Talking bout my generation (in the workplace) with The Daily Aus

Sam Koslowski and Zara Seidler produce news for young people, by young people. Together, they started The Daily Aus in 2017 which, over the next six years, grew from a passion project to a successful, independent media business employing 14 people and more than 450,000 followers on Instagram. 

Indeed sat down with the self-proclaimed news nerds to discuss their first ever jobs, their workday routines, what makes a good boss, and the biggest misconceptions people have about Generation Z.

How do you start your day?

Sam: My mindfulness moment is making a coffee on my beautiful home machine (the Breville Pro Express), while reading the news.

Zara: Working on our newsletter that goes out at 7am. I do a sweep of the morning news to make sure everything is up to date and ready to go. I read about five different outlets before 7am, probably talk to Sam about something, and then start the day.

What did you want to be when you ‘grew’ up?

Sam: A journalist.

Zara: A teacher.

Can you tell us a bit about your first ever job?

Sam: I handed out sexual health information on behalf of my local council and was yet to kiss a girl.

Zara: I sold inflatable pool toys and it turns out I am not a great saleswoman. I have taken that through my career and that is why Sam does the selling.

Many children born today will end up doing jobs that don’t exist right now. How can they prepare for a career they don't even know about?

Sam: Read a lot of fiction and have a disposition to an open mindset, ready to adapt to new challenges and be flexible. Avoid rigidity.

Zara: Develop a critical framework through which to understand the world. Something that’s really important is always being able to analyse the situations you’re in, and what can come of them.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about Gen Z with regards to work?

Zara: We’re lazy.

Sam: They don’t care about the work they’re doing.

What qualities make a great boss?

Zara: Empathy. Strength matched with compassion. We saw that with Jacinda Ardern — there was a way to match strength with compassion in leadership in a way that’s really wonderful and productive. It’s what I hope to be as a leader and something I have always admired in other people.

Sam: Two things I would add to that are the ability to celebrate wins and mark really positive times, and the ability to observe small things with your employees that mean a lot to them and play into it. A basic example of this is if there’s a particular chocolate bar they like, it might cost you $2 to shout them, but it will make their month.

Who do you admire professionally? Any heroes?

Zara: My mentor who works in a completely different industry but runs a very big organisation and she has modeled how to bring that compassion and strength in leadership. I love the fact we aren’t in the same industry, but have so many universal experiences

Sam: Stephen Colbert and the way he’s made the dry, entertaining, is something I think about every day as why we exist. I love the way he makes people laugh and cry at the same time.

What’s your superpower?

Zara: Attention to detail.

Sam: Thinking six months ahead.

What’s more important, passion or paycheck?

Sam: They’re equally important because a paycheck makes you feel valued. For young people who are renting and want to go out and have fun at the weekend, you need to feel like your work values you. 

Zara: I agree. One can’t really exist without the other and I think it’s fanciful to pretend that they can.

Who is your work bestie? 

Zara: Sitting right next to me, Sam.

Sam: Zara.

What is your guilty pleasure? 

Sam: Can we answer each others’? Zara’s guilty pleasure is watching auditions on YouTube from reality TV shows like American Idol or America’s Got Talent or The Voice.

Zara: I’ve never watched a full season in my life but I love the blind auditions though! I get down a real rabbit hole of procrastination once I get into them.

Sam: Zara, what’s mine, or one of mine?

Zara: You’ve got so very many. Sam watches the most random documentaries and gets really obsessed with them. 

Sam: Really obscure documentaries. And Stephen Colbert and my beloved Sydney Swans.

What podcast do you keep going back to? 

Zara: He’s more of a podcast guy than I am.

Sam: I listen to a lot of media industry podcasts from the US. There’s one called the Rebooting Show that I really love. It helps me hear from other industry people. There’s one called Lenny’s Podcast that's about how the best digital products are made, so they might talk to the guy who invented Slack or the person who invented the app for CNN and talk through the process of doing it. And also The Imperfects, I listen to that every week.

Zara: And off the back of that, How I Built This. And especially hearing from Mel Perkins who started Canva. It was great to hear from another female founder who has had such immense success, but is still so humble.

What would we find on your Instagram Discover page?

Zara: I recently got engaged and am planning a wedding and Instagram knows! And so every single thing on my discover page is a wedding dress. Every single thing. There is nothing else. Apparently, I am nothing but a wedding dress. Sam is also getting married and yet his doesn’t have any wedding dresses. Sounds gendered!

Sam: The top post on my Instagram explore page is how to make Instagram work for you. And people making fancy coffees because I watch a lot of videos of people making coffee.

What’s the best thing about your job?

Zara: Getting to meet really interesting people and getting to learn on the job and being ok to learn on the job and to do it with my best friend.

Sam: I was going to say doing it with my best mate! But the other best thing is just doing the news and performing that service for young people who are learning about the world around them.

The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Indeed.