Even in a post-Miranda Priestly cerulean speech world, fashion jobs can be seen as something un-serious. Stylist Dana Asher Levine anticipates this, and in a written interview with Lifehacker she deftly explains the psychology of style, how her work helps clients like Shonda Rhimes inhabit their best selves, and the specialised processes that go into updating the wardrobes of a dozen clients in a day.

In The Black Khan, Ausma Zehanat Khan’s latest fantasy novel, a resistance group struggles to overthrow a cruel patriarchy led by a tyrant. You know, escapist stuff. Khan’s work has been compared to George R.R. Martin’s, but it also explores issues of cultural divides and conflicts inspired by the contemporary and historical worlds. We talked to Khan about leaving a career in law to write, how she gets and gives help from fellow novelists, and how writing a book transforms the room she works in.

Kaeo Milker has enjoyed a long and eye-opening career at Blizzard Entertainment: QA, facilities management, recruiting and, now, heading up the company’s big MOBA franchise, Heroes of the Storm. You’re probably more likely to follow his advice than follow him down a lane, though; although he’s the captain of the Heroes ship, he’s quick to admit that you won’t find him at the top of the game’s leaderboards. We caught up with Kaeo at this year’s BlizzCon, and he gave some excellent advice about how to manage what you think you should do as a career versus what you’d love to do as a career.

Dee Johnson will take you to Mars before Elon Musk even launches his next car out of the atmosphere. Johnson has run shows like The Good Wife and Nashville, worked on shows such as ER and Melrose Place, and now she’s showrunner on season 2 of MARS, National Geographic’s hybrid scripted/documentary series on the big desert planet we dream nightly of escaping to.

The new season premiered this Monday; we caught Johnson to talk about her career path, what she’s reading, and what seems to be the only way to get a new TV show on the air.

Dungeons & Dragons is as intimidating as it is freeing. On one hand, you have a game that’s only limited by your imagination — and a big book o’ rules, which you’re free to disregard as you see fit. On the other hand, if you’re the Dungeon Master, you have to walk a tricky tightrope.

It’s important to give your players the freedom they need to be crazy and creative, but you also need to restrain them a bit so you can actually complete the campaign or story line you’re attempting to play.

The Lumberyard performing arts center lives a double life. Between seasons of live theatrical programming, this Hudson Valley venue rents out space for film shoots, weddings, and conferences.
With all the rental profits and performance tickets funding local art and community projects.

Adrienne Willis runs both sides of this non-profit venue as Executive and Artistic Director. We talked to her about moving the organisation up from Washington, D.C., working with performers, sponsors, and TV and film studios, and how her teammates mark urgent emails.

If you’ve ever listened to a podcast, you’ve heard of Mailchimp. (“Mail... kimp?”) We talked to Ben Chestnut, CEO and co-founder of the email newsletter company and marketing platform that grew to half a billion dollars in revenue without ever taking any venture capital. Ben reveals the email habit that ran his early hiring policy.

We last talked to Trip Adler in 2014, about expanding Scribd from a document hosting service to an ebook subscription service. Since then Scribd has kept growing. (And yes, it’s still useful even though library ebooks exist).

We talked to Adler about the binary path for startups, leaving room for impromptu meetings, and his personal reading habits.

In her 13 years at Intel, Sandra Lopez has overseen the company’s brand repositioning, built new organisations in the company, and applied her background in fashion — inside Intel’s sports group. She’s been named one of the 50 most powerful women in tech by the National Diversity Council and one of Latina Style’s top 10 Latina executives of the year, and she’s spoken to NBC News on the Silicon Valley boys club.

We talked to her about the surprising ways her background has played into her tech career, and how to responsibly manage a team.

Skype announced this week that it has added a cloud-based recording feature to its video chat service, which you can now access on almost any version of Skype save for the Windows 10 version. It’ll gain the call-recording feature “in the coming weeks,” according to the Skype blog.

Everyone's nervous before a job interview, but there are plenty of ways you can amp yourself up and shake off the jitters. Of course you need to do your research on the company, and practise answers to the most common interview questions. The more you prepare, the more confident you'll feel. In addition, I like to listen to my running playlist before any type of situation in which I'm likely to be nervous but need to impress. You probably have your own tricks, too.

Now that you've polished your resume and practiced inflating your ego a bit, you're ready to nail your job interview. You likely have answers prepared to the most common questions, and maybe even a fresh new suit, but there's one other thing to keep in mind: Your body language.

Do you ever give an imaginary TV interview in the shower about all your very important opinions? Do you wish more people would tag you in those "ask me anything" memes? Well now a bot will interview you like you're a pop star, using questions from old issues of UK music magazine Smash Hits.

As the lead product designer at WhatsApp, Charlie Deets makes decisions that affect over 1.5 billion users each month. That means solving some unusual challenges, such as building a chat interface that even illiterate users can navigate. It also means distinguishing WhatsApp's visual "stories" feature from similar features in Snapchat and Instagram.

On the latest episode of The Upgrade, we're talking about the self-proclaimed "front page of the internet", the massive online community known as Reddit. For some, Reddit is a second home, a place to hang out, post links, chat and trash talk with like-minded friends and foes. For others, it's a confusing rabbit warren with its own weird rules and etiquette, a teeming hive of enthusiasts and trolls, an overwhelming curiosity that they might visit every now and then, but who has time to learn to navigate what's essentially a complex system of message boards?

So you didn't get the job -- bummer. It stings but the process isn't over yet. Before you move on to the next potential gig, do these three things.

This week on The Upgrade, we spoke with Steve Casner, author of the book Careful: A User's Guide to Our Injury-Prone Minds. Steve is a research psychologist with NASA who studies how and why we get hurt in our everyday activities: Whether we're chopping vegetables, climbing ladders, or just walking down the street. We found out how we can stay safe without hiding in bed all day -- and why we should embrace our bad attitudes.

Some journalists spend their careers behind a desk. That's a fine way to work, depending on the beat, but it isn't for everyone. It isn't for Gianna Toboni and Isobel Yeung, who travel the world as correspondents for VICE on HBO.

Aurelia Moser is a developer, teacher, author and also a bit of a cartographer. She works at the Mozilla Science Lab with researchers to collaborate on open source projects, and is also a mentor at Girl Develop It.