Sarah Owens

Sarah Owens

If these are the words you dread when you’re going for that perfect job, then here are five tips to help you perform brilliantly:

1 Keep the objective in mind: these are designed to give you the opportunity to demonstrate how you approach a problem and to see how you think. And usually there’s no right or wrong answer!

2 Remember you don’t need to know everything about the subject and spend hours conducting research.  In most cases you will be fine if you make assumptions, as long as you make it clear what you’ve assumed*.

3 Make sure your presentation is clear, concise and has no mistakes.  Run through it in front of a friend if you can and ensure that it doesn’t over run.

4 Try to give your audience a something new or exciting: a different way of looking at a problem or a totally original solution.

5 Go prepared.  Know your presentation well enough that if you’re let down by IT, you can still talk sensibly; take along a couple of hard copies of your work that you can always leave behind if appropriate.

This is a great way for you to showcase your skills so treat this stage positively and enjoy it!

*One candidate actually invented findings from a focus group and continued to refer to the group’s views even when questioned, to considerable positive effect!

 Sarah Owens

New changes to legislation, as a result of a European directive (how did you guess), will come into force in October that are certainly going to have an impact on the freelance market.

They’re designed to protect the rights of agency workers or freelancers/temps, as we all know them, and mean that any temp employed for more than 12 weeks must be given the same pay and holiday allowance as permanent staff. Now this is all very admirable, however, if you’re an employer it’s not such great news and, unsurprisingly one in six companies* admits they’ll be getting rid of their temps well before the 12 week deadline. A quarter will be put of hiring temps altogether.

So if you’re a freelancer you now know why you’re suddenly going to be offered 11 week assignments!

Let us know what you think.

Comment on this blog.

*Source: The Telegraph.

Sarah Owens

If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll know I’m concerned about the shortage of planners in our industry and the fact that there’s no clear career path into planning.  So, I was really delighted to hear of The Ogilvy Planning Fellowship, an entry level scheme that will run from November to train the planners of the future.   

I think this is just brilliant.  But currently Ogilvy are one of only a few agencies taking this type of initiative.   It would be so good for the industry as a whole, not to mention the individual agencies themselves, if there were more training opportunities in planning.  By taking on and training up individuals with real potential you’ll reap tremendous rewards and you won’t need to be chasing ever scarcer planning talent, because you’ll have your own home grown expertise.

So congratulations Ogilvy and the one or two enlightened agencies who are taking on trainee/junior planners and I really do hope that more agencies will be inspired to do the same this in the coming year.

Sarah Owens

As of half an hour ago, my current briefs for direct and digital planners outnumber qualified candidates by 3 to 1. I’ve done this analysis before, but I have to say, I think this ratio is a record. I really don’t have enough good planners to go round and, I don’t think it’s just me, I think it’s the industry as a whole.

Why is this? Essentially it’s because of the way that planning’s developed. In the past, there was no such thing as planning and account handlers did the planning (for what it was) and if not them, then the client.

Fortunately for the success of the direct industry some sensible people realised that taking a more rigorous approach, knowing more about customers, finding valuable insights that informed propositions and developing the tools to put together proper strategic plans, was a good idea.

So planning became a discipline and has grown to be a vital element of the agency offering, often equally as important as creative in providing a competitive advantage.  What’s not happened though is the evolution of a proper career path for planners. It’s all a bit hit and miss. Agencies haven’t invested in planning and some are still painfully narrow minded about the type of experience they’ll look at, preferring to wait and then fight the competition for the perfect candidate.

So if you want to be a planner, what do you need?  I look for three things:

• A passion for planning.
• The skills. These are hard to sum up, but for me it’s about a naturally strategic approach, intelligence, rigour and ideas, within a framework of meeting objectives (usually commercial).
• Then, and this varies with level, the experience to demonstrate or substantiate your skills. For my roles this will need to be direct and/or digital strategy development.

Clearly the more senior you are, the more strategic experience I and my clients will want to see. I would say a senior planner would need a minimum of 50% strategic experience, some really good case studies under your belt and the ability to demonstrate that you really have made a measurable strategic difference to client business. 

So, if you’re tempted to look at a career in planning, it’s worth going in with your eyes open and your expectations reasonably grounded. I’ll be honest, I can’t guarantee success because I still think that agencies do need to start being more open-minded.  However, with the market as it is, there simply has to be more opportunity than ever before to make that leap. So visit our website or drop me your CV to cv@direct-recruitment.co.uk.

And, if you’re already a planner with direct and/or digital experience, then I can promise you the most amazing choice of roles for a long time, so do get in touch today!

Sarah Owens

We all really love the fact that we get recommended by our candidates. It’s great that you feel that we’ve done such a good job that you trust us to do the same for a friend or colleague.

It’s even more wonderful that some of you tell us that you’d be happy to do this even without an incentive!  (We do believe you, you know!).  Even if this is the case, though, we still want to say thank you.

So, we’ve come up with a new choice of rewards.  If you recommend someone as talented as you and we successfully place them, you can pick from a case of top notch champers, £150 to spend at a D&D London restaurant – the group that includes Bluebird and Le Pont de la Tour - or a £150 Selfridges Gift Card.

We have some amazingly good briefs at the moment right across the board, but particularly for Account Managers and Execs, planners, client siders with a couple of years experience and analysts at all levels.

All you need to do to ensure your reward is ask your friend to mention your name when they call us on 020 7287 1171 or email cv@direct-recruitment.co.uk

So please do recommend us and I hope we’ll be sending you one of our new ‘thank you’ gifts very soon!