Sell yourself to the account executive
During your job search you will undoubtedly encounter a good number of hard-edged ad execs. To get noticed and most importantly to get hired by them, you will need to know how they think, what they think, and what they look for in a potential employee.
Since success in the advertising world is frequently earned through trial-by-fire, successful people by necessity often acquire an unshakable self-confidence that frees them from a dependence on other people's opinions. I believe it is this freedom and self-confidence that sets the mold from which the hard-edged individual is cast. At this point in their lives, these people are capable of making major decisions without the internal doubts and fears of their less experienced colleagues. They know what is ultimately right for their own business or personal growth. They can seldom be bought, pushed, or cajoled into doing something that will endanger their personal integrity.
The ad execs you will be interviewing with will be knowledgeable and self-assured-real no-nonsense people. Regardless of their personal backgrounds, hard-edged advertising executives are definitely all business types when it comes to their understanding that the agency must always come first.
When you write a cover letter to one of these ad execs, or you come face-to-face with one during an interview, you can be sure that your evaluation will be determined by only one thing-what you can do for the agency. Unlike big corporations or institutions, agencies are fully self-supporting. They cannot rely on donors, stockholders, or foundations to support their business activities if sales slump. Every member of their staff, every piece of equipment they purchase, and every client they accept must be able to contribute to the ongoing support of the agency.
It is crucial that you evaluate exactly what you have to offer in terms of skills, experience, ability, and talent that will translate into billable hours for the agency. This must be done before you send out your first cover letter. Every advertising executive who reads your cover letter will have only one thought in mind: "Why should I even read this letter?" So you had better be certain that your letter and resume give the ad exec a reason to read them by explaining exactly what you can do for their agency.
Our goal in Step Five is to gather together all the positive things you learned about yourself when you did the exercises in Step One. Then we will go back to Workshop 9: Area of Specialization Evaluation in Step Three and review the personal qualifications you listed under the niche(s) you chose as most appealing to you. Once you have a list of what your best assets are, we will look at how to translate them into words that will impress any interviewer.
Size up your assets
While work environment issues are probably more important to you than they are to the agency you will eventually work for, there are ways in which you can state your preferences that will actually position them as advantages to a potential employer.
Before you begin, it may help to look at some examples. Suppose your environmental preferences involved a willingness to share an office, a desk, or to work in an open office with lots of interpersonal exchange. This could be viewed as an asset to a growing agency with more people than office space. A company like that would appreciate your adaptable nature. If you also included in your listing of environmental preferences that you were comfortable socializing with employees, bosses and clients, and you are interviewing with an agency that expects employees to spend personal time with agency people and clients, that too would be valuable to that particular agency.
Here is how you could turn the two work environment preferences used in the example above into benefit statements that would interest a potential employer:
I've been told that I adapt easily to almost any type of work environment. I don't have any problems when it comes to sharing space with other staff people or working in an open office. My sense of concentration is so strong that I'm not easily distracted by the office activity around me.
In addition, I value my relationships with fellow employees and look forward to opportunities that will allow me to spend more time with them outside the office. I find that these times always seem to benefit my involvement in work issues and enhance the chemistry with my colleagues. Clients, too, seem to appreciate knowing that their accounts are important enough to warrant certain social amenities from agency personnel, and if called upon to do that, I am more than willing to comply.
