It’s obvious that the economic recession has been tremendous impact on individual careers as well as the marketing and advertising community locally, nationally and globally over the past year. There have been unprecedented job losses on both the agency and client side.
As a marketing headhunter, there's another view of this which is coming into focus. Fellow recruiter colleagues report the same thing that I'm seeing. Our clients are taking advantage of this enconomic situation to re-organize, re-tool and refine and generally "upgrade" their staffs for this new era in advertising and marketing communications.
The skill sets that were the foundation for success over the last 20 years are no longer the skill sets marketing and communication employers are looking for, on either the client or agency side. Reaching out to a brand's stakeholders and communicating with them has become more difficult as media coninues changing and becoming more diverse. This seems obivous, but think of the number of companies who've "had no turnover" over the past years (decades). Without very self motivated and savvy employees, that could mean those companies are using employees who no longer "get it", or are not capable of contributing at the high level they once did.
What the statistics about layoffs aren't indicating is the number of new hires with different skillsets companies are making. Clients are replacing employees with professionals more appropriate for this new era. CEOs are "topgrading" their Boards and Clients their brand leadership. The Bible on topgrading is a book by Bradford Smart called, "Topgrading - how Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People".
This whole marketing topgrading effort does not necessarily result in one job loss and one hire. There's no direct correlation and little doubt that the net result is a fewer number of jobs. The net result by definition is also that those fewer number of people are much better positioned to contribute mightily to the marketing resource or brand as well as their clients or other constituents.
Retained recruiters are charged with topgrading at every hire, all the time. Cients don't pay fees unless they believe that the recruiter is delivering candidates that the client cannont identify, recruit and hire themselves. Topgrading and retained recruiting go hand in hand. Over the past year, it's also been one of the reasons some recruiters have been able to stay in business (with so few apparent new hire opportunities). Astute and agressive advertising and marketing communications firms are looking at now as the time to build the staff that can (and will) propel them into the future.
Topgrading for the recovery has been going on virtually since this recession started. Every marketer at every level, whether CMOs or those just getting started in the business, must make the effort to stay abreast of what's going on in the market, and continually educate themselves and refine their skills to consistently be able to powerfully contribute.