Tagged 'hiring'

How a Little Empathy Can Go A Long Way When it Comes to Hiring

Posted by Jane Turkewitz on February 4th, 2013 at 8:42 am

em •pa•thy (definition): the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another....(Source: dictionary.com)

Recruiters are matchmakers, hunters, negotiators and, most definitely, therapists. There’s not a week that goes by — or maybe even a day — when we’re not providing some sort of mental release for a job seeker frustrated with his/her search and the process as a whole. I don’t mean this as a complaint. Just a statement of reality.
A sample of things that I commonly hear:

“I had five interviews, making it all the way to the C-suite, when all off a sudden, everything went radio silent.  Nobody will return my calls or emails. I can understand if they don’t want to move forward but you’d think they could have the courtesy to just say so. A little closure, please.”
“I put a weekend’s worth of work into doing a project that was requested of me and then I never heard “boo.”  Did they just use me to get a project done for free?”
“I was hired by a company and then a week after I started, the division I... Read more

Why is recruiting for top media talent so hard?

Posted by Judy Popky on May 12th, 2011 at 12:26 pm

First off... this is my first blog post.  Ever.  I just never really think that people care about what I think.  I mean, I know I have a lot of opinions... but do you care?  Well, I guess we'll find out...
I recently relocated for a new job.  I was fairly choosy in where I wanted to go and why.  When I got here, one of my first charges (after filling out the proverbial paperwork), was to organize and staff the department for success.  I needed 5 (yep, FIVE) people to join a talented and smart, but young team already in place.
We started looking, recruiting, mining LinkedIn and all the obvious places.  Talent was really scarce. I should clarify.  GOOD talent was really scarce.
So, I know the recession hit the ad industry pretty hard.  But, it appears to have rebounded nicely for talented digital, media and developing pros.  We quickly realized that we were competing with sister companies in the same building to huge client engagements across town and across the country.
But, why is it so hard to find top talent?
I have a theory:
Back in the first dot com crash in late 2000, many of the young upstarts who opted out... Read more

Ageism and Hiring — A Little Known Fact

Posted by Jane Turkewitz on June 10th, 2009 at 12:00 am

I want to talk about Alfred Powers today. He's important, even though you don't know boo about him.
Alfred sent me this note last week in response to a post I wrote about "what recruiters DON'T like to see in a resume:"
"I'm old, probably too old to get another agency assignment, but I still have my style. Be succinct, that's my style.   One page is enough, unless you're over 80, and I am….I'm not kidding…"

He told the truth, the whole truth and nothin' but the truth in his cover and resume, starting his story in the 1950's and ending in the present day. His brutal honesty resulted in a one-page resume that highlighted his endeavors and failures without focusing at all on his accomplishments.  In other words, his resume bombed, but the absurdity of it is what makes it one of the most interesting ones I've ever seen.
Alfred, who turns 81 this month, fought in Korea for a war I have only read about. He says he's the first guy to invent the leather sneaker, which was priced too high at $15 when introduced to the world.  He spent some years copywriting in the ad agency world, but left in... Read more