Who’s Hiring?

I was listening to a story on NPR the other day about whether the stock market recovery had led to an increase in hiring.  And the bottom line answer was a quick and emphatic no.  I read another article that said if job growth continues at 2012 levels it will be another ten years before the country recovers to full employment. I am not sure that I believe that full employment will ever happen again.

I read a lot of different points of view about the current prospects for graduates.  The New York Times recently wrote that unemployment among college graduates was only 3.1% and that they were faring well.  Then I read another article that said that there were over 5.5 million young people out of work and that the high rate of unemployment was a national crisis.  I know youth employment is a powder keg globally.

I do not really worry about college graduates that much as I believe that most youth will figure it out. That is based on my observations of what has happened to the sea of young people around me over the years.  I do worry about young people who have already marginalized themselves at a young age.  The unemployment rate among young people with only a high school degree is 19.7%.  Many will be bound to jobs of labor where they will never be able to sit down at work.

The problem is more acute among people 50 plus. Now some of these people have marginalized themselves by not building bridges to the New Normal.  We all have to evolve or we will be left behind.  Ask Kodak.  Many of them are pretty much invisible to companies and hiring managers.  Overlooked and abandoned.  The irony is that their situation was created by companies that let them go.

Many companies have been doing very well recently.  They stockpile money.  Their shareholders get paid and profit.  But companies rarely look into the firing mirror. If they did many would be invisible.  They do want us to like them on Facebook though.

Another irony of companies is that most are just composed of simple people that aren’t part of any grand scheme. Some work and some get fired and then a great gulf separates them.  The working and the unworking.  Two different worlds.  Two different places to go on Monday morning. The new great divide.

So what do you do if you feel left behind?  Well the first thing that you do is that you don’t do the things that you did in the past. I recently reached out to a transition group sponsored by a church group to see if they needed any speakers.  I have spoken countless time to numerous transition groups. From Catholics to Mormons and almost to Muslims.  Those in transition follow many beliefs including none.  The Great Recession cut its swath across all faiths.  An equal opportunity unemployer.

The person who I connected with told me that the attendees at their events preferred people from the employment industry. I lit a candle for them that night.  Entering the New Normal by using the rear view mirror of the past doesn’t work anymore.

I like to look to youth for some answers.  Some of them have shunned the corporate path for the entrepreneurial track.  The follow their vision which has only the road map of their passion.  No experience.  Limited business skills.  Limited money but unlimited reserves of dreams.  I surround myself with them.

I reflect many days that I would have been left behind with many others in the Old Normal if I didn’t create my own future a decade ago when I started Blank and Associates.  A couple of bumps in the road caused things to change.  The first thing I did was not chase the Old Normal and stopped looking for jobs that no longer exist.

I don’t know all the answers but I know one thing.  It is not the ways of the past.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn.

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

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Don’t Let Your Business Cards Weaken Your Personal Brand

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How Not To Get Left Behind in the Old Normal.

Watch this video called She is Not a Great Networker.

How Not to Get Left Behind in the Old Normal.

I read an e mail today from LinkedIn telling me that it was their 10^th anniversary. I watched their video.   Time does fly.  LinkedIn was launched in May 2003.  Five years before the world melted and the New Normal was created.  That occurred in September 2008 and the world was at the brink of financial disaster.  Scary times.  Companies still remember those days because most hire slowly. Unless you are Google or are a Java Developer.

I think the New Normal made LinkedIn a success because the millions of people that got launched into transition captured its power and helped it to grow. No recession?  Maybe just more Facebook.

I had my weekly sushi lunch with my son today at Gen Kai in Dana Point. He is reading the Four Hour Work Week.

We always have a Happy Meal. You would like it.

Here’s a picture.

He told me that his friend’s sister just got a job at LinkedIn. She probably got a nice package.  I e mailed her when I got home.  I met her when she was ten in the Old Normal.  I shared that I have almost 10,000 connections on LinkedIn. You can’t act your age in the New Normal.   It is easier to do if you got to the New Normal years ago.  Even before the world melted although I did share its pain.

I connect with people who are applying for six figure jobs.  Their Linkedin photo looks like they are on a camping trip.  They don’t realize that they might not get that job because of their photo.  They think their resume is more important than their Linkedin profile. I found them on Linkedin.  They are obvious to the New Normal.

I still get resumes from people not remotely qualified for the people I am looking for.  They think that “let’s just see what happens” still works today.  They are wasting their time.  Since they are I won’t respond because I don’t want to waste mine. To get a job in the New Normal you have to pass through the eye of the needle not be the horseshoe closest to the stake.

I get an e mail from a printer the other day.  I didn’t know him.  He mentioned that I used to work at JWT in the past. He sent his corporate brochure along.  He wanted me to pass it along to anyone who may be looking for a reliable printer.  I did work for JWT for ten years in Toronto and Chicago.  The Chicago office was opened in 1891.  It closed in 2009 when the world melted so I don’t have time to send his corporate brochure along to anybody who may need printing.  I did call my daughter that day that works in Chicago at an agency on the corner of State and Wacker.  She found the job online.

Unfortunately many people are still stuck in the Old Normal and they act as if things didn’t change. They are blind.  I talk to their e mails and say “You don’t get it you have to change”.  But change is hard and I don’t have the time because you see in the New Normal your quickness of response is today’s currency. I heard that on Q on my CBC app on my iPhone while I was having a run around the soccer field in Laguna Niguel. He was on air in Toronto my home town.  He is Persian. There are 650,00O Persians in Southern CA.  I wonder if he knows that?

I want the people stuck in the Old Normal to come to the New World but many can’t.  I want to rescue them but I don’t have the capacity in an over capacitated New Normal world. It is best for them to find their own way as I did. I wish they would come over soon.  They have nothing to lose.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn.

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

You might enjoy these articles.

Don’t Let Your Business Cards Weaken Your Personal Brand

Why Reinvention is a Virtual Necessity

Listen to this audio recording on Networking Tips For Those Who Hate to Network.  It features my friend Tina Wilson who lives in the New Normal but is legally blind.  I love her new dog.

Life in the New Normal is Just Like Playing Hopscotch.

This is a recent blog that I wrote for Marketing Executives Network Group or MENG.

Remember playing hopscotch? It was easy to play.  All you needed was some chalk. Maybe you stole it from school.

Life in the New Normal is very much the same game.

Just like hopscotch it all depends when tile you land on.

Just like in hopscotch in the New Normal many people have one foot tied behind their backs. A balancing act of intention and resolve but precariousness.

Some companies are hiring and some companies are still firing.

It all depends on what tile you step on.

Stepping on the getting hired tile can be very difficult especially if you are over 50.  Some are younger than Baby Boomers yet many people think they are out of the game.  I am glad that I stopped looking for work in the Old Normal way a decade ago.  I learned new games.

I always thought that getting through the eye of the needle was a tough parable.

Getting hired if you are a long term person in transition is even harder.

The irony is that the companies that fire people hire people slowly but they want you to like them on Facebook instantly. Please like me they say.  Here is a contest.  Here is a game you can play to win a gift certificate. Here is how you connect with us.

Many companies are sitting on piles of cash because you buy their products.

Companies don’t look too often into the firing mirror.  Some wouldn’t see a reflection.

In the New Normal I hear from people that are killer on social media.  They teach on how to harness its power.

However they send out emails saying they need work.  They aren’t landing on the right tiles.

In the depth of the melting of the world in the fall of 2008 as the financial markets crumbled I would be travelling to speak on Networking Your Way to New Business.  I could have been in Des Moines, Duluth, or Oklahoma City.  The world melted on the coasts first and not in those parts of the world. Business was tough. I came home and told my personal witch I felt like a fraud. “We teach what we need to know,” she said.  That is why she is my personal witch. I have lent her from time to time to other people who need a little brain alignment.

I spoke recently at a local college about how on why people shouldn’t find a job.  I had a follow up coffee in my hood with a young chap who was born on the other side of the globe.  My sister was born in Beirut.  He had some friends in Dubai and was heading there. He was younger than my kids.  He asked me to connect him with somebody in my LinkedIn network from that part of the world.  I never met her but she reads my blogs from time to time.  She connected him with another contact  in her LinkedIn  game and he got a job with a Multinational Agency in her part of the world.   He is probably 23.That is how Hopscotch is played today in the New Normal. Some people have one hand tied behind their backs and some people are free and growing.

It’s your turn to hop in the New Normal.

You can connect with Hank Blank on Linkedin.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

You might enjoy these articles.

Don’t Let Your Business Cards Weaken Your Personal Brand

Why Reinvention is a Virtual Necessity

Watch Surviving the Great Recession.

Are You Connected or Disconnected in the New Normal?

We have all read the stats.  A billion people on Facebook, hundreds of millions on Twitter and LinkedIn.  Billions of blogs including this one.

I was reading an article in the New York Times this morning on my iPad while lying in bed. I had to make sure I wasn’t missing any e-mails at 6.30 AM. The article was about the anxiety of the unanswered e-mail.  Yes we have all had it happen to us.  We send out an e-mail and there is no response.  We wait a few days and then try again.  Nobody home.  We agonize if we should send a third e-mail to a post box called rejection when they clearly aren’t listening to us.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with somebody yesterday who was lamenting how personal interaction protocols have been breaking down.  I have heard the words many times before.  It’s rude they say.  It’s just not right. It’s unprofessional.  All of the above.

Now in today’s New Normal when I listen to somebody who is expecting to hear back because they sent their resume to a company I just shrug my shoulders.  My expectations are very low but when you looking for work you want the elevation of the courtesy of a response.  A little career reassurance. Maybe an e-mail saying you aren’t right for this position but you sure have done a lot of nice things in your career.  Sixty seconds that can lift a weary soul, create a company ambassador and put a smile on a human face.  But then again I have low expectations today.

People sometimes reach out to me by phone.  I am pretty easy to find on Google. They call me on my cell. They can be from other cities, other countries even. My Canada. They committed time to finding me.  I make a reciprocal effort to contact them, maybe spend some time researching them before I call but not too long because I have to get right back to them.  We chat and I follow up with some thoughts, maybe some free ideas, maybe something more.  And then I wait.  I wait and then I call.  I e-mail and then I wait and then I stop. I have changed my expectations. Chasing rejection is futile.

I have been listening about a lot of recent books about the impact of the internet on our lives. There are Ted Talks on being Connected but Alone.   Many people have a hard time getting to the gym but we have no problem accelerating our response time to any electronic stimulus to instantaneous in an over busy world.  We could probably solve a few problems if we all put a similar commitment to a few of the world’s problems.

Yes protocols, politeness, and even plain manners have to a degree disappeared in the New Normal.  Maybe we all have to remember the echoes of our mother’s voices that we did when we were growing up.  That benchmark of never disappointing was seldom breached. It embedded a pattern of behavior in the future but there are no mother’s voices echoing in e-mails.

There is your reputation. That tends to endure.  Maybe even more so in the online world of today.

So at the end of the day how well connected are we in the New Normal?  As connected as you want to be if you put down the phone and walk away from the computer and talk to somebody in your Starbucks line. It might lift your expectations when they write your name on the cup.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

You might enjoy these articles.

Why I Network with People In Transition.

What Kind of Client Are You?

Watch Why Young People Shouldn’t Try To Find A Job.

What Kind of Client are You?

I was having an early morning coffee with a client the other day.  Today clients often have very early morning Starbucks because they have a lot to do with fewer resources to accomplish them.

He was sharing with me a story about one of his clients.  Yes clients have clients if they have channels of distribution and they want to sell their products. He described a meeting he recently had. He said the room was full of people who could not approve anything but everyone could veto everything. Been there?  I have.

Welcome to the New Normal.  Consensus decision making and often consensus indecision.

I had an early morning coffee with an agency friend the other day.  He shared his story of working on a large multinational client.  We all know their name and have all purchased their products. Because they are large they have numerous agencies for various specialties.  Too many for one client to handle or even get to know if you are a marketer that works at a company that rotates you every 15 to 18 months.   They had an ideation session that I am sure that every agency jumped to attention to attend. All present and accounted for Sir!  At the end of the day there are 50 plus ideas on the white board.

How did the client decide which one was best?  Let’s have a vote.  Very democratic but not exactly fact based decision making that was drilled into my brain.

Are marketers still stewards of their brands? What is a client’s top priority today?  Managing the brand or managing their careers?

I do know that many clients that I meet today are looking for their next job.  Riding the wave of their company, their title to the next big break. Many are not happy at work.

I hear from another type of client from time to time.  They reach out to me when their things go awry at work and they may feel a little threatened. They want to want to have a Starbucks with Hank Blank because they know I am very connected.  Then things settle down for them and all is good again at work.  No more networking needed.   When I reach out to them because I may have some opportunity to present to them many respond with silence.  Silence is golden but my eyes still see.

I was checking in with a client that I think is very compassionate about her people especially when she has to let them go because she is told to do so.  I can feel her heart.  She shared that everything was extremely hectic in her world.  Lots of trade shows, a new acquisition, a challenging CEO.  She wished me calm in my life.

As a consultant who has to create a job for himself each and every day there is little calm in my life but I somehow offered the promise of that island. I wish I was there.

I had a chance to be a client once.  When I was 30 I was offered a job as the VP of Marketing for a major QSR chain in Canada. I agonized over it. I did a Robert Frost on it but I didn’t take it.  Was I wrong?  What do I know?  I am just writing this blog and watching the way the wind blows. In the end I know we are all clients.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

Watch a Video on Why It’s Time to Change the RFP Process.

If you are a client with children you might enjoy this article on Graduation Time.

Should Marketers Conduct their Own Agency Searches?

It’s Graduation Time. Lesson Two.

Prior to reading this you may want to check out It’s Graduation Time. Lesson One.

In the Old Normal extracurricular activities may have made you well rounded. In the New Normal your knowledge of technology makes you king or queen or prince or princess.   Know than the hiring manager or your boss will make you valuable.  The more you can keep us with technology the more you will rise.

You can only control what you bring into the game and how you use the assets around you. College job fairs are nice but are from the Old Normal.  In the New Normal your LinkedIn profile is more important than your resume.

College can tend to homogenize people. Conformity is safe but doesn’t make your distinctive.   Real value comes from distinction and being your own identity.  It is hard to build an identity when you don’t always have a clear focus on who you are.

In the New Normal networking is more important than hanging around with you peers.  You have done that enough already.

In the New Normal creating your own job may be a better way to make money than trying to find a job.

In the New Normal surround yourself a variety of growth mentors. All ages, all disciplines.  Start with digital wizards. Have friends who are programmers even if you are a musician.

In the New Normal you need a career plan for yourself.  Start by finding ways to monetize your passion.  That will provide a career that runs with zero energy and provides positive life emissions.

In the New Normal the distant future is five years.  Twitter is 6 years old, Instagram is 2, and Vine has just been born.  Target industries and markets that will make your more valuable to the job that comes after this one.  Plan your career two steps ahead.

Avoid industries that are going to be Kodak’s in five years.

What skills will make you more valuable in 5 years?  What language should you learn?  What skills should you acquire?  What countries should you visit and expand your connections in?  It’s More Romania than Italy. Nice food though.

When I was in college I was reading books about Watergate.  President Nixon had a couple of advisors that worked for the advertising firm JWT.  I thought that was kind of interesting.  I ended up working at JWT for ten years.  I wasn’t in advertising, in the United States, and knew nobody.  President Nixon used to walk the beaches in San Clemente.  I still talk to my college roommates from Canada. We have drinks on the pier in San Clemente close to where I live.  My college roommate’s sons live in Shanghai. They must have read Marshall McLuhan.

Where are you going to be and live when your college roommates comes to visit you in the future and how are you going to get there?

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

You might enjoy these articles.

Why College Students Need to Get Into Linkedin.

Networking Tips For Young People Who Hate To Network.

Watch this Video on How to Rise Above the Crowd.

It’s Graduation Time. Lesson One.

It will be graduation time soon.

So what kind of world will you be graduating into?

There will be at least two worlds.

The first is one you can’t control and that world is called the New Normal.

The New Normal Started in September 2008 when the world almost melted when Lehman Brothers went away. You may have never heard of Lehman Brothers.  They were a 156 year old company when you were in your teens.  Those effects are still being felt today.

It probably didn’t mean as much to you then as it did to your parents.  But then again you may be graduating from a school neither you nor your parents wanted you to attend because of it.

It may have happened before you even entered college but it has defined the world you are graduating into.  Things are getting better but things are different and you will live in that difference unless it changes.

The New Normal affected your college experience.  Few courses and more competition for them. Larger class sizes. Longer graduation times.  I read an article in the New York Times that only half of first time college students graduate in 6 years.

What’s up with that?  I went to the University of Western Ontario which you have never heard of and I got two degrees by staying for 6 years.  That’s how I got to California.

In fall 2012, a record 21.6 million students are expected to attend American colleges and universities, constituting an increase of about 6.2 million since fall 2000. More people for fewer jobs.  I graduated into the kind of past.

The average student college debt will be $27,000. Yea.

The current unemployment rate in the U.S. is 7.7%  Better.

The unemployment rate among people under 25 is 16%. Ouch

The unemployment rate among people under 25 in Spain is 55%. That gets people into the streets. As the Rolling Stones sang in the 60’s the time is right for fighting in the street boys.

That world didn’t impact graduates much in the Old Normal but it is does in the New Normal.  As Marshall McLuhan said when I was going to school “It’s a Global Village”. You may have never heard of him and you may not have been to Spain but you are living his prediction.

You need a new lens to see in the New Normal.  In the Old Normal your parent’s friends were more old people.  In the New Normal they are data bases. Mine them.

The second world is the one that you can control and that is the world you personally create around you. How well resourced are you?  How well LinkedIn are you?  How resilient are you?  How well rounded are you?  What would make you interesting to a company? How wide is your network?

More on that in Lesson Two.  Soon to come.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

You might enjoy these articles.

Don’t Let Your Business Cards Weaken Your Personal Brand

The Slash Generation.

Watch this Video on Why Young People Shouldn’t try to Get a Job.

 

Surviving the Great Recession

I was at Starbucks the other day. Starbucks is the official office of the New Normal. It is filled by people who are working all day long without paying rent. There’s free Wi-Fi as well. I walked by a fellow who was talking to some colleagues. The words that came out of his mouth amplified for me in the air. “We survived,” he said. You could see his journey in the crevices of his brow.

I could imagine his conversation: “We survived, but we came out different. We had to make some major changes. Many of our competitors didn’t come out of it.” All true. I have heard it many times. I am often at Starbucks. The great recession changed everybody, everything and most values.

Do you trust your bank? Your mortgage company? Your employer? Your boss? Politicians? Oil companies? Your athletic heroes? Where do you shop now? Do people who drive $150,000 cars look successful to you? Do you buy your kids hoodies at a surf shop or Target? What companies do your children admire? Do you worry less or more? Has what’s important to you changed during the great recession?

Many companies didn’t survive the great recession. Where is New Century? Where is Mervyns? Many logos on office towers have changed many times where I live. I worked at JWT Chicago for 4 years, on the 27^th floor of the John Hancock building. It was the show.  JWT Chicago opened in 1891, and closed during the great recession. “The times they are a changing,” a prophet sang.

A whole class of people has been marginalized. They reach out to me. They lost good jobs during the great recession that they can’t replace. Generally, they are 50 plus years of age. They are not in a position to retire. There are probably millions of them out there who have tried everything to get picked, but are continually overlooked. Feeling like the last kid picked in the game of Red Rover - The New Normal’s Lost Generation.

Some can create a job by starting a consulting career, but others don’t know how to productize their knowledge and turn it into a business. One of the jobs that I had in the past with an agency probably doesn’t exist anymore, or there are much fewer of them.

Look into the future. Do you think that they position that you are in will be around in 5 years? If not, then today is the first day of your life. You can become marginalized because of your cost which often increases with age.  You can become marginalized because of your skills. If you let that happen, that is your choice. You have to change as fast as technology. That’s today’s bench mark.

When kids were young, we sometimes told them to act their age. When you are older you have to reflect the age of relevance. Doesn’t make you bullet proof, but it does provide a vest.

You see in the New Normal many things don’t align with the Old Normal. Companies are cash rich, the stock market sings, but hiring lags. Some months the news is all happy and the next month not so much.

In the New Normal you have to be ready for the next change and it will happen.  Hopefully not for a long time but I still remember the dotcom bust of a decade ago.  Some don’t because they weren’t alive in the workforce or maybe because the pain was short lived.

So, where are you today?

Are you ready to be fired?

When is the late time you reinvented yourself?

How have you made yourself smarter today?

How large is your network?

How have you made yourself more marketable today?

There is a train coming down the track. It hasn’t hit us yet, but sometime in the distant future it will. It always has in the past.

 

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on Twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

 

You might enjoy these articles:

Don’t Let Your Business Cards Weaken Your Personal Brand

Why Reinvention is a Virtual Necessity

Watch She’s Not a Great Networker

How To Rise Above Your Competition

I recently wrote this article for The UPS Store Small Business Solutions.

In today’s small business environment there is intense competition. It’s a crowded world out there. That is nothing new to the readers of The UPS Small Business Solutions blogs.

But one major change has taken place in the last few years in the new business sales cycle.  Today you can be virtually certain that before a prospect engages with you they will Google you.  Yes your Google presence is your step to growing your business.

In the New Normal you must rise above the crowd or your competitors.  Your Google presence is more important than your elevator speech because your chances of getting on an elevator with the key decision maker are very small.  Your business rises above the crowd through your dominance on search engines.

And what would prospects see today if they Google you? Is your Google presence telling your prospects how smart you are?  How you are engaged in new marketing practices like social media? I would surmise that a Google search would list your website and then probably a hodge podge of listings.  Often a number of business directory listings which only tell people where you are located which isn’t a particularly compelling way to motivate prospects to want to do business with you.

Today it is imperative to own all the listings on the first page with your thought leadership.  Your thought leadership should be based on the things that you do that make your better than your competition.  Think more about the customer’s benefits of engaging with you rather than generic benefits of service and price.  How will working with you makes their lives easier and drive their sales?

So how to you build a strong Google presence.  Well it is a combination of traditional and new media and ongoing updates because Google likes change and activity and engagement.

For me the foundation of a strong organic search presence on Google starts with an electronically optimized press release distributed through a wire service like Business Wire or Marketwire.  Oh sure there are free wire services but they don’t create the same buzz.  You get what you pay for is something that hasn’t gone away in the New Normal.

The next step is to productize your knowledge.  Most small businesses know a lot of things.  In the New Normal you need to turn that knowledge into something you can sell and write about.  In other words content marketing.  Converting what you do into blog posts will help your SEO.  Blogging shouldn’t be perceived as a burden.  It is simply writing down what you around know and getting credit for it on Google.

I am sure that there are many blog posts The UPS Small Business Solutions blog on the advantages of having a strong social media presence for you and your company.  A key benefit of social media campaigns is that it improves your SEO.  Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter among the many others offer you a place to repurpose your content and dominate that first page on Google. Your participation positions you as a company that know how to market itself in the New Normal.  If you are current in that fashion it also conveys that you are current on the most up to date trends in your industry.

Another easy way to repurpose your thought leadership if by leveraging LinkedIn. You can belong to fifty groups on LinkedIn.  These groups should be a combination of peer groups and prospect groups.  I always tell clients go where you want to be.  In other worlds participate in the groups that you want to influence.  Here is an example.  I am Canadian and want to speak on networking and business development more in Canada.  A year ago I made 10% of my LinkedIn groups into Canadian groups.  Today about a year later, 15% or more of my readers are from Canada.  How did that happen?  Well I repurpose my blog on those group discussion pages. That’s an efficient way to tell people about what you do in a way that makes your appear to know your core competencies.

In the New Normal it’s not what you say about your business, it’s what your Google presence says about you.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

Watch a Video on the Power of Networking.

Enjoy an article on Networking Tips For Those Who Hate to Network.

Are You a Finder or a Grinder?

How to Build A Consulting Career.

Are Solopreneurs the Future in the New Normal?

Creating an Agency Culture in the New Normal.

I grew up in the Old Normal working at agencies like JWT. When I was transferred from JWT Toronto to Chicago 700 people worked there.  It was hard to find me when I first arrived.  JWT Chicago was founded in 1891 and went away in the New Normal.  Lehman Brothers was founded in 1850 and they melted in 2008 creating the New Normal.

Although the advertising business has changed dramatically since I entered the game there is no doubt that the best people want to work at the best places.  Definitely creative people do.  But in the New Normal creative people can come from the big idea space and also the big technology idea space. The latter could be in charge in the next New Normal.

So how do you create an agency culture in the New Normal? How do you achieve it in an environment where employees can sit right next to each other with their ear buds providing their invisible cubes?  Their separation and privacy while working in close physical intimacy.

First you have to understand Millenials.  They like your money but they don’t belong to you. They want stability with agility.  They want direction and at the same time they want participation.

Many agencies try to create a culture with free food, allowing pets in the office experience, free massages etc. etc. etc. The stuff that gets them articles on being the best places to work when many often aren’t close to that.

Sure free food is nice but it is about capturing your employee’s personal passions and using that fuel to create a unique agency dynamic and experience.

Youth hasn’t changed in the Old and the New Leader. They want to be led by a Leader.  Being a leader is hard.  You have to inspire and inspiration is a true gift.

Agency principals don’t go out much. Few are the face of their agency’s brand.  Attend industry events.  Attend Ad2 events where the entry level people can talk to you.  Agency principals you need to set the example.  Dynamic agencies that attract good people are easy to find because they are out there.

The key with youth is to harness their /talents. They are the slash generation.  You know what their job description is.  You know where they went to school.  Now capture the / that follows that.  Their slash talents are their passions.

Create a culture by filling your agency with those voices.  They may have been interested in heavy metal, mountain biking, music, animation, blogging, photography, Pintrest, Tumbler, Q, speak three languages, cooking or whatever.  In the agency world passion can lead to New Business.

Nurture them. Agency principals often rule by two different philosophies.  Carrot or the stick.  Incentive or fear.  Although we live in the New Normal with lots of fear after the Great Recession the stick strategy neuters culture.  The carrot strategy is the only one that will succeed.

Be a rewarder. Surprise your chosen ones.  These are the few that truly get it.  They are intuitive.  They were born to be in the game.  They know they are good but they are like thoroughbreds.  They need to be nurtured and supported. They respond to little perks.  Praise for sure and an occasion serendipity acknowledgement.  A weekend at a hotel or a gift card or a gift for the significant other if you have kept their partner on the road too long.  Valuable employees love when you invest in them. It affirms their sense of self-worth.

Teach your employees well.   Create a monthly agency forum where you invite unique and different talent to speak to them at a company meeting.  Create your own TED. Have a monthly networking mixer with significant others some months and internally on alternate months.

Be an innovator. Ideate.  How do you create an environment where everyone will be encouraged to generate ideas? Involve them in your New Business brainstorming.

Be Honest. Make them marketable.  Teach your employees well.  Advertising is an industry with ups and downs. Client wins and losses.  In advertising to cut costs you can’t close a plant, you have to fire people.  It is as simple as that.  That is the nature of the business today and in the past.  So make them marketable if things change. Train them on LinkedIn and how to network.  One day you may have to launch them on a new path but they may want them back.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

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Watch a video on How Agencies Can Get More New Business.

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