Many Agencies Need To Rethink Their Websites

A candidate of mine who I had not heard from for a while asked me to take a look at the website of the agency he was working for.  He was very proud of it.  It is a smallish agency – maybe fifty people and his description of it on the phone sounded fabulous.  The agency was caring, successful, growing, had a nice list of clients and projects.  Just the kind of place I like to recruit for.  I was really disappointed with their website.

No client list.  A short statement of philosophy but lacking the fervor with which my friend described the agency. Some creative work was on line, but limited description.  The way they showed their print ads, especially those in reverse type, the body copy was unreadable.  The website had no listing of management (so of course there were no management bios).  And the contact information was limited, giving an “info” email address and a phone number, but no name to call.  I knew very little more about the agency than I did before I went to their website.

Sadly, this isn’t unusual.  It is true of agencies of all size.  It is unfortunate when the site doesn't give the simplest of information.

Most advertiser companies subscribe to the Redbook.  Historically, it was a great place to go to see background information – account lists, billings, principal officers and department heads, office addresses, etc.  Ironically, the Redbook (or its competitor published by AdWeek) should have been obviated by the web long ago.  But that hasn’t happened.  In fact, if you go to the web and look up most of the big agencies, the information that can be found in the Redbook simply isn’t there.  And when it is there, it is really hard to find.

But it is not just the big agencies. It is, in my opinion, most ad agencies.

My opinion is that most of these websites are over designed and difficult to navigate. And they are controlled by creative people where design tops function and practicality.

From my point of view, many of these sites are confusing.  Some have long, unnecessary (in my opinion) introductions which cannot be by-passed, or if the intros can be turned off, it is sometimes difficult to determine how to skip them.  Once in the site, it is difficult to tell where the information is. Often the most commonly sought information is hidden behind other data.  I have seen management listed under "philosophy" and clients listed under "Our work".   Pick your favorite agency and go on their web site.  If it is a network agency, try to isolate a particular office; in many cases it is impossible or, listed generally.  The very information which is in the Redbook is nowhere to be found.   

If I were an agency, I would consult with some of the search consultants to determine what should be on the site.  I cannot understand why all agency sites don’t list the simplest information:  Client lists (by location), billings, key players by location including HR (so many of these sites list jobs but do not give the name of the HR person; I understand why this is done, but it is almost rude.), and, finally, show samples of work - digital, print, broadcast.  Shockingly, many of them don’t show their web work at all.  I also believe that these sites should show awards and other recognitions they have received. If I were a prospective employee, this is the stuff I would want to read.  Ditto if I were a prospective client.

Almost every agency shows a section on PR and is proud to show all the press releases of the past year or so.  In many cases, this information is actually irrelevant, in my opinion.

The problem is that it appears that the website is handled by a creative committee while the Redbook information is handled by HR or PR.  The web info is often given to web designers and web strategists who are not connected to new business or human resources.  I have been told by several new business people that the simplest changes and updates of their web sites end up being discussed and considered by huge creative committees. 

I cannot help but think that these days the first place a new business prospect would go to for information about a prospective new agency is the web.  If they cannot isolate the particular information or office that they are looking for, it might possibly leave a lasting negative impression of the firm.

Just my thoughts on something most agencies don't want to face and deal with.

Are Phone Calls Rude?

Back in May I published a post entitled “eMails Are Hurting Us”.  The essence of it was that it was important for executives to actually talk to each other. This post is an extension of that one.

The other day, I published a comment on Facebook, “Heard something scary the other day. The 18 year old daughter of a friend of mine was trying to set up an appointment via email and commented to her father that she was not getting a response.  He told her to call.  Her response, ‘Calling would be rude.’  OMG, it is a whole new world.”  My Facebook feed generated a vigorous discussion, both pro and con.  I thought it worthy of posting to see what my friends and readers think.

No question that the twenty-something’s see the world differently than we do.  They may be right.  Technology has changed everything. 

Vs

Let me put the father-daughter conversation in context.  She was trying to get an internship. I think that if the company did not respond, he was perfectly justified in telling her to call.  Context is everything.

As my daughter, Liz Gumbinner, suggested on Facebook, it depends on context. Liz does not like getting calls for solicitations.  Her attitude is that if someone emails, she can ignore it, delete it or file the note and answer it at her leisure.  A call, especially one on her cell, may come at an inopportune time and is intrusive.

One of my friends commented that she does not like calls at all. Another commented that, “…in advertising, a candidate who didn’t call would concern me that they would be afraid to call a client or to be aggressive enough to survive.  This is a candidate I would have…doubts about.”

I have had clients who prefer emails to set up appointments; I have others who like phone calls.  I guess it depends on personal preferences.  One thing I know.  I like calls to set up appointments.  The human touch and hearing a voice is a great way to start. If they get voice mail, smart callers speak slowly; leave their phone number, repeating it twice (cell phones all too often break up just at the critical time in the message) and they also leave their email address so the person who gets the call has a choice of response. 

I agree that solicitations are now often best done by email.  Solicitations on my cell and via text are verboten. Phone solicitations, depending on their nature, are mostly not ok, but, these days with voice mail, can either be deleted or answered later.  I sometimes answer my phone in the office; when those calls are solicitations, I get really annoyed, especially those trying to get me to switch my phone carrier or real estate brokers trying to get me to move (I am on a bad list. Somehow commercial brokers are always trying to show me space, but my lease runs through 2015.) The volume of these calls is astounding.  There is one exception, stock brokers.  Once upon a time, they did a lot of cold calling; I miss those calls because, occasionally, they had good advice.  Anyway,  I have a policy of returning all calls or emails, except solicitations.

One thing for sure, five or eight years ago, I would receive six or eight calls every hour.  Today, these are all emails and I am lucky to receive eight calls in a whole day.  I find this rather surprising.  People send me emails with their résumés.  If I have not met them, I barely read the cover note but go right to the résumé to see if I want to meet them.  But I prefer those who I do not know to call me so I can hear their voice and make a judgment about their demeanor.  And of course I always like to hear from my friends on the phone.  In business, there is no substitute for human contact. 

As for social media, everyone users them differently.  Some people use Facebook only for personal friends.  I use LinkedIn only for people I actually know; If strangers want to know what I am cooking, I am happy to have them “friend” me.  But receiving correspondence on LinkedIn, especially from friends who I know have my email address, is annoying.  It simply requires me to take extra steps to respond rather than just pressing “reply”. 

However, I don’t consider social or real business calls or emails to be rude.

How do you use email versus the phone?

In a Job Hunt, There is No Such Thing as an Informational Interview

I always tell candidates, especially juniors, that there is no such thing as an informational interview.  If someone agrees to see you it is because there is the possibility of a job, either now or in the near future.

When people at companies are really, really busy, they just don’t see people.  Once someone agrees to see you, there is probably something in your background that they are interested in – it could be as mundane as your school, but it could be your experience or your perspective, based on your background.  Once they have agreed to see you, your interview should be approached as if they had a specific job in mind.  Besides that, even when there is no specific job, during your interview there may be something you say or an experience you discuss that rings a bell with the interviewer and they end up realizing that you can solve a problem they have.  This could lead to them actually making a job for you.  It happens all the time.

Why is this advice important?  Because, if you approach an interview thinking that it is just for information, your interview will be different than if you believe there is a job.  It has to do with mind set. Informational interviews, if purely that, tend to be casual meet and greet affairs.  But a real interview becomes purposeful and directed, which is what every candidates should want.

All interviews, no matter what level you are (even entry level) are based on the same premise:  past success is indicative of future potential.  You must communicate your past successes and how you achieved them.  If you go just for information, you are very apt to just chit-chat and then forget to let people know who you really are.

While the purpose of any interview is to gather information about the company you are seeing, the objective of an interview, whether for a specific job or just to meet someone, should be to get passed on.  If you are seeing someone with the mindset that you are only there for information, you could easily forget to determine if there are others you should also meet.

Even when an interviewer tells you that there is no job available just now, it is really not an informational interview. 

At the end of the interview there are a couple of questions which must be asked.  First, ask for the order.  Every salesman knows this. Jobs go to the person who asks for them.  Make sure the person you are seeing knows that you are interested.

Second, ask if there are other people within the organization you might meet.  You can also ask if they know people outside their company with whom they might connect you to.  Don’t push too hard, however – no one likes to be bullied by an interviewee.

Finally, ask how they would like you to follow up.  When should you call or email and which do they prefer?  Then be sure to do what you are told, when you are told to do it.

Hire People, Not Résumés

When companies lose an executive, they go into panic mode.  Especially advertising agencies.  Agencies are so focused on filling a vacant job that they forget to define the issues that they face when replacing the lost executive..  The loss of an executive should be an opportunity for introspection.  It is a time to figure out how to improve upon the departing executive, no matter what level he or she is.  And no matter how good he or she was.

Two weeks is never enough time to do a proper search and on-board someone.  So what most agencies do is to focus on finding clones of the previous title holder. The faster it can be done, the less problems they will have with antsy clients and internal issues.  It is much easier to find someone who already knows the business without regard to whether their experience and capabilities are truly right for the agency and account.  Consequently, all too often agencies tend to hire a person with a comparable résumé rather than spending the time to define the problem and hire the right executive.  

I call this hiring a résumé.

It happens all the time.  Over the years I have seen so many wrong people hired.  They had great résumés but just did not belong in the job. 

When someone like this is hired, both the agency and the new person soon realizes that the wrong person was hired.  It then takes a long time - often more than a year to act upon this bad hire.  So after while there is a meeting of the minds and the new person leaves.  What a waste.

What does the agency do?  It once again looks for another person with the same or similar background.  That is the true definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.

A great example of this happened a few years ago when a holding company hired a very well known former agency person to run one of its subsidiary agencies.  The person they hired had been president of a well known and highly respected ad agency which was similar in size, reputation and creativity to their subsidiary.  He turned out to be a disaster.  Within about eighteen months, the agency was practically out of business and the new president lost his job.  What the holding company failed to do was to fully understand its own situation and define the essence of the job the president had to undertake.  The agency had lost its previous president and had also lost its largest account which was about 60% of revenue. It was a great agency with a great reputation. But the holding company failed to define its issue as a new business problem; they needed to build up revenues.  They should have hired someone with strong new business credentials.  The new president was simply bad at new business.   He was a competent executive and had previously been involved with new business, but he was not the rain maker. His prior agency was dominated by two creative gurus and a very well known new business person who really did the pitch and the closing.  And the worst part was that there was a search firm involved (not me).  The guy they hired was an obvious hire because of his résumé, but not because of his strengths.

When I am given an assignment, I ask agencies to define their problem, especially for a senior job. I am often told that there is no problem.  That is, of course, ridiculous.  When agencies properly define the problem, they can generally find the right executive much more efficiently.  I have seen many successful executives move, even at senior levels, from, for instance, non-package goods on to a  major CPG account. They are able to do that because the management of the agency has carefully considered the needs of the account and realize that a particular person has the skills necessary to handle the client, without necessarily being able to manage the account.  The category experience will come quickly. 

I can think of one job I recently filled where I found an account person who had a completely parallel track to an account director spot I was looking to fill.   She had worked on three of the brand’s major competitors.  She and I discussed this and agreed she should talk.  I was not sure that this was the right opportunity for her, but we agreed that she should talk and explore it.  I knew she would be offered the job, even before her first interview; they were going to hire her for her résumé.  Within a week she had done four or five interviews and was offered the job.  She correctly turned it down.  However, from the feedback she gave me, I was able to call the agency president and discuss their true needs.  Two weeks later I was able to place someone who had no category experience but who was better suited for the job than the candidate with category experience.

This is a really important distinction.  And I believe that by correctly defining the job, the agency saved itself from a poor hire. It is essential for any company to first define what has to be done, what skills are needed and, finally, to determine what background experience would work best.

I have written about hiring category experience, which limits the candidate pool considerably.  It is especially insane at junior levels.

Would love to hear about your experiences in this area.

Adventures in Recruiting: Cross Purpose Interview

Before I was well established and known as a recruiter, I had a really amusing incident, which is worth describing.

I had been recruiting about two months and I got a call from a senior account manager.  He said to me, “I hear you can work on anything.  If that is true, I could use your help.”

I was delighted.  It meant that in just a short time my reputation as a recruiter had spread and people were now calling me.  Of course, with great enthusiasm I told him that I would love to work with him and would like to meet him.  It was and has been my policy to try to meet all the people I work for, not just my candidates.

I have always had the belief that I should know and understand the culture and casting of my client companies.  I made a date to go visit with him the following morning.

I showed up a couple of minutes early so I could observe the reception area, see who was coming and going and get a feel for the agency. It was an agency I knew by reputation, but had never known anyone there.  Obviously, this would be my first assignment with them.

Because I had only recently started recruiting I did not have a great presentation on myself. I still used my advertising résumé and biography accompanied by a single page sheet explaining my recruiting philosophy.

When I was brought in to his office, he asked for my résumé.

Him: “This is for an account supervisor spot.”

Me: “Not a problem.  I can work on anything.”

Him: “I heard that.  That is why you are here.  This is a difficult account.  The client is very demanding.  I need someone who is able to deal with a client who can sometimes be a bit, shall we say, nasty.”

           

Me: “Well, I once had a client punch me.” [True]

Him: “I would like to hear that story but I am a little rushed for time.  Have you ever worked in the hospitality business?  I don’t see it on your résumé.”  

Me: “You tell me what kind of background you are looking for and I will find that person for you.”

Him: “Does that mean you are not interested in the job for yourself.”

Me: “I am a recruiter and I came to see you to get job specs.  I think we have a misunderstanding.   I am not interested in this job for myself, but I know people who might be great for you.”

Him: “I thought you were a candidate. Although your resume looked a bit senior for this job.   I have never had a recruiter come see me before.”

Now I thought that was amusing, but here is the best part.  About two weeks later, I was called by a senior vice president who was running a piece of business at an agency where I had worked for many years running the same account.  He knew who I was and what I was doing.  He told me he wanted to hire someone and had heard what I was doing so he thought I would  be a natural to help fill the job.  I asked to meet him.

Walking in to those offices was like old home week.   There were still many people I knew there and I was greeted with open arms, so to speak.

I spent about ten minutes with the person who was a senior vice president, the same title I had had.  He gave me the job specs and I because I had worked on the account, I completely understood who and what he wanted.  Not a problem.  I knew his issues before he even described the job.

Then, he got up from his desk, walked over to the door and closed it.  He walked back to his desk and handed me his résumé.  “Now interview me.  I hate this place.”

It has actually happened to me several times since.  And I have had a number of people come to my offices for an interview prior to starting a job hunt who, in turn, proceeded to give me a job search assignment.

Recruiting can be a very amusing business.