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This is a great story on Talent Zoo, the same people who ignored us when we pitched them the Adholes idea. Splitting my time between entrepreneurialism and working at ad agencies, I've experienced first hand some rather terrible hiring practices.

As stated in the article above, many people are getting frustrated and leaving the industry (or like me, working on starting their own companies.) What will happen when the economy finally improves to the point where, like in the late 90's, it was actually hard to find employees? Certainly we'll all remember how arduous the job search was now and dread it. How many times have you been told "We need to hire this position right away, send your book ASAP." only to have it sit in an office for a month, see the job reposted dozens of times in the classifieds and then the position is never filled.

Gun shy? It's more like squirt gun shy. They won't even shell out $25K so they can overwork a junior AD anymore.

There are a few areas of hiring and firing which need to be eliminated or improved in the ad biz

1) HEADHUNTERS. After the revolution, they will be the first ones I'll execute. Talk about useless bottom feeders who are overpaid. And I'm talking about the headhunters that I actually LIKE. They prey on the simultaneous laziness of creative recruiters and desperation of creatives tired of pounding the pavement and knocking on doors. Their job is/was supposed to be to be a filter for ad agencies overwhelmed by portfolios, but quite frankly, they don't do that anymore. They're all trying to win the lottery of filling an actual job by sending as many shitty books to an agency as possible. Why is it that somehow my book passes muster of these wonderful headhunters who, with some sort of liberal arts background can judge whether or not I do great ads or not, but once it gets to the agency I stink, suck, aren't worth a damn.

I spoke to a headhunter tonight who wanted to send me to an agency I ALREADY USED TO WORK AT, who specializes in the exact same BUZZ MARKETING SHIT that I'm COMING UP WITH MY VERY OWN MEDIUMS FOR, and I gave him a whole list of things to tell them, including the fact that I worked directly for the CEO, and after three weeks he tells me "oh yeah, they passed on you." Yeah? When were you going to TELL ME THAT?

Of course they all don't have a lot of jobs right now, so it's no mystery that everyone in New York is going for the same position. For example, I got a call from one headhunter about a job. Then another headhunter calls me about the same job. Then another. And another. How many portfolios do these people need before they can hire an AD at some crappy direct place? Do they need someone with a collection of Gold Pencils to write a Johnson box?

Anyway, it's a mystery why these people get paid $5000 to $25K or more a pop to place creatives when the very same people are sending their books directly to agencies anyway. It also boggles my mind that I invited NINE of them to this site, and one showed up, only to quickly leave.

CREATIVE RECRUITERS Would you just DO YOUR JOB ALREADY? What's so hard about looking at my portfolio? It's 20 pages long. They're simple, short-copy ads. It would take a 6th grader 30 seconds to look at my book. How does it take you a month? How many One Show lunches do you go to? How many millimeters of dust must collect on a book before you look at it? HOW COME WHEN I FLIRTED WITH YOUR AT YOUR XMAS PARTY YOU WERE ALL INTO LOOKING AT IT AND THEN YOU HAD IT FOR THREE WEEKS AND NEVER EVEN LOOKED AT IT? If you actually looked at books, found GOOD ones, and gave them to your creative director and the people you hired went on to win awards, creative directors would actually take you seriously instead of making fun of the drek you present them with and then hiring their friend because they actually put up somewhat of a challenge in Foosball.

Remember kid, the smaller the job, the bigger the ego. As soon as your salary gets too high they'll boot you on your ass and hire some hot 22 year old liberal arts major with an attitude and you'll have to go get a real job, or, hahaha, become a HEADHUNTER.

CREATIVE DIRECTORS I remember a time when my friends at BBDO were looking to leave. They had come in as an eager crop of junior ADs and CWs and now they were full ADs and CWs with some work under their belt. It was time to move on. So they'd send their book somewhere and, whoops, they have an Insurance account, but their book doesn't. So they would say "Hey, why don't you do some spec for an insurance account and send your book back over here." And they would and a lot times they'd get hired. Now you send your book to a creative director and you get no feedback whatsoever. And that sucks. Again, one day you'll get fired and no one will look at your reel and then you'll be sorry and you'll be on Adholes trying to schmooze and find a job and I'll be sitting here with an itchy trigger finger, trying to resist the impulse to delete your account. You jerk.

LAYOFFS Tell me, why are layoffs necessary? Holding companies own Agency A, who just lost Company A, but now it just went to Agency B, which is also owned by, you guessed it, the SAME HOLDING COMPANY. Why is it, that you can get fired by the agency of one holding company and offered a job through a HEADHUNTER the very next day, where that agency has to pay $5K or more to get you when YOU WERE ALREADY WORKING IN THE NETWORK TO BEGIN WITH. In every holding company, there are some agencies gaining accounts and some losing accounts. Interpublic owns McCann, which won a bunch. They also own Lowe, which is really still Lintas, they just call it Lowe to make the creatives feel like they're in a creative shop, just like when I was there it was called Ammirati but it was still really Lintas and Lintas stinks and they keep losing accounts.

So why not just have everyone work for the holding company? Holding companies are holding their own pitches, why not employ the talent too? Agencies can be brand names or placeholders to keep Daimler Chrystler away from Honda in the same network. Under my way of doing things, advertising would be run like Major League Baseball. You're an AD at Lowe and suddenly you stink, you're not getting it done, you suck, you're a has been, a never will be? Well, McCann doesn't know that! Hey, McCann, we need a strategic planner. What do you say we send you this Art Director, a Junior Account Exec, 300 feet of Ethernet cable, two cartons of black foam core and this really cute staff assistant we think might be working on a sexual harassment suit to you guys for a Senior Strategic Planner, two Art Buyers and a junior traffic manager?

Sure we'd all get a change of scenery once in a while, but think of all the money an agency would save in headhunters, severance packages and that loss of morale when everyone's worried about having their head on the chopping block. Instead of headhunters and creative recruiters you'd have General Managers who would be judged on how well they made trades. "Man, can you believe they traded Bobby Jones away? He didn't do much here on Ragu but, man, did you see that Adidas stuff he won a Clio for? And who did we get? A junior account exec who lasted three months and Fred, the pasteup guy? We wuz robbed."

I for one, would love to be general manager. It might just be the only job I'd be willing to take at an ad agency at this point.