Yourself. You'll be surprised how many leads you can generate on your own.
Start with the Yellow Pages. If you want a job on the client side of the business, call the advertisers with whom you'd like to work. Ask to speak with someone in the advertising or marketing department, then set up an appointment.
The best place to go, though, is the library. Get a hold of the Advertiser's Redbook and look up the advertisers you'd most like to work for. You'll find the name of the person you should speak to listed right under the advertiser's company name. Look for someone with a title, a manager or director. If you find more than one person, call them all, then set up appointments.
If you want to work within a particular product category or service, like food or banking, check the trade publications for that particular field.
If you want to get into the agency side of the business, go through the Yellow Pages routine, or visit your library and thumb through a copy of the Advertising Agency Redbook. You'll find almost every agency in the country listed in alphabetical order in the Agency Redbook, plus a list of department heads, so you'll know whom to ask for when you call.
Don't forget to ask the people with whom you interview if they know of any jobs around. If they like you, chances are they'll help you find a job. If they know of anyone who's looking, they'll tell you so you can call for an interview.
Ask if there's any free-lance work available. Free-lance assignments are work given on a project basis to people who aren't on staff. Free-lance will give you a chance to show what kind of job you could do consistently if you were on staff. It'll also put a few dollars in your pocket. And we all like to eat.
What if you're looking for a job outside the country? Then where do you look? Advertising is a business that goes far beyond Madison Avenue. In fact, the largest single agency in the world isn't even headquartered in the United States. (That agency is Dentsu. It's based in Tokyo.) There are also lots of advertisers and agencies based in Europe.
The best places to start looking for overseas jobs are in the same places you look for any other job. Check the employment sections of big city newspapers, trade publications, personnel agencies, through contacts made directly with advertisers, and with the help of the Yellow Pages, and Advertiser's Redbook, and the Advertising Agency Redbook.
Another good way to find employment with a company abroad is to accept employment in a office of that company in this country. A lot of advertisers and agencies pick the key people for their overseas operations from their staffs here in the States. So, if you interview with a company that has foreign offices but no openings in them at that time, try to get a job in their Stateside operation. Just because they don't have any openings abroad now doesn't mean they won't have one at some point in the future.
Starting with the American office of an international company is also a good way to deal with the inevitable language problem that you're going to face. Obviously, if you move to any new country in which English isn't the major tongue, you're going to have to become familiar with the language that is. And if you're going to become a practitioner of advertising in that country, a communicator, you're going to have to become a lot more than just familiar with that language.
If you get foreign employment through the American office of a company, they'll probably help you solve that dilemma, because they'll know you and they'll obviously like the work you do, or they wouldn't go to the trouble of transferring you.
No discussion on finding advertising job leads can be complete without talking about personnel departments in agencies and advertisers. That discussion must begin with the suggestion that you try to avoid them. Most people in personnel departments are friendly and competent, but jobs can open up at a moment's notice in this business, and you just can't be aware of those events unless you're in the thick of things.
That's one reason why you're better off calling a department head instead of the people in personnel for an interview.
Another reason is that department heads can create job openings. The people in personnel usually can't.
But no matter whom you speak with, no matter where you want to work, no matter what kind of position you're looking for, no matter how you go about getting your job leads, and no matter how many job leads you generate, you're going to need a resume and you're going to have to go through an interview. You can have all the job leads in the world, but if you don't have a resume and if you don't do well in the interview, you won't get a job. So don't fool yourself into thinking that your job search is over when you find a hot lead.
Not at all.
You're just getting to the fun parts. And those are the things we'll deal with next.
