Hiring and Training College Graduates

There are two areas of business that I have a passion for.

One is Direct and Brand advertising integration, the other is bringing young people into our field by hiring and training college graduates.

Here's a fact: Most advertising agencies do not like to hire college grads. That's because they (and they do not like to admit this) do not have a clue on how to train them.
Most young people who get into advertising start off in a corporate environment and then move to an ad agency after they gain experience. They're usually poorly trained and their experience doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
When ad agencies do hire college grads, they don't train them, they work them. Some young people make it, most don't. They get burned out and quit.

For years every time one of my agency managers needed a new hire, they would say to me, "I need somebody with experience. They have to hit the ground running." When I would suggest that they hire a bright young person and train them, they would give me their best "You don't have a clue nor do you appreciate how valuable I am to this organization and should not be wasting my time training people" look.

They would proceed to look for somebody with "experience" and occasionally they would find one, but usually the new hire had a lot of poor experience and had to learn the job by osmosis.

Around eight years ago, I decided to see if I could hire and train some bright college college grads.
The first thing I did was establish some recruiting ground rules:

- They must have a degree in marketing, advertising or communications.
- They must have graduated with a minimum of a 3.5 GPA
- They must have worked every summer, including high school.
- They must demonstrate social involvement or leadership (sports, charitable ventures, student clubs, etc)

They had to meet these minimum requirements just to get an interview and there were no exceptions.

The next thing I did was start meeting marketing professors at Colleges and Universities in the Philadelphia area. We have a lot of colleges and Universities in the Philadelphia metro market, I've been told that we have more than Boston, though I've never counted them all up,
Over the years I've made some great friends in the academic community and they have sent me their best and brightest.

I'll leave you with this little story.
I hired a bright young man, who met all of the requirements. I had a meeting scheduled with a big client and decided to take him along to observe. On the way to the clients office I turned to the new recruit and said, "Look, you don't know anything. So if the client asks you a question, simply respond by saying, 'I don't know sir, but I'll get back to you with the answer', you got that?" "Yes sir, got it," he said as we entered the client's offices.
The Vice President of Marketing came down to meet us and I introduced my new hire as we got on the elevator to go to our meeting. On the elevator the Marketing VP turned to the young man and asked, "Are you from this area?"
My bright new hire looked the VP right in the eye and said,"I don't know sir, but I'll get back to you with the answer."

We'll continue this discussion later.

Jon