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We need a hand around here in three different ways. Do you have wheels? A way with words? Outstanding office sidekick potential?

For the writing positions, we’d like a sample of your writing, along with a resume, and if you don’t have a ton of experience, and feel trapped in a cycle of “… but you need experience to get a job, and you need a job to get experience,” we agree. We’ll take a mock story: write something and submit it.

Wanted: TWO Writers for the Local Perspectives Section of our Print Issues

Are you up to date on topical and tangly news and city issues? Can you be engaging and enlightening while not being one of those writers who just like to hear themselves speak? Do you watch city council meetings instead of Netflix? Do you aim to make a point and expose the beating heart of a piece, or do you merely regurgitate fact? More importantly, do you have what it takes to replace the irreplaceable husband and wife duo we’re losing in Jacob Allderdice and Sharon Ho moving to Toronto?

You’ll need to be confident you can pitch a story idea or two to our editor once a month; you’ll need to be that kind of person: someone so attuned to city issues and news that you don’t need some editor assigning you a story, because we all know passionate writing stems from a writer’s own reaction to their city. But you’ll also need to be versatile enough to write an article on a topic assigned by our editor, if he decides there’s a topic our paper really ought to discuss that month. More than any other section of the paper, this is no gig for people who can’t come up with their own article ideas.

Rate of pay: $75 / 500-word article.

Wanted: ONE Visual Arts Writer for the Arts Section of our Print Issues

Do you have an eye on the local visual arts scene, and a finger on its pulse? Can you respect and write about art that you wouldn’t hang on your own walls if they gave it to you free, or are you one of those highly opinionated people who think your own opinion is gospel? Have you written about art, and can you talk just the right amount over our heads about it, without losing us? Can you do the artist justice with your well-articulated musings? Can you make Joe Blow as excited about art as your high brow self is? Can you bring stories to us, as easily as we can pitch them to you? Can you write an exhibit review as easily as a general news piece? Can you name twenty visual artists in town in twenty seconds, and have you visited an exhibit in the last two weeks?

Rate of pay: $75 / 500-word article.

Wanted: 1 Delivery Driver, Once a Month, for Our Kenmount Drive - Mt. Pearl Route

It’s every delivery driver’s dream gig because guess what: you won’t have to worry about restocking this route throughout the month (our staff does that). You just need to show up at our printer once a month, with a vehicle that can take 12 stacks of 200 papers … which basically any 4-door car is able to do (if you empty your trunk and backseat). You’ll be given a meticulously crafted Excel spreadsheet that lists about 35 stops in the order you need to do them in. Simply plop the papers in our blue Overcast racks, while being polite to the mobs of devoted readers as they swarm you, plucking fresh copies from your arms. Only moderate strength is required, and enough patience and care to place them in the racks properly. It’s a great gig for a bit of extra cash that we prefer to give to starving artists looking to supplement “income,” and likewise to new parents, etc. But it’s reliability we’re after (someone who only bails on their route 2 or 3 times a year, to go on tour, give birth,and that sort of thing).

Rate of pay: $50 for about 2 hours work; job includes invites to staff parties where the beer and food is free.

Wanted: 1 Outstanding Office Sidekick (1 Day a Week or 2 Afternoons)

There is no job description, because this job is as fluid and awesome and essential to the paper as you are. Our editor/publisher Chad Pelley is only one person, wearing too many hats, with too much on his to-do list. You will come into the Overcast office one day a week (or 2 afternoons) and attack that to-do list with the passion of someone who understands the spirit of this paper and wants to help it continue to grow … which is something it can’t do when the publisher/editor is overwhelmed by the little but oh-so-important things.

A shift might look like this: prepare invoices for the companies that bought ads in the last paper (there’s a template, you simply change names and amounts owed), and email them out, then write a web post about the film festival happening that week, then send a polite email to the advertiser who owes us four grand (from four months ago), and then maybe try and kick another dent in writing our online restaurant listings. Oh, and before you go, can you plan a staff party for next month? Also, copy and paste the 32 articles in our print issue into this software program that turns them into web articles? (Some understanding of WordPress-hosted websites will make you ideal, but that is a skill that can be taught. It’s very much like writing in Microsoft Word, and nothing Chad is capable of, in terms of technology, is something you couldn’t learn.) Basically, you come in from 11-5 one day a week (or two afternoons from 2-5) to a to-do list, a really random to-do list, and you scratch a few things off of it. Also, you have to deal with Chad’s taste in music, but he can turn the music down low, or put on something you’d enjoy more.

Rate of pay: Let’s say minimum wage + $5, for six hours a week, which will be $360 a month.
$15 an hour for one day a week, from 11-5 (or two afternoons a week, from 2-5, if you’d prefer).

Send an impressive email to [email protected] to apply for these positions.