Frank O’Brien is the founder of Conversation, a “new traditional” ad agency based in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Frank is used to big moments. He’s started his own agency, has made clutch pitches and won big-time clients. He even recently opened his own bar on New York’s Upper West Side. No stranger to pressure, is Frank.
But Monday is a big moment for Frank. Conversation, his agency, will be on national TV as a part of AMC’s“The Pitch,” which is a documentary/reality TV show about two rival agencies competing for a new piece of business. In this case, the client is Popchips. As a former agency guy myself, I’m curious to see what Frank comes up with for Popchips. They already have a strong brand, and are looking to get stronger, so that means the agency that wins will really have to pull out all the stops to impress them.
TheLadders had the opportunity to stop by Conversation’s offices and speak with Frank about his agency, his pitch experience, and what life is like at Conversation. We didn’t ask him about the outcome of The Pitch (no spoilers!) but this is a great insider’s look into the life of an agency founder and executive.
Be sure to catch Frank and his team on The Pitch on AMC, Monday
at 10 pm. There’s also still time to enter TheLadders #mypitch contest on Twitter. Tweet your personal elevator pitch and you can win a 3-month Premium subscription to TheLadders.
Writer’s Note: Over the weekend, Frank’s episode was moved by AMC to Sunday night and aired at 11 PM. You can see additional coverage and a recap on AMC’s site. I won’t offer spoliers here, but you can find out the outcome on the site if you want to…
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.
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.
Money isn’t the only “green” candidates care about when considering a job offer. Professionals are more concerned with the eco-friendly practices in the workplace (or lack thereof) than hiring companies may think. In a recent survey we found that 72% of respondents would choose the more eco-conscious company if they had two equal job offers. When asked how important it is that their company is green, the majority of professionals said it was very or even extremely important to them.
Being green isn’t just important for attracting new talent. Your current employees might be unhappy with you lack of your eco-conscious practices, as well. Some 35% of respondents would not consider their most recent company to be green. An additional 17% were not sure whether their company can be considered green, which leaves only less than half of respondents considering their company “green enough” for their standards.
It’s not all bad news, though. Given a small incentive, we also found that a whopping 75% of respondents would change their daily routine to contribute to a greener company environment. We also found that it actually doesn’t take that much to make your workplace just a little bit greener. While many companies already reduce their paper usage and recycle and reduce trash, there is an opportunity to buy greener supplies, encourage employees to turn off their computers and lights and turn down that AC when not needed.
Benjamin Grohé is the Product Manager for new consumer products at TheLadders. When he is not coming up with innovative ideas to delight our customers, he is celebrating his European heritage by cruising the streets of New York City on his new Vespa or playing football (the REAL football).
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.
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
This past Saturday, the first Agile User Experience (AgileUX) conference, sponsored by TheLadders, was held at the SVA Theater in Manhattan. The conference brought together leading voices from within the New York City design and technology community to discuss strategy and tactics for delivering world class software products.
The conference was organized by Jeff Gothelf, formerly the Director of User Experience at TheLadders, and myself, current head of UX at TheLadders. Todd Hoza, who is the Creative Director for TheLadders, provided creative leadership for the conference.
The speakers we chose came from a cross-section of disciplines including product, venture capital, customer research, and consulting. Speakers representing TheLadders included Eric Burd, VP of Product, who discussed organization change to align the entire business — from sales, marketing, finance and customer support — to an agile mindset.
Eric Burd - VP Product at TheLadders
Also representing TheLadders was Jennifer Gergen, Associate Creative Director, who discussed strategies for better integrating design into an Agile process. I spoke about the importance of continuous, rapid-cadence customer research and usability testing and delved into the details of how to conduct that research and feed it back into product delivery. Finally, Jeff Gothelf argued for demystifying design and the importance of transparency for greater team collaboration.
Will Evans, Manager, User Experience Design at TheLadders
The event drew close to 400 attendees, some from as far away as Japan, who gathered to learn and share ideas for designing greater product experiences faster. The general consensus was that it was a great learning experience exploring the most recent thinking in product design, and many people left energized and excited to bring those ideas back to their organizations. TheLadders was proud to sponsor such an event and continues to be an active member of the New York City Technology and Design community.
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.
AgileUX NYC 2012 — How to create great design experiences in an Agile development environment.
Saturday, February 25th from 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM (ET) School of Visual Arts Theater, 333 West 23 Street, New York NY 10011
This conference is for stakeholders, product managers and user experience designers passionate about building products that delight their customers, whether you work for a lean startup or a large organization. You’ll learn from the thought leaders in the AgileUX community about the entire lifecycle of software development, including:
Organization and cultural change
Team building
Process design
Customer research
Design studios
Transparent design
User story writing
Mid-stream rapid cadence usability testing
Getting a seat at the table
Attendees will walk away with a strong understanding of the complete lifecycle and practical methods they can deploy immediately.
This conference is for stakeholders, product managers, user experience designers, or just about anyone passionate about building products that delight customers, whether you work for a lean startup or a large organization.
Motivation. It’s the key driver for taking an action. What motivates a person to change careers? What motivates a hiring manager to select one job candidate over another? We care deeply about UX research – we do it more than just about any startup you will ever work for. If finding the underlying drivers for customers’ decision making motivates you, then listen up.
As a Lead UX Designer here you will lead efforts to create, concept and design new ways for our community of jobseekers and recruiters to interact in meaningful and engaging ways.
We work quickly, nimbly, and collaboratively. We are an AgileUX team, which means that you will not be designing high fidelity deliverables. You thrive concepting with a team, using sketches and wireframes as conversation starters to explore possible solutions. You must bring your top-notch interaction design, information architecture, and user research skills as well your opinion. Most importantly, bring your passion.
The Skinny:
Develop a deep, empathetic understanding of our customers
Create iterative, lightweight prototypes to concept solutions
Lead cross-functional teams to solve business problems
Design elegant, efficient and sophisticated solutions
Prototype, Usability Test, and then Prototype some more (we do testing weekly)
Be able to defend your design decisions with well-structured arguments
Thrive in an environment of constant change
The Specs:
10+ years experience as an information architect, interaction designer, and user experience designer
Thorough understanding of design principles
No fear of speaking with customers (we do that a lot)
Usability testing – you’ve done it, you love it, you want more of it
Love of data. We have tons of it. Use it wisely.
Proof (we’ll ask you to demo it) of taking an idea from concept to implementation.
Be able to speak to your work clearly and succinctly (we value brevity)
**Note: This is not a graphic design role nor a front-end coding role but should you bring those skills along with solid IA/IxD chops, that’s just more of you to love.**
Email me to apply (wevans@theladders.com)
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. His experiences include Director UX for social network analytics and terrorism risk modeling at AIR Worldwide, UX Architect for Gather.com, and UX Architect for travel search engine Kayak.com.
We’re excited to announce the launch of our new homepage for recruiters. The product, marketing and user experience teams here at TheLadders have been working hard to optimize our sites and services for professionals and recruiters alike. The new recruit.theladders.com is a big step toward putting the right professionals in the jobs that are right for them.
Not only does this new homepage ease the search process for employers and recruiters who are new to TheLadders, but it also makes it that much faster to match them with the right professionals for their jobs straight from the start. Our new design puts search first, allowing recruiters to dive right into Passport—our free recruitment solution—while providing them with a comprehensive chart of our other solutions and full suite of products. Staffing and HR pros can view product videos and even request a one-on-one demo with one of our account executives to see all the ways we can help them fill their open seats.
Our aim is to make it quick and easy for employers and recruiters to promote their jobs, advertise their brands and send updates to interested professionals. This makes it quick and easy for our job-seeking community to start connecting with the right recruiters and applying to the right jobs. Hear that sound? I think it might be the black hole shrinking.
Dan Logan is a Product Marketing Manager at TheLadders. As a frequent host of company meetings, he’s used to answering questions and keeping up with industry trends. He also lives in Brooklyn… and loves it.
But Monday is a big moment for Frank. Conversation, his agency, will be on national TV as a part of AMC’s “The Pitch,” which is a documentary/reality TV show about two rival agencies competing for a new piece of business. In this case, the client is Popchips. As a former agency guy myself, I’m curious to see what Frank comes up with for Popchips. They already have a strong brand, and are looking to get stronger, so that means the agency that wins will really have to pull out all the stops to impress them.
