We just wanted to point out that our firm has received a massive increase of advertising agency resumes being sent in for the past week. On average we received 1-2 a day last year… now we are receiving 10 to 40 per day.. roughly 1000 resumes per month … they are literally pouring in. HR is being overwhelmed with the volume of resumes. We’re growing, but not like that… nor will we ever want to grow like that. Irresponsible growth is what forced many of these massive layoffs in the first place.
Just a word of advice, if you are looking for a job, blindly e-mailing your books and resume in isn’t the way to get a job. The way to get a job in this recession isn’t to just peddle your books, the better way to get a job is to setup a search engine friendly blog, post your thoughts on advertising in todays economy, make it robust, complete with your books an examples online.
It’s not the old boys network of BDA’s anymore, and judging on the volume of resumes being sent it, it’s not going to be a BDA world anymore.
Send the agency you are applying for the link to your blog / website via Linkedin , Twitter, Facebook, get your “i need a job” site on the main page of Digg screaming why someone needs to hire you…anything other than blindly sending in an e-mail.
The reason you want to do it this way is simple, it proves you know how to build a decent blog or website, it proves you know how to use social media tools, it proves you understand at least some aspects of how business is being run and advertised today.
Rank for the keywords you feel that agency wants.
The chances are the owner or person in power of hiring will be of course trolling their own search terms in Google (not their trademarked name, but the name you think they are looking for. Trying to rank for their trademarked name will results in lawsuits not employment), seeing your name up there in the results will force them to take a peek.
Trust us on this, sending an e-mail with some Pepsi ad that you created that cost Pepsi millions in print media spends to distribute isn’t cutting it, not by a long shot. (we singled out this one because this poor sap sent in a 30 meg e-mail filled with TIFF images) and a Microsoft Word document as his resume to boot.
You have to keep in mind that the word “advertising” has changed, years ago we had a long conversation regarding the definition of advertising, it came down to the many of the holding companies didn’t view Advertising the same way we did. “SEO isn’t Advertising” “Social Media isn’t Advertising” Big bills and massive media spends were the only things that were considered “ads” hence their lack of investment in our field of advertising, and hence why we are flooded with resumes from Ogilvy, BBDO, Arnold and overall almost every agency of size within a holding company. Our problem is that these ad agencies largely never trained their employees on Advertising… or at least how we define it. … our view is polar opposite on Advertising, what’s the point of throwing up marketing material on print media if no one reads it, or if they do read it.. they can’t find it the generic products name in the search engine to buy it or they are not reading good reviews on individual blogs about the products.
What do we know… we are only the ones collecting BDA resumes.
Good luck and good hunting… worth noting during the interview process it’s fair to ask the HR person if the Advertising Agency is profitable. Last thing you want is after all this hard work to be handed a pink slip again.
