I am spending roughly fifty percent of my time interviewing people at the moment – and not just Planners (though God knows, most of the ones that I have seen are stupefyingly bad), but Account Directors too – and I absolutely detest it.
I’m a terrible interviewee myself. Veering wildly between unwelcome familiarity and the sort of icy, withdrawn demeanour that is such a striking element of portraits of Dante, I have attracted, over the years, such an exciting variety of feedback that it remains something of a shock that I have managed to remain profitably employed over the last fifteen years. With that in mind, perhaps I should have been a little bit more forgiving of the last candidate that I saw.
She was from a big, famous agency (not creatively scintillating, perhaps – but everyone has to pay the mortgage) and had been in advertising for twelve years or so. And yet…
And yet, she managed to talk about advertising without once referring to ideas or creativity. I asked her (a self-described “Strategic Suit”) what the difference was between what she did strategically, and what I (as a Strategic Strategist) did – her answer was that I had more time on my hands to do strategy, as I didn’t have to engage in the business of writing timing plans. That was it for me: the idea that one “does” strategy is all I needed to hear to convince me that she thought that what I had time for was to “do” charts – and my thoughts on that are documented elsewhere.
So, I have just given my judgement (“I couldn’t see what aspect of the job she might be any good at”, if you’re interested) to 80s Throwback Account Guy who seems to be handling the Headhunters, and I look forward to meeting someone who interviews better than I do in the very near future.
Eiljert Gabbles On 