Tesar-Reynes

I talked to someone the other week that was told that “he had been relieved of duty” as a CMO. I was one of the people he called after he took some time off to get his head on straight. He was fortunate that the news still had not reached the press. Before discussing the steps for his next job, I asked him these questions:

- Had he gone through most of the stages of grieving?
- Was he thinking straight and were his emotions under control?
- Was there any negotiations left on his separation package, and, was he centered enough to do it?
- Was there agreement with his old company as to the rationale of his leaving the company?
- Did he know what was being said about him by his peers and subordinates at the old company?
- Had he done a personal P&L on how long he …

In the last week I have talked to a couple presidents at different marketing services providers. When I asked them if things are better, they all responded pretty much the same way:

• “The free fall is over and clients are thinking about spending money. Money in the sense of “you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” In other words, if I spend it now in an opportunistic manner it is gone; if I wait, something better or worse may help me make the right decision.
• A number of clients are sitting on no inventory so they have lived off the fat of product already produced and paid for. To make more will be at an incrementally higher cost of goods.
• There is no such thing as a long-term plan. The clients seem to want windows of commitment that are only …
  
  [ More ] February 5th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in Tough Times |

I got a call in the late summer from a guy I placed at a large company back east. He runs corporate communications and advertising. If I remember, the guy is in his mid-40’s and is a certifiable Type A. The conversation started with “I am going f’ing postal! You gotta minute?”

The gist of the explosion had to do with the fact that his three agencies were going in circles with non-relevant off-strategy creative. And the digital shop was the worst. I swallowed hard and asked if it had to do with bad direction. His next 16 sentences were not complimentary to me, my family or the company. His net-net was an entirely different observation: they seemed to keep reinventing the wheel. What was being presented to him either had failed before or was poorly thought out.

I asked him …

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to sit down and share a couple of beers with a real story teller. He was the kind that keeps me wide awake and ready to order him another round.

He was talking about his old boss and said, “He looked like Gregory Peck after the whale had pulled him under a few times.” Later he talked about a supplier who reminded him of “that gnome in the Middle Earth who was trying to steal the ring.”

People who make me use my imagination and memory really communicate with me because I am forced to do some of the work. I am truly interacting with the speaker. Unless I am forced to contribute, sometimes I can just sit there like wallpaper, which …

With 2010 around the corner, I thought it was a good time to draft resolutions for the New Year. Judging by how I did in 2009, more due diligence will have to be played on my part. Of the 10 resolutions I set in December of 2008, less than half of them were accomplished.

I took a beach vacation to Santa Barbara (which is gorgeous by the way), figured out Twitter, and built a network on LinkedIn. I did a halfway decent job of keeping a work schedule and working out at the gym. But I failed …

When times get tough the resume tends to become plastic. We see titles being changed, jobs being dropped out, graduation dates erased and the early part of careers completely excised.

In my eyes, each of the above has a different penalty. If a person does not include early career information or grad date, there is no harm done. They have not really misrepresented themselves and I can ask them to fill in the information.

The people that get nailed are those who willingly alter their past by creating new job titles/responsibilities and leave out entire pieces of their job history. The resume reads well, but if we catch it, the person will never be presented by us to a client. …

It’s a strange time for college graduates. Those who just finished school should be ecstatic that step of their lives is over. Instead, I run into former classmates and hear two reoccurring themes. One, they can’t find work. Two, it’s beginning to affect their self-esteem.

If you’re one of these people, then you may find yourself shooting for an internship rather than an account executive position. My six-month internship with Carolyn Grisko & Associates, for example, just ended last week.

Unfortunately, the timing was not right for me to translate that internship into a full-time position. Others are luckier. A good associate of mine has interned at Ketchum for a year and will soon be hired on. There’s still hope for those of you seeking …

On a fairly regular basis I’m asked by senior management about whether there should be a great deal of space devoted on their resume to their corporate summary or the bullet positioning of their experience and accomplishments. In most cases, these people have agonized over this piece of real estate. They’re unsure how many words to use and how all the key words will be scanned by recruitment software.

My position on this is pretty simple. I never read this part of their resume until after I’ve read the meat and potatoes down below and I feel that this candidate belongs in our database or that they fit a search that I’m working on. Only then will I go back and read a summary and only then will …

I am a natural born optimist and have been looking for something that would show a sign that the economy was turning for quite some time. I think I got my first sign in the second week of May. That’s when our phone started to ring, and we got six new searches or projects in the course of the next seven days. We are not back to full activity, but it’s nice to be busy again.

The one frustration is dealing with a couple of clients that have fought the good fight internally and are now looking for people to join their company. Some of these hiring managers feel that they can get good people for less than market value and that they are doing them …

In the last three recessions I remember the figure thrown out that somewhere between 35% and 45% of the people in integrated marketing communications got out of the business. I suspect that similar figures will be used for this one.

In the past, when people moved and changed jobs, they were lost from our database and probably lost to the statisticians of the industry. Thus far, in the last three months, I have called or contacted about 200-300 people in the $150,000-250,000 wage bracket. A goodly number are without jobs but a large number of them are consulting and are running their own business. They are having success because they can circumvent corporate head count rules.

The larger question to me is what happens to the people who drop out …