Talk to anyone in business and they will tell you that one of their biggest challenges is the recruitment and retaining of staff. Media is no exception to this conundrum.
This makes it all the more important that media is on the agenda as early in the recruitment process as possible. It needs to be on the radar of students before they have graduated and it needs to be pitching its case to the brightest of each generation. That's why PHD media planner Steve Roest persuaded his Omnicom parent agency network to set up a summer school and invite 30 students along for the first session last month to try and attract top graduate talent into their grasp (page 22). Participants learnt about what it is really like to work in media planning and buying, getting a taste for pitching, the art of branding and influence, life in an agency and different types of advertising.
Individual agencies have followed suit, including ZenithOptimedia, MediaCom and another Omnicom agency, OMD UK. Carat runs a graduate assessment day that shows graduates what commercial media is all about. The Aegis agency has hired 25 graduates in the past year on the back of such initiatives and targets the most capable people.
Once talented staff have been hired they need to be encouraged, nurtured and developed. Careers don't run along a single track anymore. The temptation for those in their 20s and 30s to chuck everything in and go travelling seems difficult to resist. The churn rate in media is 25-30%. Keeping staff challenged and motivated and communicating what the future holds for them, while also making sure young staff are contributing to the business, is a tough task.
Career breaks, a fun working environment, team-building initiatives and the opportunity to interact with senior management in a meaningful way all help encourage staff to stick with it and develop a long-term career.
The agencies are doing their bit and they have cottoned on to the real business benefits of attracting talent early and doing everything they can to retain it. But Steve Roest's telling comment that he suggested the Omnicom summer school because the media industry had zero profile at Oxford University when he was studying there, shows there is still a long way to go before media can punch its weight with finance and the City as a key destination for the brightest graduates.
- Steve Barrett is editor of Media Week, steve.barrett@haymarket.com.