Right from the start, it was clear to me that these guys were experts.
On AMC’s new show, The Pitch, two ad agencies go head-to-head for a piece of new business. The ability to win new business can make or break an agency. Pitching a client is a fast-paced, exciting, and often highly stressful experience that only the best pros excel at.
One of the agencies in this weekend’s episode of The Pitch is DIGO, an integrated full service brand and business growth agency. I had the opportunity to head over to their offices in Manhattan and talk with DIGO’s Founder and CEO, Mark DiMassimo, and President Lee Goldstein.
We talked about the pitch process. The job search. And the importance of finding the right fit. Right off the bat, it was clear these guys knew what they were talking about.
As a job seeker, you only have to pitch yourself when you’re in a job search. These guys? They pitch for a living.
Watch the video to hear what they had to say. You’ll be as impressed as I was. And there’s plenty that you can take away for your own job search.
Of course, don’t forget to catch The Pitch on Sunday, June 3rd, at 11 PM ET. If you want to see how the pros do it, that’s your chance to catch Mark and Lee in action!
William Beard is the Associate Creative Director of Copy for TheLadders. He loves to travel, always has ESPN.com open, and always takes the cheese option when it’s offered.
Last week I attended Mobile Health 2012, with a focus on “Baby Steps for Big Results.” The idea being there’s power in “baby steps” done quickly, for long term behavior change. Hosted by Stanford U’s Persuasive Technology Lab, this year’s keynote speaker was Weight Watchers CEO and ManMeetScale blogger David Kirchhoff.
David took the opportunity to speak of his personal struggles with weight loss and the dreaded word “maintenance.” He shared one of his own baby steps for keeping the weight off when confronted with temptation…he tweets. For example, @dkirchhoff “On a flight back from St. Louis. Just turned down another warm cookie. It’s the little victories…” There’s something about publicly declaring your weakness and celebrating your win.
So what’s this got to do with TheLadders? And why did we attend a mobile health conference? It’s a good question. What I told attendees is that there’s synergy between the trials and tribulations of health and wellness behavior changes and job search behavior changes. What do I mean by this? In my role as a product leader at TheLadders, I witness countless job-seekers struggling with adopting best practices for a faster, more meaningful and more prosperous job search simply because the tasks at hand appear daunting, or they are overloaded with irrelevant jobs and action-less info.
At the heart of the conference…Baby Steps! (Actually, I find this term a little off putting so I’m going to call it “Starter Steps” to steal from Tim Chang of Mayfield Fund, a conference panelist. Starter Steps translate into BJ Fogg’s new program “3 Tiny Habits” as a way to create new behaviors – in health, or in our case, the job search. Fogg states only three things will change behavior in the long term:
Option A. Have an epiphany Option B. Change your context (what surrounds you) Option C. Take baby steps
Unless you’ve ever spotted a unicorn, forget about the epiphany – it’s too difficult. Instead, focus on changing your context and taking starter steps. These two options are practical and can lead to lasting change if you’re following the right program. Fogg warns that few winning programs exist – luckily TheLadders, like Weight Watchers, is one of them, in my opinion.
You should join a future session of Fogg’s Three Tiny Habits to try starter steps for yourself, and while you’re at it, check out Stanford’s Top 10 Mistakes in Behavior Change.
For more from the audience and participants of Mobile Health 2012, check out the #mh2012 Twitter stream.
Chantal Botanais Director of Consumer Product Development at TheLadders. She’s a pragmatic leader whose mantra is “Insight, creativity & innovation are what make good products great.” She’s #lean and #agile, and a Real Madridista.
As any of our career experts will tell you, having a great personal brand and a clear and concise elevator pitch to deliver your professional value is key. Get your pitch right and it could be just what you need to unlock networking opportunities that could lead to your dream job.
We’ve teamed up for a co-promotion with AMC’s new series the The Pitch to announce our first Twitter contest! Share your super-brief elevator pitch on Twitter using the hashtag #mypitch and you could win a 3-month Premium membership on TheLadders.
How to Enter
1. Follow @TheLadders on Twitter
2. Learn more about crafting your elevator pitch from our selected articles.
3. Tweet your personal elevator pitch with the hashtag #mypitch
4. If your #mypitch tweet is a winner, we’ll DM you with info on how to redeem your free membership.
Now onto the technicalities: The contest, beginning on Sunday, May 6 at 12:00:01am ET and ending Wednesday May 16 at 12:00:00am ET, is open to legal residents of the United States. Winners will be notified on or around Thursday, May 24. Contestants must be at least 18 years old and have a registered Twitter account. For full details, see contest terms and conditions.
That’s enough from me—now I want to hear from you! See you on Twitter.
Kate Addicottis lead copywriter & voice behind @TheLadders. When not tweeting, Kate creates content to engage members and attract new ones. (At exactly 140 characters, the preceding bio is Twitter-ready.)
When our VP of Public Relations, Lisa Hagendorf, first asked me if I wanted to work with AMC’s The Pitch, I broke out in a cold sweat. It wasn’t the show’s fault — it was that simple phrase: The Pitch.
See, before I started my successful career here at TheLadders, I was an agency guy. I’ve worked at some of the biggest and best advertising agencies — Ogilvy, Euro RSCG, Draft and McGarryBowen. Throughout my agency days, I’ve worked on over 50 pitches. They can be exhilarating and they are always exhausting. Late nights. Bad take-out dinners. Intense discussions. Strategies. Concepts. More intense discussions. New strategies. New concepts. Arguments. Sometimes there was crying. Too many calls home, saying you’re still working. Finally, we’d finalize the concepts and send them off to production. There would be a light at the end of the tunnel.
But wait! Emergency meeting!
The new Executive Creative Director took a shower and now has a new strategy and creative idea. Swearing. Lots of swearing.
As soon as I became a Creative Director, I vowed to respect my teams and make sure I understood how they felt. But that goes out the door after a few late nights and the pressure you feel to win. No other professional business gets close to the insanity and pressure of “the pitch.” You have to be willing to put everything you have into it. No one wins because they brought in work they could do in one day. They might have done the work in one day but that’s because they only had a day to do it.
As I watched The Pitch, I felt the pain and excitement of the teams. A part of me wanted in. The competition showcased is really addictive and brought up old competitive feelings. The rush.
And it’s on AMC. Who doesn’t love AMC right now? They’re the most Emmy-recognized network on basic cable. Many of you know it as home to your favorite shows, including Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Killing and The Walking Dead.
TheLadders is happy to collaborate with The Pitch. How do we fit in? We’re experts on the elevator pitch, one of the key aspects of career advancement, and an essential part of a strong personal brand. The Pitch reached out to us because they know we can help professionals give the perfect Elevator Pitch and move their careers forward.
Todd Hozais Director of Creative & UX at TheLadders. When he’s not busy helping build the brand from the inside out, he’s taking credit for all the great work his talented team creates.
If you are looking for innovative ideas for driving revenue for your organization, a regional user group is the perfect format. You get an opportunity to get answers to the top questions on your mind and network with other experts in the field to find out about their methods.
This week TheLadders is hosting the first Marketo Regional User Group in New York. More than 20 marketing professionals from several companies are joining for a discussion about their experience with the solution. The topics include lead scoring and qualification process, nurturing programs and using Sales Insight tools to maximize the impact on the top line.
TheLadders just recently launched the solution while rolling out marketing campaign functionality, lead scoring and nurturing programs. Our biggest challenge was to tie all the data environments together to make Marketo tools effective so we reached out to the CRM team to create the infrastructure. Everything needs to work in synchronicity with each other. Currently our focus is partnering with Sales Leadership to refine our scoring logic, build process and drive adoption. With Marketo, it’s easy to set up reporting and the marketing team can execute campaigns with less manual effort enabling us to be more strategic, and focus on driving higher marketing and sales ROI.
Marketo Highlights
Allows the marketing team to pass highly qualified, prioritized leads to the sales force at the right time
Enables marketing to measure effectiveness of its campaigns in real time
Gives sales team better visibility into marketing programs and to get tips and talking points on customer behavior
Launched the solution in five weeks, immediately pushed several key campaigns to help achieve corporate KPIs and set records on site visits and all-time site engagement
We’re confident the Marketo Regional User Group will be a success, and we’re excited to share with the attendees—and learn from them—so we can all reach our customers more effectively.
Inga Romanoff is Director, Enterprise Marketing for TheLadders and the Marketo Regional User Group Leader in New York City with over ten years of marketing experience in the U.S., Russia, Europe and Asia PAC. Inga is responsible for strategic initiatives in developing the B2B platform at TheLadders.
How do recruiters and hiring managers actually make decisions about candidates?
One thing we know they use is your resume. But how? What is it about one resume that gives a recruiter the information they need to make the right call?
In order to find out, we needed to see how recruiters reviewed resumes. To do this, we conducted a comprehensive eye-tracking study of recruiters while they reviewed resumes.
If you’re not familiar with eye tracking, it’s a line of research that uses technology to record and analyze where and how long someone focuses when digesting a piece of information or completing a task.
We brought in recruiters and recorded them as they viewed online profiles, different types of resumes, and other forms of candidate information.
Here’s some of what we discovered:
How much time does a recruiter spend reviewing a resume?
Unfortunately, not much. Most job seekers think recruiters spend 4 to 5 minutes reviewing a resume. The truth: recruiters spend about 6 seconds before they make the initial “fit/no fit” decision. That means prioritizing information is essential.
Does a professionally written resume make a difference in what a recruiter learns about the candidate?
The results of the study revealed that the recruiters were able to easily find and focus on the important information they were looking for in a professional resume much faster than regular resumes or an online profile.
Are online profiles effective?
No. Online profiles have pictures, and unfortunately, recruiters tended to focus on them for the simple reason that pictures naturally draw the eye. We found they kept recruiters from locating the most relevant information, like skills and experience.
Will Evans is Manager, Experience Design for TheLadders in New York City with 15 years industry experience in interaction design, information architecture, and user experience strategy.
Our New York offices are located in a neighborhood just west of SoHo, recently deemed Hudson Square. We’re lucky enough here to have a great group called the Hudson Square Connectionthat hosts local get-togethers for those who work and live in the area. I’ve really enjoyed attending their events with coworkers and getting to know some of the people I pass on the street to and from work every day.
The Hudson Square Connection team even created a special rewards program, the Connection Card just for locals offering discounts at nearby businesses. TheLadders is partnering to offer a free 3-month Premium membership to our neighbors as a way to help them get to know our business better. For TheLadders, this is a great opportunity to establish and grow relationships with our neighbors. For attendees like me, this is a great way to save some cash at local restaurants and meet other professionals in the area.
As business, it’s smart to make friends with your neighbors. As a professional, it’s even smarter. Here are some simple ways you can build connections in your community.
Say hello to familiar faces
You see the same people on the street, in your lobby, in the parking lot or on the train every day. If you see them often enough to recognize them, odds are they recognize you, too. Why not introduce yourself in those quiet moments on the train or waiting for the elevator. After all, it’s called an elevator pitch for a reason.
Attend local events
Don’t limit events to just meeting people in your industry or function. You never know what connections your neighbors near your office or home may have. For extra credit, go a step further and see how you can help your community through volunteering. That way, you’re not just meeting new people—you’re also showing them your skills and work ethic while building your resume.
Ask your friends
One of the best ways to connect with people in your neighborhood is through the people you already know. See if you can join local friends when they go out with their coworkers for lunch. Reach out to non-nearby friends to see if they know anyone in your area that might be interested in meeting up for a coffee. This is especially helpful if you’ve just moved to a new area and don’t know many people yet. You might find a great new industry contact, possible job opportunity, or just a new coffee buddy.
Kate Addicottis lead copywriter & voice behind @TheLadders. When not tweeting, Kate creates content to engage members and attract new ones. (At exactly 140 characters, the preceding bio is Twitter-ready.)
I’m proud to announce that TheLadders was featured in USA TODAY for the second time this month! You can find our Candidate Insight question “What size company do you prefer?” in the March 19, 2012, Money section’s Snapshots®.
Lisa Hagendorf is the Vice President of Public Relations for TheLadders where she is a huge ambassador of the brand in the office. At the gym. And on the street. She just can’t stop talking about TheLadders. Ever.
At TheLadders, we like to give employees every opportunity to grow.
Recently, my fellow Associate Creative Director, Jennifer Gergen, had an amazing opportunity come her way: She was accepted to participate in the Startup Bus.
The Startup bus is a really unique event. Designers and Developers in different cities board buses and travel to South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) in Austin. They’re formed into small teams and tasked with launching a new startup by the time they arrive.
This meant that Jen would have to take off work for a week, on very short notice. But when she asked our boss (Creative Director Todd Hoza) if she could go, he didn’t hesitate. He realized what a fantastic opportunity this would be for Jen personally and professionally.
Think of the skills she’d be honing: design, development, coordination, teamwork, project management… the list is nearly endless. Todd also realized that there was potential for Jen’s to win—and maybe not come back to work if her startup was funded!—but he was willing to take that chance because he knew what it meant to her.
It’s that kind of freedom that you get at TheLadders that you really can’t get anywhere else. The freedom to grow and to take advantage of unique opportunities.
For what it’s worth, Jen’s team did a fantastic job, making the final group with their startup, Happstr. Happstr is a social sharing site whose goal is to spread global happiness, an idea I think we can all get behind in these cynical times.
We wanted to congratulate her and her team on a great run! We’re sorry she didn’t win, but I have to admit: I’ll be posting on Happstr and sharing how happy I am when I see Jen walk in the door later this week. We can’t wait to have her back!
(You’ll be hearing from Jen about her experience when she gets back, don’t worry.)
Bill Beard is the Associate Creative Director of Copy for TheLadders. He loves to travel, always has ESPN.com open, and always takes the cheese option when it’s offered. You can follow him on twitter: @wrbeard
USA TODAY, the widest-circulated newspaper in the country, cited TheLadders in the Money section cover’s popular Snapshots® on March 7, 2012. Stemming from one of TheLadders Candidate Insights questions — “Does your next job have to be a promotion?” – the story will reach more than 1.7 million readers.
A big thanks to USA TODAY and TheLadders Product and Marketing teams for revealing this important and innovative information about Job Seekers.
Lisa Hagendorf is the Director of Public Relations for TheLadders where she is a huge ambassador of the brand in the office. At the gym. And on the street. She just can’t stop talking about TheLadders. Ever.
One of the agencies in this weekend’s episode of The Pitch is DIGO, an integrated full service brand and business growth agency. I had the opportunity to head over to their offices in Manhattan and talk with DIGO’s Founder and CEO, Mark DiMassimo, and President Lee Goldstein.
William Beard is the Associate Creative Director of Copy for TheLadders. He loves to travel, always has ESPN.com open, and always takes the cheese option when it’s offered.
