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.
Nearly every year around December, TheLadders freezes development and releases around the holidays to stabilize the site in preparation for the expected spike in site traffic from professionals hoping to make good on their New Year’s resolutions to find a new job. A colleague of mine, Ed Cudahy, had the idea to use this time for an internal Hackathon and it’s been our pre-holiday tradition ever since.
This annual event has been hugely valuable for our product development teams allowing us to build and test innovative new tools and techniques. Reaching a little bit beyond their technical comfort zone is something that we want our teams to embrace all the time. Encouraging that creativity during the Hackathon is a great way to help incorporate innovation into our everyday process and get everyone involved in the process of innovating at all stages of implementation.
This year, we extended the event to four days total to make sure there was time to trace a full product development arc: from ideation to selection of tools to the crunch-time that hits just short of the finish line. With just a little direction and a lot more freedom, I think this was the most successful Hackathon yet. In our experience, a strict set of requirements can stifle some good ideas—and the whole purpose of this event is for people to stretch their brains a little.
To create little breaks and make good use of some of the ridiculous (i.e. awesome) toys we’ve accumulated on the floor here, we added a number of side competitions as well. Really, these were just for fun to build team morale and release a little energy. In the true spirit of a Hackathon, all of our awards and trophies were hacks in and of themselves. We had a few golden mice, a golden keyboard, and the grand prize, a lego trophy with an Arduino and an LED sheild embedded in the front scrolling the word “WINNING”. Taking a little inspiration from the television show “The League,” we expect that this year’s winning team will modify the trophy and present it to the team that wins next year’s Hackathon.
Dustin Lucien is the Director of Engineering at TheLadders with 15 years of product development experience. When not planning flying fish races as a fun diversion for internal hackathons, you can find him at home in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Clinton Hill.
“Employ Humanity.” It’s not just a phrase we throw around. It’s painted and posted on the walls in TheLadders’ SoHo offices. It’s a philosophy that lives in our genetic makeup. It’s why we do what we do. And this weekend, more than a dozen volunteers lived that philosophy at our first ever Career Boot Camp event hosted by StreetWise Partners.
StreetWise Partners provides job-skills training and career mentoring for highly-motivated candidates facing multiple employment barriers. Seventy StreetWise mentors and trainees took part in a half-day event, which supported talent and economic growth in New York City. TheLadders best-in-class job matching service and content is a perfect fit for StreetWise and their mission! The day kicked off with a panel presentation comprised of TheLadders executives Alex Douzet and Ware Sykes, and StreetWise board members Orlando Ashford and Singleton Beato. After the panel, career advisors and resume writers from TheLadders conducted workshops for StreetWise participants on personal branding, effective networking and job applications.
We’re looking forward to more events with StreetWise and continuing this important and inspiring partnership. We’re also especially proud to support StreetWise and their ongoing mission. Together, we hope to one day “Employ Humanity.”
You can learn more about StreetWise Partners and TheLadders here.
Lou Ciniglia is the Enterprise Sales Manager at TheLadders.com. He has seven years of experience in recruitment services. His wife is a recruiter. His friends are recruiters. He talks to recruiters all day, every day. Lou loves recruitment.
Learn how Ben, Carolina and Chuck found the jobs that were right for them through TheLadders Signature (previously known as our Job Search Consultation Program). TheLadders Signature is a systematic program that provides precise one-on-one guidance to help top-tier professionals find the next step in their careers.
If you’re interested in learning more about Signature, check out our site.
Ben talks about finding the structure and confidence to land his new job.
Carolina discusses how her advisor helped her stay positive and focused during every step of her job search.
Chuck explains how the program worked for him and why he recommends it to his friends.
Ware Sykes is Vice President of Sales and Services at TheLadders.
The Ladders Signature is a six-month program that is proven to help professionals find the next step in their career. Selected participants who actively engage in all components of the Signature program are guaranteed a job offer or their money back.
Andrea and I first began working together because she was looking to make a career change. After Andrea witnessed several companies go through layoffs and restructuring, she knew the traditional media industry was in trouble. Her entire advertising career up to this point was focused on print media and I knew this could be a problem for us since most advertising jobs were shifting to digital. Andrea would need to make that transition as well and we knew it could be difficult for her to get noticed without that direct experience.
I helped Andrea to map out her network and from there leverage her extensive contacts to secure a number of interviews. I was confident Andrea could get a position, but was a little worried when even her friends’ companies said she needed more digital experience. After this we began exploring start-ups and using her contacts, Andrea found Fashion Etc, a start-up that was quietly looking for someone to manage their entire advertising process. After no less than 2 face-to-face interviews and countless phone conversations, Andrea was offered the role. I was so excited to hear from Andrea that she had landed the position with Fashion, Etc. During the end of our partnership, Andrea had so many interviews and was doing so well, it was almost hard for me to keep up! But Fashion, Etc was the right job for Andrea and I could hear it in her voice when she told me all about how it was this cross between luxury goods and digital media!
Moira Danaher is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC) at TheLadders. After working with a variety of clients in different industries, functions and locations, Moira’s specialty is the job search and helping clients to land their next positions. Moira loves helping clients and making a difference in their lives.
TheLadders blog is always sharing great stories about how our team helps our members, but we’re also proud of the accomplishments our team make out of the office. Today, I’d like to share with you a story about Michael Castro. Mike first started at TheLadders almost 2 years ago as a Job Search Advisor. It was his job to help TheLadders members use the site and to find the right jobs for the right person.
But Mike had a talent and passion that we didn’t know about.
Mike is an amazing and talented filmmaker. When he isn’t writing or performing his own music, he’s shooting videos and films on his Canon 5D. TheLadders first saw his talents come to life when Anita Samojednik, TheLadders VP of Customer Operations, had Mike make a film about his fellow Job Search Advisors for a QTF (Quarterly Talk Forum) meeting. Everyone was blown away by the quality and style of the video. I’ve personally worked in film and video with top commercial directors, and I was overwhelmed. TheLadders had a top director and editor in our midst. TheLadders CEO & Founder Marc Cenedella made it clear we needed to put his talents to good use. Mike moved over to TheLadders UX group, and over the past year has shot and edited over 15 videos. You can see all of his work for TheLadders on our YouTube channel – combined his TheLadders videos have almost 50,000 views.
Recently, Mike submitted a short film to the LA Comedy Shorts Festival. TheLadders is proud of our talented editor and producer, Michael Castro. Please watch and witness the talent we see everyday.
A short film by Mayfair Jollies.
“Love D.O.A.”
Written by Jason Resnikoff & Shalani Tripathi
Directed, shot and edited by Mike Castro
Produced by Joe O’Brien, Mike Castro and Jason Resnikoff
Starring: Jason Resnikoff Shalini Tripathi Maegan Pachomski Paolo Po Joe O’Brien
Featuring the music of Steve Mahoney (“Ever the Optimist”) and The Lesser Ghost. Also featuring ambient sounds by Kevin MacLeod.
Todd Hoza is Creative Director of 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.
Job seekers, recruiters and hiring executives have an increasing number of options to choose from when seeking their next great move/perfect candidate. We believe TheLadders is uniquely positioned to help both sides of the ecosystem achieve success. TheLadders invented the first job site for $100k+ job seekers 8 years ago. And, this year, TheLadders turned the industry on its head (again) by launching the first “job offer guarantee.”
So how did TheLadders invent an offering like Signature, our coach-led program proven so effective we guarantee the outcome? Eight years of data serving the $100k+ segment definitely helped. Latest technology and academic research didn’t hurt either. Our near-famous, unlimited snack area? Maybe.
I’d argue the differentiator is our people. People who are smart & incredibly passionate about careers. People who understand success occurs at the intersection of technology and people (yes, I’ve been reading the Steve Job biography). People who put job seekers success first. That’s what we mean with our new tagline, Your Career Is Our Job™.
We believe in our people so much, we looked internally when developing our new tagline and brand promise. Yes, we validated the heck out of it externally – but the important takeaway is the idea started right here. And when we had to showcase our new tagline at our 9/20 NYSE event, we again turned to our colleagues. Enjoy a video created in-house by the UX team’s Mike Castro (who was once a Job Search Advisor) with support from Todd Hoza (our creative director) and Kate Addicott (our copywriter and tweet-miser of @TheLadders).
We enjoyed making the video. Hope you enjoy watching it.
Nicholas Karrat is Vice President of Marketing for TheLadders.com. He’s passionate about building great brands (e.g., TheLadders), traveling with his family and October baseball. He’s been waiting ~20 years for “the call” from the Yankees…any minute…
September 20th was quite the day for TheLadders! After lots of hard work, we officially opened our doors to all career-driven professionals looking for their next big opportunity. We’ve found a lot of success with the $100k+ salaried workforce and are excited to share that with everyone else. To celebrate this launch, we hosted our very first Career Carnival that same day.
What is a Career Carnival, you ask? Well, it’s not your average job fair. Located at the South Street Seaport in our very own New York City, we organized an afternoon of games, prizes, and career advice. Perhaps some of you checked it out? It was a lot of fun and a perfect afternoon break for those working in the area.
As is the case with all carnivals, we made sure to include games that tested your throwing abilities (Waste Basketball), speed (Tie Tying Race – my personal favorite!), and hand-eye coordination (Professional Ping Pong). And, although there wasn’t a dunk tank holding that co-worker you secretly dislike, we did have 3 copy machine piñatas to help relieve all of those job search frustrations. If you’ve seen the movie “Office Space”, this is ringing some bells for you. If not, just know that it was fun, exciting, and there were great prizes to be found inside!
Most importantly, we had a Career Advice booth offering visitors free career advice from some of our certified experts. They were also able to pick up a free copy of our best-selling book, “You’re Better Than Your Job Search”. It truly was a great way to get a jump start on that job search while having a little fun in the process.
Kelly-Marie Bermudez is the Marketing Manager for Online Acquisition at TheLadders. When she’s not introducing customers to TheLadders, she’s discovering new restaurants, cheering on her METS, and travelling the world little by little.
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.
