Category Archives: career path

A Conversation with Michael Pollock on Leadership and More


L&M: You have a very extensive background in the advertising world, yet your education is a Bachelor in Science, Physics. That is quite a departure; what led you to advertising?

MP: I grew up with the narrow and specialized curriculum of an old fashioned English boys school – By the time I was heading to University, my English boy’s school had only qualified me to read Physics or Chemistry. And I never really mastered Organic Chemistry – so Physics it was. There was no liberal arts……..

Questions discussed include:
L&M: You have worked with creative people throughout your career. Are there any that stand out to you as leaders?

L&M: Like you I believe you learn just as much if not more from your encounters with bad leaders. Have you ever thought about how great they could have been if they had better leadership skills?

Posted on April 4, 2013 in career path, management
0 Comments - Leave a comment!

The state of the hiring market – what it means for you

“Salaries, perks, benefits, severance…are all down”

This according to the head of the Executive Compensation practice at a leading NY media business law firm.  Compounding the pain, he shared a graph showing that employment in what the US Government calls the information industry rose dramatically from 1990 to 2000 and then fell all the way back by 2011.  Not an attractivepicture.  

“But,” he says, “it looks as if 2013 is starting up from 2012.” So things are getting slightly better than awful.

This is very much a buyers’ market for talent – but be aware that when you do eventually get to discuss an offer, it means that they really want you.   The employer will have been through all sorts of hoops and to come to a decision and now they will want to get it over with.  The New York Times reports for example that the average Google interview process, always..ahem..thorough,  has expanded in the last two years, to 30 days from 21.

Digital businesses are often looking for thought leaders. “I can’t interview fossils.” “Creatives have to live in the now, they can’t live in the past.”  “I am looking for people who can enlighten our clients and these people are hard to find.”

So blog about your field and what is going on and where you see it headed.  When hirers look online to check out prospects, you’d better be there with an effective and relevant digital presence – don’t be one of the “disappeared.”

As to that old “middle manager” level: be aware that in this economy you are expected to go back and utilize your core skills yourself, no-one is likely to hire you to just be a manager, however good you are.

And then there is the elusive Purple Squirrel.  This is the candidate that all employers are dreaming of: the next to impossible find who has, according to Wikipedia: “precisely the right education, experience, and qualifications that perfectly fits a job’s multifaceted requirement. In theory, this prized “purple squirrel” could immediately handle all the expansive variety of responsibilities of a job description with no training and would allow businesses to function with fewer workers.”

It is the lure of the Purple Squirrel that makes hirers take so long.  When you are going back for the fifth interview – know that they have been picturing this rarest of creatures – and it is your job to convince them that you are as purple as they are going to find!

 

 

Posted on April 2, 2013 in career path, Career Q+A, career transition, interview, job search, Uncategorized
0 Comments - Leave a comment!

6 Ways to become a Purple Squirrel

A Purple Squirrel is what recruiters call that elusive, more-than-perfect candidate that all employers dream of and hold out for: the one who will make their business sing.  A Purple Squirrel will meet all their constantly evolving job specs – and far exceed them. But Purple Squirrels have to be sought out – they don’t just show up. “Keep hunting” hiring managers say.

So how do you become a Purple Squirrel? Mainly it’s how you behave in your current situation; because the Purple Squirrel is totally focused on his work and won’t be wasting time looking around.  So then let’s assume you’ve been discovered and tapped for an interview.  Here is some of what it takes.

  1. Be out ahead in your field and your company.
    Develop solutions to problems before anyone knows they are problems.  Be the go-to person who achieves far beyond any expectation.  When people ask for you they speak of only you – not in a bracket with a bunch of other contenders.
  2. Be excited about your work.
    Be passionate: come up with fresh ideas, break new ground – and importantly, inspire others to do more and to want to do it better.  Be a motivating team leader and in-demand mentor to the rising stars.
  3. Understand what is needed, not just what is wanted.
    This applies in your present gig and also for that new opportunity. You don’t just do what is asked of you, you surprise, adding value at all stages. When the interview beckons, do your homework. Utterly understand the sector and the company; ask good questions, listen intelligently, express a point of view about where they are headed and how you will make that happen. Know all there is to know about your interviewer and what will light her fire.
  4. Be clear about your value and believe in it.
    Get the interviewer fired up with vivid accounts of your achievements. Let these stories demonstrate that you will surely do more for them than they had even hoped. Be confident that you have what they need and that it would be a wonderful thing for them and for you to advance into the future together.
  5. Tell them what you need from them to get results
    Since you are the Purple Squirrel they had thought they’d never find, they’ll be more than ready to discuss. Remember, it’s about the work, not you. Tell them you really want to do this, but it won’t work if they drag out the decision process.
  6. Get your network on board.
    When they read about your successes on LinkedIn and in other groups, they’ll be so impressed they will eagerly pass on the word and endorse you.  “You have to have this guy – he’s just what you need.”

I asked a recruiter about her experience finding these elusive candidates.  To my dismay she had not heard of the Purple Squirrel – so I told her what one is and she immediately said “Oh you mean a One Legged Unicorn.”  But what’s in a name.

Posted on April 2, 2013 in career path, Career Q+A, success, vision
0 Comments - Leave a comment!

What is your Passion Project?

Each of you who work in a creative field should be engaged at all times on something that is a passion project for you. For the purposes of career development it should be something that you can talk about with excitement and plan eventually to show the fruits.   If you play your cards right, it could even be something you are being paid to do – this is surely the goal for most of us – to be paid to do what we love.

However, many of us have had jobs that demanded very high entry qualifications, a very rigorous portfolio inspection, a super-high standard all around – but once we are inside the organization, the regime did not allow for such great work to emerge.  The result can be that after a couple of years of this work we don’t have a portfolio strong enough to get our own job back!  So we should be working on a passion project on the side, so that it will be available to provide a future employer with the evidence that we have continued to push the boundaries and display our creative chops.  It will show that even though we were working in a conservative environment, we kept on exploring and pushing ourselves so that we are just what a potential new employer is looking for.

I have been looking at the job qualifications for a slew of posted creative positions – and they ask for team leadership or writing skills, editing or conceptual or innovation skills.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could refer immediately to your passion project and use the energy you bring to it to exemplify those qualities that the employer is looking for?

In any case when you talk about any gigs or projects you have worked on you should be aware of what your stories are saying about you.  You should choose your examples to showcase just what you want to brag about.  (Don’t tell the stories of fiascos! Even if they are good stories.) Show that you are innovative for example by describing, vividly and with pride and excitement, a particular project that showcases your pushing of the envelope.  And how great if that project is happening right now so that you are immersed in it and working it through so that the case also demonstrates how you think about it.  Talking about your passion project is one of the best ways to illustrate your strengths.

Aside from providing the inspiration for pitching your virtues, your passion project is an opportunity for you to explore new techniques, ideas, tools that you are excited by. You can experiment without a client or manager to interfere. They will work or maybe they won’t – but you will learn something and could even get a stellar portfolio piece.

Passion for what you do will take you a long way and be remarkably attractive to employers.  So have your passion project always on deck so that yours is demonstrably genuine.

Posted on November 30, 2012 in career path, job search
0 Comments - Leave a comment!

Can office gossip be beneficial to your career?

Michael Pollock discusses the issue of office gossip with hosts Rebecca Jarvis and Anthony Mason on CBS This Morning.

Posted on August 17, 2012 in career path, Career Q+A, interview, success
0 Comments - Leave a comment!

Don’t just talk to people who do what you do

I have been made aware recently of a lot of thinking about the value of cross-fertilizing ideas and working across disciplines to gain smarter insights and achieve greater success.

It started with Eric Kandel, the Nobelist godfather of neuroscience (thanks to his long and intense focus on sea snails) who I heard speaking about the intellectual ferment that was Vienna around 1900. In this hothouse era, doctors became painters and writers; painters and writers hung out with biologists; playwrights and scientists all mixed their ideas together. From this came the work of Freud, Schiele and Schnitzler; Kokoschka’s paintings that revealed medical symptoms unnoticed by doctors, and Klimt’s sensuous art that is layered with references to biological science.

These artists and scientists were strongly influenced by anatomist Emil Zuckerkandl, who pointed out the absolute importance of looking beneath the surface of things to find out in depth what is really going on. Seems obvious, doesn’t it, but it was a revolutionary idea at the time.

Kandel’s new book the Age of Insight will likely turn out to be fundamental in helping us understand the young science of neuro-aesthetics – the study of how our body chemistry responds to the details, colors and textures in works of art. This exciting advance in understanding ourselves was made possible because Kandel turned away from his single-minded focus on the sea snails to bring science and art together.

Secondly, there’s Matt Ridley’s oft-quoted TED talk about how progress and prosperity are the children born when “ideas have sex” with each other. He emphasizes the importance of specialization in human development – and while in his TED talk he focuses on making objects, and how the coffee grower provides for the oil rigger who in turn supplies the plastics manufacturer and so on – Ridley’s catchy tag line “ideas have sex” takes us back to Kandel’s Vienna and how our progress and prosperity depend on us working together across disciplines.

And thirdly, an Internet entrepreneur told me that he has always gained enormous value in his career from asking questions of his friends who work in other fields. By asking filmmakers, musicians, photographers and writers how they solved problems, he has seen that each calling seems to have developed its own methodology for solving what are essentially the same problems of creating art and doing business. He has learnt something from each of them and brought together the best of the insights and techniques.

So it seems that this is the key: specialize, collaborate across disciplines, grant your ideas the freedom to mate and you will be smarter and achieve more.

Posted on July 16, 2012 in career path, career transition, change, strategic, success, Uncategorized, vision
0 Comments - Leave a comment!

What’s next for you?

You always should be preparing for the next thing you will do. Your career will almost certainly not be a linear thing with one job leading to the next to the next in a logical sequence. And as for a job-for-life? Well that is ending even for teachers.

But in media and technology and marketing? Constant evolution. Unless you are paying attention you could get left behind. Keep up with the media channels and the technology of course. But also the cultural references and the styles. I was recently pitching to turn a wonderful noir thriller into film. A major TV Executive Producer – lotsof big shows on his resume – asked me how I saw it. I said that the non-linear storytelling of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and the wit and style of Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels were models that I thought could inform the way this story should be told. There was a pause – then he said and not in a constructive way “But those examples are twenty years old.” I was just at an Internet Week keynote where Shane Smith from Vice referenced Friends and Cheers – and quickly was made aware that they meant nothing to 90% of his Gen Y audience.

So yes – we have to keep on our toes on all fronts. Coasting is not an option. Be continuously aware. Talk to people in different disciplines and learn what they are excited about. Ask them what keeps them up at night. Brainstorm ways that they might advance or that their industry might advance. Look for the parallels and the intersections with what you are doing and try and project what might be next. Sit down once a month and write a blog post that expresses your ideas. Even if no-one reads it but you, it will get your brain in gear. Putting things down on paper (can I say that any more?) has a way of helping your thinking to crystallize and organizing your thoughts so you can have even smarter conversations.

Aim to become the thought leader on your team or in your company. Bring in the new ideas and have opinions about how they can affect your business. For example if you are in the TV industry, what do you see happening with TV on the web? Is it eating the lunch of broadcast or cable TV? How should you be addressing that change? What about the effects of spot skipping? Is the TV set now the third screen?

And don’t forget that you may have two agendas here: one for the business you are currently employed in, and one that is the development of what’s next in your own career. Wonderful if the two coincide, I am not encouraging revolt here – just that you have an evolving awareness of where and how you will provide value in the coming years.

Posted on July 16, 2012 in career path, career transition, change, Uncategorized
0 Comments - Leave a comment!

Pivoting for career success

Should you keep following the same career path regardless, or should you consider pivoting to achieve new success? We can learn something about this from venture capitalists. And after all our careers were all startups once.

Pivot. Traction. VCs love these words. For the people who funded projects in the last funding cycle, the idea was the thing. They funded Powerpoints –ideas that had been dreamed up but not yet been executed. They invested in the fevered presentations and projections of the founders.

But today the cost of creating an online application or resource has become so very affordable, the VCs want to see the idea brought to life and to market before they put serious money in to bring it to scale. They want to see that the idea has traction – that is to say it can grip the road and move forwards.
But they know that when ideas are being developed to serve markets that don’t actually exist yet, which is the case for most new online businesses, then there is no reliable or even responsible way to project. After all what did the future mail order book market look like before Jeff Bezos gave us Amazon?

So the second word comes into play: pivot. Once the business idea is in the market it often becomes apparent that it is not quite the best thing to be doing or the most effective way to approach the opportunity (or create the opportunity). It isn’t gaining enough traction. So the VCs want the team to be able to pivot and move to an alternative plan. They don’t want to cut their losses and move on. They don’t want to start again with another group of founders. They want the project to pivot to address the new thinking.

The key to this, they say, is the people. VCs invest in people who are not only driven and passionate and smart and all that – they also want to see that they have the ability to pivot. Preferably they would like to see a history of successful pivoting. The founder who sticks stubbornly with the original plan and refuses to learn from the market and the real world is not as attractive to a VC who needs a return on investment and doesn’t want to wait for too long for the world to catch up to an inflexible and blinkered founder.

So they pivot in response to lack of traction. (Don’t you love it!?)

So does your career still have sufficient traction? Are you open to considering some course that may be more effective for you? And in this “ever changing world in which we live in” are you on your toes and addressing the opportunities? It’s the same idea as for the startup investments: see what gets traction – and when necessary pivot to address the changing environment as you take your career to scale.

Posted on May 21, 2012 in career path, career transition, change, coaching, job search, transition
0 Comments - Leave a comment!