The Perfect Fit

Resources For Your Remote Career Path

When you have the ability to work remotely, the opportunities are endless. You could land a full-time job with a company that operates virtually, or you could even open up your own online business! No matter what’s next on your professional journey, Bishop Partners can help you get ready. Here’s how to search for remote work opportunities, network online, and spruce up your resume for the job hunt.

Find a Telecommute Position

Today, plenty of companies allow their employees to work remotely. Here’s how to land the remote job of your dreams!

● Wondering how to find job postings for remote positions? Check out these platforms.
● Create a virtual portfolio for employers to view that showcases your most important professional achievements.
● Get in touch with Bishop Partners if you need resume and portfolio consulting.
● Get ready for your video interviews in advance by rehearsing your answers and testing out your technology.
● Once you’ve secured a remote position, settle into a routine that will boost your productivity!

Run a Business From Home

You can open a business without renting a retail space. These tips will help you launch a company that you can run remotely.

● Don’t launch a product or service without creating a business plan first — you can get all of your ideas down on paper.
● Registering your business as an LLC will grant you limited liability and tax perks, so get your Certificate of Formation in your state through an online formation service!
● Make sure that customers can easily find you online by setting up a small business website.
● Running a remote business doesn’t have to prevent you from networking — these tips will help you connect with others online and offline.

Tips for Job-Seeking Veterans

Are you transitioning from the military to civilian life? These resources are packed with tips on landing the right remote job.

The Recruiting Market is Red Hot and Rapidly Becoming Candidate Driven!

What the difference a year makes! Employers are no longer simply driving the recruiting bus, picking up experienced and skilled employees. Candidates need to want to work for you (employer) as badly as you want them on board!

In a survey with ExecuNet (a leading Executive Recruiting resource), completed last week the results were surprising, if not downright shocking!

“We are hearing from more and more executive recruiters that the executive hiring market is very strong. Some compare it to 1999-2000 just before the “dot com” bust. That may be overblown, just glad things are moving forward.

The challenges of a strong marketplace is that it isn’t all good news for recruiters who work so hard to fill a position. It is clearly becoming a candidate empowered market.

A Robert Half survey from February, 2021 highlighted that 28% of candidates backed out after receiving a job offer:

▪ 44% received a better offer from another company
▪ 27% received a counteroffer from their current employer
▪ 19% heard bad things about the potential new company through due diligence”

One of the principles of interviewing is: “Know Your Candidate!” They have options.

Know if your candidate is interviewing elsewhere – a top candidate attracts other recruiters, so keep the pulse on all candidates you are seriously pursuing; you can be seen as a helpful part of their process.

Understand what competitors are offering – top candidates can be expected to attract top interest and you can build relationships to help them compare offers, so they can better make a decision.

Prepare for the Counteroffer – clear with the candidates early what their view is of a counteroffer and lack of longevity for anyone who accepts one.

Improve the way to extend offers – take advantage of the relationship between hiring manager (or recruiter) and candidate and be open, honest and sincere.

Help your candidates resign – enable them to leave graciously and professionally, it protects them and commits them to final closure.

Do you, the Employer, have the time and resources necessary to really develop the relationships and understand the nuance of a candidate’s career goals? Those are the (simple) elements that help the retention of high value candidates. It’s also why there are Executive Recruiters!

Give Bob a call to see how Bishop Partners can help you hire the most valuable candidates, in a timely way.

Recruiting Surges as Pandemic Recedes! It’s Recruiting Pandemonium!

The St. Louis Post Dispatch Headline over the weekend read, “US Economy Roaring Back”! Friday in the Wall Street Journal, “Jobless Claims fell below 500,000 last week for the first time during the pandemic as layoffs continue to decline.” It’s not only bars and restaurants who are having trouble hiring . . . it’s every (not any) employer who is interested in upgrading particular capabilities.   

The second week in January, 2021 Bishop Partners experienced an incredible, sudden acceleration of recruiting activity from our former and new Clients. It was exciting! We’ve already completed more searches this year, than all of 2020!

For example, in an agency or in-house creative group, those superior creatives, digital media planners/strategists/buyers, client service leaders or new biz developers are extremely difficult to identify and hire. They don’t watch job boards or apply for new positions. If they’re not working at the employer of their choice, being paid what they’re worth and professionally very happy, it’s their own fault!

When layoffs are planned and executed, employers don’t lay off their most valuable employees. They lay off those who are not great at what they’re doing or who’s comp level was just too much during Covid.

Companies are more methodical in the approach to hiring in that the openings are a result of analyzing the business model and organizational structure to key on personnel realignments, upgrades or replacements. With the vaccine rollout and a better understanding of how to mitigate surges than a year ago, companies are working feverishly to meet demand and expand capabilities (modern marketing), while also assessing where they can embrace remote talent in some departments permanently.

If you aren’t already, now is the time to be developing your hiring strategy for the rest of the year. Business is bouncing back quicker than anyone expected . . . don’t get lost in the dust!

To efficiently identify, recruit and hire the top performers in your industry, it’s smart to hire a professional recruiter who specializes in your industry. You want the position filled as quickly as possible.

Give us a call and we’ll be happy to discuss your needs and explain how we can be a resource for you.

Beginner's Guide to Starting a Small Business

If you’re looking for a way to become an active member of your community, consider starting a business. Local entrepreneurs help cities and neighborhoods thrive. They pave the way for industry and contribute to upward growth for everyone around them. Here are some tips for how to create a business that’s interwoven with your community:

Getting Started
Set a strong foundation in order to build a company you can be proud of:

● Take a look at this article to figure out if you’re ready to start a business.
● Look over different business structures to see which is right for you.
● Raise funds through loans, grants, investors, or crowdfunding.

Building a Local Team
Create jobs for your neighbors and build a unified team:

● Freelancers can help you handle basic foundational tasks, such as accounting or email marketing, while you build a full staff.
● Be sure to do an honest audit of your own skills in order to see what gaps you need to fill with your team.
● For example, if you don’t have much marketing experience, you may want to consider using a marketing recruiter to help you find a great fit.
● Even if you’re hiring locally, you can still consider hiring remote workers in order to

Photo Credit: Pexels

reduce office costs and attract self-motivated candidates.

Staying Community-Minded
Your business has the power to make a real difference in your community:

● Offer your product or services to local people and businesses to build relationships.
● Build charitable giving into your budget so you can support local improvement efforts.
● Join your local chamber of commerce in order to stay knowledgeable on what’s happening and connect with other business owners.

With time, local businesses can become defining elements of a neighborhood or city’s character. Focus on building a business that supports the community, and it will support you in kind!

New Urgent Search, Account Director in Minneapolis

With 50 years of data-driven direct marketing experience, our Minneapolis Client offers the services, resources, and expertise their clients need to power successful, omni-channel marketing campaigns.

Our Client’s rapidly growing Marketing Services team is seeking experienced account/client services professionals to serve in the position of Account Director. The primary role of the Account Director is to support Group Account Directors, Strategists, and the Sales team in developing and implementing direct response marketing strategies. This will include managing client communication and deliverables as well as direct or indirect supervision of assigned Account Services team members.

Principal Responsibilities
• Become an expert on each of assigned clients’ company, products, industry, offers, messaging and brand guidelines, etc.
• Brings new ideas, insightful thinking and proactive planning to clients on a regular basis.
• Provides input and assist the Group Account Director and Strategists in the development of strategic marketing communication plans.
• Frequently develop pitch and presentation materials and “sells” ideas and recommendations to clients.
• Build and maintain positive relationships with client contacts through daily interactions as our Client’s principal representative.
• Actively participate in development of campaigns from ideation through to client approval and performance analysis in a leading role.
• Develop creative briefs and any reference materials needed to give strong direction to the internal team in order to complete deliverables.
• As necessary, review creative materials and provide detailed proofing to ensure it matches the requirements outlined on estimate, matrix, or other reference documents
• Deliver quality materials on-time, on-strategy and on-budget; monitor project labor vs. budget on ongoing basis, revising scope documents or escalating concerns as appropriate
• Ability and willingness to travel, up to 30%

Strategic Business Development Manager (REMOTE) #21032

General Description:
Our St. Louis Client is a marketing resource specializing in Corporate Communications, both internal and external. They take pride in conveying a company’s message through engaging tactics, suited to their individual culture. Are you passionate about helping a business grow and create extraordinary customer experiences?

Our Client is seeking a talented, highly motivated and dedicated relationship development leader to engage leading corporations and promote internal culture communications. As a customer-obsessed, engagement communications enthusiast, you will influence and build upon the success we have had with other iconic Brands like, Southwest Airlines, Jimmy John’s, Ulta Beauty, TEDx, ABInBev or The Goddard School.

Our Client’s on a mission to hire the very best and is committed to creating an exceptional employee experience, where everyone is respected and has access to equal opportunity. We realize that new ideas can come from everywhere in the organization, and we know the next big idea could be yours! There is opportunity to work from a remote location in the Central Time Zone.

Principal Responsibilities:
• Execute new business efforts, including proactive targeting, RFI/RFP response and financial negotiations.
• Deliver compelling, benefit-focused presentations tailored to each client; ensure presentations stand out from the pack
• Determine where there is a potential opportunity for business and qualify, convert, and engage these opportunities
• Identify and manage the creation and development of presentation materials and room theater.
• Lead the development, customization and delivery of RFP and RFI responses
• Provide accurate and detailed communications, pipeline and financial forecast within Salesforce. Be accountable for each project’s hitting profit targets.

Experience:
We’re looking for experienced new business developers with a marketing, advertising or digital media background. We’d like five to ten years’ experience, most recently in an agency or consultancy environment. If you’re smart, ambitious, articulate and looking for long term career growth opportunity, let’s talk! If you have experience in the Technology, Healthcare/Pharma or Finance categories, we’ll be even more excited for that conversation!

Lead Generation Strategist (REMOTE) #21033

For this role, we want you to elevate the strategy and content components of our new business development protocol. You will work directly with strategic accounts to drive creative content strategies that deliver prospects interested in learning more about our Client (your new Employer). This is the opportunity to improve your skills in marketing automation, create and refine input and help grow a Marketing Agency of the Year.

Our St. Louis Client is an award-winning communications agency, with a respected national reputation for engagement excellence. They believe an agency should be transparent, honest, open-minded, and focused on its clients and its employees. The culture should welcome, embrace respect and support each individual as an integral part of the entire company's success.

This Lead Generation Strategist will run the day-to-day strategy with some guidance with the Chief Growth Officer. Digital experts will partner with you to shape campaigns that unlock exceptional performance. All the while, you will monitor your strategies; partnering with external agencies to drive superior results – the kind of outcomes that lead to long-standing relationships that make marketing matter. 

You will present to clients with authority, "front" meetings, and take ownership of projects/campaigns and their outcomes. Scope of expertise should also cover best practices for executing against a journey-based planning framework that intuitively directs owned, earned and paid distribution channels. There is an opportunity to work remotely, within the Central Time Zone.

Principal Responsibilities:
• Serve as a content marketing manager for agency teams supporting clients with content development and distribution deliverables.
• Integrate with the planning efforts of the strategy account development teams to define audiences, customer journeys, and content ecosystem dynamics associated with client marketing campaigns and objectives.
• Help define and establish the role of content marketing in overall strategic marketing plans, and champion the importance of the content marketing discipline.
• Lead the development and distribution of compelling and engaging content strategies and executions, working closely with martech and business intelligence teams to measure and report and fine-tune performance metrics.
• Lead the agency’s own content marketing effort through strategic activation of social media assets and other owned, earned and paid channels, while managing two external digital media agencies supporting your efforts.

Experience:
Three to five years’ experience in an agency or consultancy, working hands on with digital media, metrics and content strategies. Experience directing the development of a variety of social media and content marketing materials (link to portfolio requested), including use of a CRM. Salesforce, Pardot or Marketo experience strongly preferred. Excellent knowledge of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, social listening tools and marketing insight software.

Spring Clean Your Professional Profiles

As Spring is just around the corner, it is a great time to clean and refresh. Consider applying that concept to your online professional profiles with an update to all of your social media platforms. 

As the economy improves, hiring activity is increasing and is expected to really accelerate, especially in the second quarter. In a competitive job market, it’s important to stand out amongst your peers. A good way to catch a hiring authority’s eye is with a strong profile on LinkedIn. Strong LinkedIn Profiles are significantly enhanced with recommendations (more so than endorsements!).

Incomplete profiles or leaving off blocks of time will not get you the same attention as those profiles that are showing effort and attention to detail. Even if you are not actively looking for a new role, your professional presence can yield a conversation about an opportunity that can intrigue.

Recruiters are constantly searching for talented individuals in their field, so demonstrate your contributions by detailing the ways you’ve added value, where you have gained applicable experience, and how you have delivered on leadership, team building and mentoring opportunities.

In addition to updating your LinkedIn profile, also take the time to review the rest of your social media. Hiring authorities might look at Facebook, Twitter and Instragram so maintain those platforms in a manner that represents you authentically and professionally. What you put out there publicly can attract an engagement with a recruiter or eliminate you from the talent pool.

It’s also a good idea to always have your resume up to date. Don’t forget to include promotions, certifications, collaborations and contributions you’ve made since the last time you looked at your resume.

A Client of mine put it best, I think. She said, “I won’t hire any candidate who has something posted that they wouldn’t want their grandmother to see!”

Thanks to Bailey at Bohan & Bradstreet for contributing to this article.

Identifying & Hiring Top Talent Efficiently

Every owner, CEO, President or hiring manager often has a problem to solve. The need could be the result of Covid layoffs, retirement, building bench strength, budgeted growth plans, replacing an under performing team member or one that has moved on. Regardless, the position needs to be filled as quickly as possible, by a candidate who is a professional fit for the role, and equally important, one who is a strong cultural fit for your organization. You need them to flourish on and with your team. 

Sure, you can post your open position on job boards and receive hundreds of applicants and perhaps a handful will work in the industry. Nevertheless, most will not be qualified for your role and they will have no specific industry experience. Perhaps a handful will have worked in the industry but aren’t qualified for your role. You will spend countless hours (which translates into wasted time and money) sorting through resumes and talking to people who cannot solve your problem. If you are lucky, you may get one that you can hire. Are you seeking to ‘get lucky’ in filling this crucial need?  Is that a result worth the amount of time spent?

A better approach is to align yourself with an industry specific, professional recruiter. One that understands your product(s), how you go to market, who your competitors are, and will understand the specific issues that you need the candidate to solve.  Your ‘industry expert’ recruiter is well connected with the people in YOUR industry vertical and ultimately can qualify anywhere from 50 – 200 people (depending on the position). In the end, you will get the best 3 or 4 candidates who are actually excited for the opportunity to join your team! 

Sometimes (especially with highly technical roles) it may be as few as 1 or 2 candidates introduced. Regardless, this is the ‘less is more’ approach. You will receive quality candidates, fully vetted and qualified to fit the specifications of your role, both professionally and culturally.  They will know enough about your company to know that this is actually a career opportunity for them.

Don’t fall into the ‘we need to see more’ before we can make an offer trap. Remember, time to thoroughly qualify a candidate…has already been spent for you. Focus on who is in front of you – the qualified candidate that will solve your problem while achieving success for you and your organization.

Written by my friend Ted Konnerth, CEO of Egret Consulting and lightly edited by me.

As The Economy Improves! Don’t Just Hire . . . Analyze, Identify and Recruit!

If you’re considering hiring new staff in this Q1, chances are that you’ve determined very specifically those skills which will deliver the most return, quickest. The days of just “hiring” employees are diminishing. As modern marketing becomes more and more complex, it’s essential to hire the correct experienced skillset, that will increase or enhance your existing capabilities.

Were you forced to layoff HR and/or recruiting staff in 2020? Many employers simply couldn’t afford the luxury of non-revenue producing positions, no matter how important they were considered. If you post a job online today, will you have the experienced staff necessary to efficiently assess the quality of the applicants and respond promptly?

Bishop Partners is here to support your recruiting efforts. Whether you want local, regional or remote workers, our database of thousands of marketers of every discipline delivers referrals (if not candidates) surprisingly quickly. Our 35+ years in marketing and 20+ recruiting marketers of all disciplines, uniquely positions us to help your hiring managers identify specifically those traits and skills most critical . . . and do it very quickly.

As a result of Covid created Client need, I have “unbundled” the recruiting services. You post the position, I’ll screen the candidates. I develop a comprehensive overview of the candidate(s) for introduction. I also offer multiple payment options. Read more detail here, on my blog at http://bit.ly/2XXRYwC

I’m very proud of the trusted national reputation earned over those 20 years. Please give me a call to investigate how I can effectively and efficiently support your hiring needs . . . Immediately! 

Take care and stay safe!