creative briefing

Note: The following is a rant. And if you’ve caught on to anything about me on this site, you’ll know that it’s not about me. But let’s call it an after-thought to something that I have had experience with, and have recently been reminded of. Lastly, remember that just because it’s a rant, it doesn’t mean there isn’t an important message that comes with it.

Being a new graduate, most of the people I surround myself with have either recently gone through the job hunt or are currently involved in the process. And it’s definitely a grueling one, to say the least - resumes and cover letters flying out of holsters and networking events filling up your calendar, leaving you just enough energy to smile and keep a firm handshake as you make your valuable first impressions.

Getting the interview used to be half the worries. You’d get the phone call or email and half of you would jump for joy while the other half faints out of panic as you try to pick the best time slot (the whole primary vs. recency effect thing). You’d prep your ass off on situational questions and you’d walk into your interview with that same smile and firm handshake. On your way out, you may or may not still be holding that smile, but even if you did, you’re still going to meet that other half of the worries as you wait for the verdict. And if you thought that was tough, think again.

Most modern corporations today are moving towards multi-round interviews. That’s right, so you can expect to have everything described above done up to 3 times - if you’re lucky to get past each subsequent round. Standard procedure usually begins with a phone interview. If you make the cut, you’re granted the opportunity to visit the office and have a face-to-face interview with a panel of scary people. If you make that short list, then you’re invited back once again to write a case and do a presentation (or in some cases, a simulation of some sort). Following that, you may be grilled again in another interview.

No matter how many questions you ask in a single 30-minute interview, you’re always taking a bit of a risk when you decide to invite that individual to join your team. The truth is, you can’t learn everything about a person in 30 minutes. And that’s why doing these multi-round interviews make sense. It throws the candidate into different stress environments and lets you see them under different lights. Many aspects, like the case competition or simulation demonstrate the candidate’s ability to think on their feet, giving you a glimpse of how they’d survive if they were to be tossed into the fast-paced environment that is your company culture. It’s a great way to really judge the adequacy of your candidates and put their loyalty to the test.

And now jump onto the other side of the desk for a moment and consider this: after the stressful, grueling, and torturous month of tests, interviews, and other superhuman tasks a candidate has done to try to prove that they are worthy of your company’s acceptance, how do you think it makes your company look when after all’s been said and done, you send them a generic and impersonal email that says “after careful review of your qualifications, we have chosen to pursue other candidates at this time”? Firstly, like crap. But secondly, and most importantly, like they wasted a month of sleepless nights on a company that doesn’t care enough about their people to give them a personal call to tell them that they didn’t make the cut.

Here’s the lesson (and sorry it took so long to get here): take care of your people, even those you don’t hire. Because if you don’t, sooner or later, you won’t have people to hire anymore. They say a negative impression spreads ten times faster than a positive one, so for your own sake, tie up those loose ends. 

Be human, and most importantly, remember that your candidates are all human as well. Yes, even those you don’t hire.

/rant.

As with every entrepreneur fostering the growth and development of a blooming company, you inevitably find yourself splitting more and more of your responsibilities to other individuals. Ask Evan Carmichael of YoungEntrepreneur.com and he’ll tell you that delegation is one of the key elements to master for any young go-getter. And it’s not so much the idea of taking the load off your own shoulders, but the concept that you should better focus your strengths in one area rather than wear yourself thin that makes delegation a strategic move.

Since the spawn of my creative agency almost 4 years ago, I’ve naturally fulfilled this process by bringing on great partners along the way to take on different faculties of the business such as finance/accounting, IT, and strategic marketing. Whether it was to pass on the responsibility to more experienced hands or to add extra hands to my personal expertise, this growth strategy has worked well for us.

Naturally, the next step in this progression is to branch out our sales efforts. Like most small companies, we’ve believed all along that sales is one of those areas that can be kept within the available stream of people to manage along with everything else (sadly, marketing is thought of in the same fashion for many organizations). However, during an interesting conversation with two of my best friends tonight, one of which happens to be one of the best salesmen I know, I started thinking about the importance of a dedicated sales guy within the roster of any organization. More specifically, I got to contemplating why my business needs a sales guy and why others in the same position would need one (or two, or three…) too.

Here’s what I came up with:

1. Focus on your strengths
   Going back to my point about delegation, focusing your efforts on one or a few areas will always be more effective than spreading yourself thinly across a lot of them. I’m a marketing specialist (so says my degree) with an eye for creative work. As much as sales is related to marketing, they’re not the same. I’m not a salesman and I will probably never be one completely. Rather than working on perfecting my sales skills while also trying to perfect my marketing instincts and creative senses, why not let someone else take it on? For the same reason that you know those all-in-one machines won’t do each task as well as a machine that is dedicated to that task will, dedicating someone to selling will greatly improve your sales strategy and allow you to better apply your area of expertise.
    
2. Sooner or later, referrals won’t be enough
   Our agency has been fairly fortunate up to now and have survived almost purely on referrals and word-of-mouth marketing. But since starting this gig full-time, I’ve realized that with more time comes a work capacity that is greater than what referrals can fulfill. With most freelancers, this is a familiar territory that calls for the need to perform some active sales tactics. The problem is, the more time spent on selling, is the less time spent on other areas, like execution (and we return to the problem noted in the first point). So, if you’re like us and have depended on referrals to maintain your flow of revenue, then get ready to face a dose of reality: you’ll need to do some selling eventually. Who better to tackle this responsibility than a sales guy?
    
3. Keep the pipeline full
   If you’re a freelancer or are part of a small organization that doesn’t have a dedicated sales person, it can be difficult to balance the projects you’re working on and the projects you’re hoping to win. You’re caught in a difficult position because if you don’t fill up your pipeline with upcoming projects you’ll run out of work. Yet, if you spend too much time closing deals, your current projects may suffer. On the other hand, if you had a sales guy, he or she could focus on bringing in the new clients while you can maintain your focus on keeping them happy through quality work. Ah, an equilibrium is reached.
    
4. Have a bigger piece of pie
   Of course, the number one concern with bringing on an extra head is money. “Why would I take a chunk out of what I’m currently earning in order to pay a sales guy?”, you ask. Look at it this way: while the percentage of earnings that you gain will decrease, the amount of total earnings will increase. In other words, you are sacrificing a larger percentage of the pie for a larger pie in general (which inevitably gives you a bigger piece of pie!). That’s the target anyway. It may not be this way at first, but once ramped up, having a sales guy could essentially increase your revenue stream by bringing in more clients and projects.
    

Naturally, adding a sales guy to the team isn’t for everyone. If you’re comfortable with the current flow of work and your capacity is being fully utilized, then you’re probably still okay to not take this route. Otherwise, consider adding a sales guy as part of the next evolution of your org structure for the reasons stated above. I know I will.

Note: the terms ’sales guy’ and ’salesman’ are used purely as a traditional industry term and is meant to include both males and females in sales roles.

Every so often, my creative marketing agency does a call-out on various job boards and forums to bring in some new talent to work on upcoming projects and initiatives. Whether we post on design-specific job boards like FSw Jobs, Krop, or FlashinTO, or on more generic boards like CraigsList, we always seem to get a nice pool of respondents. However, like anyone in HR can attest to, only a small handful ever end up actually being considered.

The ones that don’t make it past the cut form a nice collection application faux-pas. Some are mind-blowing. Some are sad. Some are just plain funny. In light of one of our recent call-outs for creative talent, I thought I would shed some light on some of the things that get an application a line by-pass… to the garbage. Here are 7 ways to not get a job.

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Scratch project management. In the long list of skills that successfully get me from one day to the next, I’d say that people management ranks as one of the most valuable skills anybody can have in any profession. Its significance is no less in the creative field. Designers and developers are definitely, for the most part, an ecentric group. Brimming on creative genius-ness and madness (sometimes all at the same time), managing a creative group can certainly take some extra umph.

While I promise to never depict designers and developers as a breed of mad scientists again, you have to admit that people management plays a big role in helping a creative team channel their energy appropriately into effective deliverables. Throw into the mix the fact that you run a virtual company, and you’ve got yourself the weight that sits on my shoulder every day.

I’m certainly no Atlas, but to keep the creative magic flowing, here are a few tactics and values I subscribe to.

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