two hours of questioning, the interview was over.
Everyone stood to shake my hand as they filed out, and I was so sweaty that going home and showering seemed more appealing than it had in a long time.
I noticed that Sofia was quite tall and Laina was quite short.
This was interesting, as Sofia was a bit soft-spoken and Laina seemed anything but.
As I left the building, I reflected on the people I’d met.
The two of them would be interesting to work with.
I felt like Sofia could become a friend.
Laina seemed almost hostile or at least reserved, which was a little concerning; I would need to get to the bottom of that.
I really didn’t enjoy letting conflicts with friends and coworkers linger.
I’d dealt with that long enough with my family over the years.
Well, one person in particular. Ugh. Thinking about my mother was never a good idea, and today of all days, I didn’t want to dwell on that.
Ah well, it was a beautiful day, and I’d had a stellar interview … at least I thought so. And I had my very first book club to look forward to tomorrow night. I was so excited I’d almost forgotten about baking cookies until late last night, when I remembered and wrote a reminder note for myself.
Mmm, cookies .