Remember Frank Zappa? You know you do. “Joe’s Garage”, “Baby Snakes, “Don’t you eat the yellow snow”, some of that’s gotta ring a bell. I love Frank Zappa. I have no idea why, but there’s something about listening to psychotic, off-beat craziness that I love.  That, and the fact that I love listening to someone who can play their instrument really well just go off and shred faster than Bobby Flay can cut up a vegetable.  I could listen to Vinnie Colaiuta play speed drums for hours!  Anyway, most people don’t really KNOW Frank’s stuff all that well because, well because unless you’re a music dork or a well-learned musician, you can’t really wrap your grubby fingers around what’s going on in his tunes, much less what’s musical about it in the first place.

Now, are you familiar with Sting? If you’re not then you’re either 12 or have been brain-dead for the last 30 years.  The former (well now current) singer from The Police has been writing chart-topping pop hits for 30 years now, not to mention the fact that he lives in a fucking castle! He still makes $2,000 a day from “Every Breath You Take”. $2,000 a day off one song! ONE SONG! He’s a badass! I would put it out there that, as far as musical talent is concerned, Frank and Sting are very similar.  Here’s the difference:

One writes intricately pieced-together, jumbled, jig-saw like anthems and the other (for the most part) writes simple 4/4 pop songs with melodies that have so much catch to them, you’d think they were a baseball mitt. One made really good money and reached a handful of “special”customers. The other made more money than some small countries GNPs and reached several tens of millions of customers.  Now, you can argue that both made enough money and had enough album sales to consider themselves “successful”.  But, you could also say that Sting “made it” just a little more than Frank. Regardless, I am a fan of both.

When we started Over October (shameless band plug), we decided to change the way we wrote songs.  We decided that it was just as respectable to write a solid pop tune that fell under 4 minutes and that had 5 chords instead of 37 chords jumbled in the middle of 18 verses, 4 pre-choruses, 17 middle 8s and, well you get the picture. It wasn’t about trying to show everyone how musically talented we were. It was about reaching as many people as possible with our music.  It didn’t really happen but that’s a different story all together.

As the entity that is your agency, you have a message that you’re sending (whether you realize it or not) to anyone that interviews with you.  Whatever you’re selling, whatever you’re pitching, whatever you’re saying to candidates is your message. I have found that a good bit of the time, agencies don’t really sit down and think about the message that they’re sending to people they’re trying to hire. Sure, you’ve got the message that you want to send to potential clients down pat.  But, why oh why aren’t you thinking about the people that could potentially be working FOR you?  Aren’t they just as, if not more, important?  The answer of course is HELL YES!

Not only does your message resonate in the minds of the people that you interview, but it gets spread to others in your market. If you don’t think your candidates are sharing information about their interview with their colleagues, friends and family, you are sorely mistaken!  I’ve found at least one constant with candidates:  they talk, oh how they love to talk.

All I’m really saying is have a clear and simple message in mind that you want to convey to potential employees.  They need to hear why they should come and work for your agency and they need to know what exactly it is that you want to accomplish in the next 5, 10 and 15 years.  And, as I said earlier, it doesn’t have to be complicated at all.

Example of a good message:

Here at Agency X we believe in consistent support of our employees to help them accomplish theirs and the agencies’ goals.  We are constantly striving to bring in the best accounts (clients) that we can and will always provide the tools necessary to do so for our employees. We believe that working hard is the key to our success but that our employees should be able to have a life outside of work.  Agency X strives to build a solid reputation in the marketplace and to be considered the benchmark in regards to what makes successful agency.

Example of a BAD message:

Here at Agency Y we believe that your job should come before God, your family and any recreational activities that you might enjoy. We don’t believe in spending money and will cut costs as much as possible, eventually leading to the strong potential of lay-offs.  We feel that clients should WANT to work with us.  Therefore we do not condone any type of schmoozing, ass-kissing or anything that might make us look weak in the eyes of a potential client.  We will not negotiate on terms with anyone.  It’s our way or the highway.  Normal business hours are Monday through Friday from 6AM-6PM and employees are required to work two hours of overtime per day.  We do not pay overtime.  Weekend hours are optional.  You are required to work 5 weekends a month.  If the month does not have 5 weekends, hours will be made up the last week of the month. We clock in and out for the start and end of the day, lunch, smoke breaks and bathroom breaks.  However we do not allow bathroom breaks. Family is not welcome on the premises except for special agency functions.  There are no special agency functions. We do not promote from within.  There are no promotions.  We typically pay 15% below average salary for the area. 

I know the last example sounds silly, but you’d be surprised at the impression candidates sometimes take away from interviews because the message is not clear. Just remember, Keep It Simple Stupid and make sure your message is a positive one.  You’ll get more and better candidates from it. 

“I’ve been going to this high school for 7 ½ years.  I’m no dummy.”

-  Charles De Mar “Better Off Dead”

Technorati Tags: Frank Zappa, Sting, message, interview, Agency

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.