The challenge of finding talent
The recession, combined with a growing acceptance and use of digital communications by marketers and traditional agencies, has sparked a frenzy of searching for players with digital chops. There are 500 or so all-stars, like Lars Bastholm, at the senior and middle-management levels who are available for poaching. But the bulk of the talent market is comprised of people with limited digital experience.
In this economy, you'd think that finding great digitally savvy players would be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. There are many good people out of work involuntarily and actively looking, especially in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. You can ping your LinkedIn or Facebook network and turn up six candidates in 24 hours, one better than the next, and all willing to work for the same or less than they were making. However, matching the right person to a given opening requires careful consideration of the position itself and how each candidate aligns with its responsibilities.
In some cases, employers are looking to trade up and capitalize on the cornucopia of talent that was previously unavailable. In other cases, clients and agencies are looking to get initiatives off the ground or find key people to help lean and mean teams get up to speed and become more productive faster. In others, they are looking for specialty talent -- people who understand databases, IT or creative staff who can make widgets, or strategists, publicists, and account reps with an endless appetite to seek out and engage bloggers.
Here's the thing: There is no common definition of a digital player, nor is there a baseline understanding of the skills or experiences that qualify one to claim digital chops. In fact, even the caricatures -- the tattooed nerdy chick and the bespectacled buzz-cut gear head -- have fallen away as more and more people with different psycho-demographics have embraced digital creative, media, CRM, production, and account management skills -- skills that were once the sole province of Generation Y.
Like any marketing task, when it comes to hiring, clear thinking and careful planning must precede campaign execution. Here are points you need to consider.
