Tesar-Reynes

In the midst of all the gloom and doom, I can report one good piece of news: interactive. This seems to be one of the only areas where there is true activity.

Right now I am working one VP search for interactive on the client side. I have two more that should kick in during the first quarter. Two days ago I was talking to a candidate for the VP search and they were looking at three other openings concurrently. I have a close contact in Europe who is starting to turn down business for site development; they are too busy.

Social media seems to be very strong too. I have one senior search that I …

In last Sunday’s Times, an article about Facebook caught my eye. The writer, Randall Stross, asks, “Do you want to ‘friend’ a detergent?”

No, of course not. But the deeper question, the one everyone seems to be asking – “How does social networking translate into cash?” – continues to go unanswered.

That’s the question Mark Zuckerberg deals with on a daily basis. The 24-year old owner of Facebook was depicted in GQ’s latest Men of the Year issue as a kid way in over his head.

As the article pointed out, “critics will mock him mercilessly…they’ll point to the exodus of executives, say he has no business plan, and call on Zuckerberg to yield control to …

I remember a guy telling me, a few recessions ago, that he was out of work for three months and he never told his wife and kids! I asked him what he did every day. He said that he took the train into the city and “walked around.” He went to every museum twice and saw a great deal of movies, fitting interviews in between.

“Why,” I asked. He told me he was ashamed that he had been fired and didn’t want his wife to worry.

A few recessions ago most of us had some savings and could weather a setback of being out of work for a bit. Some of us even preferred to stay at home  raising a family or holding down a local …

There are a bunch of people out of work right now and more will be joining their ranks as the cutbacks continue. I get calls from people who think I have some magic mojo to help them get a job. I only have one piece of advice that I know works every time.

Visualize that your ship has gone down and you and your family are in a life boat at sea. Think of your personal resources as the food and drink that is stored in that lifeboat. Logic dictates that there is no way of knowing when you will be rescued. The only sane thing to do is conserve your resources to make them last as long as possible. So, follow the metaphor a little more….

Augment Food and Water
Add to your income by getting a part time job, consulting or …

Yesterday Tony gave a guest lecture at Columbia. The class, called Marketing Yourself, teaches students how to do exactly that – market themselves to future employers. Teachers focus on helping students build their own personal brand, with the end goal of placing us in rewarding internships and entry-level jobs.

Tony’s first piece of advice, that we had the distinct pleasure of “entering the worst job market in the past twenty years,” was the exact kind of refreshing no B.S. assessment you can come to expect from Tony.

I think the class appreciated him being honest with us. We read the headlines. We know the economy is in shambles. We are, a little bit, scared.

But Tony tempered his advice with this – One, it’s better to be realistic. As employees just …