Like many thousands (maybe even millions) of others, I have spent much of this year job hunting. And I have to say, in my long and varied career I have never known a job market like it. The market is over-supplied with very good candidates, so competition is fierce, and rates are depressed. There are people leaving permanent jobs who want to move to life as an interim, and vice versa, and it’s hard [...]
I want to share a tale of a terrible job interview, as it made me think about how badly structured so many interviews are, and how applying some of the best-practice from the agency pitch process could lead to better outcomes all round. Let me start by saying that the agency pitch process is far from perfect. As I discussed with the lovely Jenny Plant in my recent podcast interview, it’s like asking someone [...]
Following the first three parts of my 20 Lessons from 2020 - on marketing, business and the economy – part four is a slightly longer read, and looks at lessons 15 through 20, what we can learn from society. The next and final part will summarise what we can all learn from 2020 and where we might go from here. 15. Zoom kept us together I couldn’t write a Top 20 without reference to Zoom. It’s been so prevalent, I [...]
The first two instalments of my 20 Lessons from 2020 looked at marketing and business. This piece focuses on the lessons we can learn from the changes to our economy, highlighting three of the sectors, and the one demographic, that have been hardest hit. 11. Will streaming finally kill off the multiplex? In the late 80s, the death knell sounded for cinema as annual admissions hit an all-time low (around 54m p.a). But it [...]
Following on from Part One, Lessons from Marketing, the second instalment of my 20 Lessons from 2020 takes a look at the business world. 7. Flexible Working For many, this is the Covid silver-lining. It’s certainly one of the ongoing changes to the workplace that’s been greatly accelerated by the pandemic. Flexible, remote working is generally positive and here to stay, but it is a delicate balancing act. For those with the space (and appropriate, [...]
Well here we are, the start of a brand new year, although for many of us the only evident change is the number on the bathroom scales… Ever the optimist, I wanted to look back at some of the events of last year and see what lessons we can learn as we head bravely into 2021. So here’s part one of my 20 Lessons from 2020, starting with a game on my home turf, marketing. 1. [...]
For any good manager, it will be obvious why adopting surveillance software to track an employee’s ‘productivity’ when they’re working remotely is a bad idea. Whilst it clearly highlights a wider issue of trust and empathy, it also points to a bigger problem with the traditional business model, and why some have felt the need to resort to this. Surveillance software that measures key strokes or time in front of a webcam is clearly [...]
Back in April, when you announced that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) was being extended to include the salaries – but not dividends - of sole director companies, many of us were relieved to hear that we’d at least be getting some help. But then you suggested that dividends were being excluded as you were suspicious of small business directors paying themselves in this way, and that this was "something the government needed [...]
Since his election, hundreds of articles have been written about Jeremy Corbyn's electability and whether he even wants the top job. But I wonder if the Labour Party, understanding the need for dramatic change after Ed Miliband's performance, have actually appointed an interim... It takes a brave organization to employ someone completely different from the usual hire, but as Einstein once said, doing the same thing you’ve always done and expecting a different result is the [...]
Just before we all went Jubilee-crazy, both Marketing and Marketing Week ran big features on the increasing use of interims. It’s good to see some healthy interest in the profession. It was a shame that Marketing chose to include a completely unsubstantiated “Top 5 Pitfalls” in their piece, which included things like; a lack involvement and dedication, a lack of accountability and the risk of compromising company confidentiality. When your income depends on your reputation, [...]