Media economy
Job outlook brightens for media buyers
By Kevin Downey
Jun 15, 2009 - 8:41:26 AM

The job market for media buyers and planners has been abysmal, but it appears this drawn-out hiring slump may finally be turning.

While there are still layoffs taking place, they appear to be fewer, and some agencies are hiring again.

"We’re starting to see a re-absorption of the people who were displaced," says Kurt O'Hare, president of O’Hare and Associates, a New York recruiting firm. "Some shops are replacing people they’ve lost along the way."

“It’s quiet but people are getting jobs,” says Patricia Sklar, president of recruiting firm Sklar & Associates. “We’re getting people interviews, although not anywhere near where we used to.”

Recruiters caution that it will likely be another year or so before laid-off media people will be fully absorbed back into media departments, but by then hiring activity should return to prerecession levels.

Some of the uptick in hiring is the result of agencies coming to realize they let too many people go when the economy hit the skids last fall. They've found themselves stretched too thin.

But other agencies are signing new clients, so they need more media people to handle the added workload.

“We’ve grown, we’re hiring, we’re expanding our square footage and we’ve rounded out our team with more people,” says Aric Zion, CEO of Zion & Zion, an ad agency in Tempe, Ariz. “It is absolutely due to the number of clients. We’ve brought on smaller clients and larger clients.”

At this point, says Sklar, media people who have the best chance of landing a job are those most willing to pack up and move.

“If people have flexibility in relocating, they have a greater chance of finding something,” she says. “But, of course, not everyone has that flexibility.”

Another positive sign for the job market is that some advertisers are beginning to beef up their budgets.

While the most recent spending reports would suggest the ad recession is worsening--recent reports for the first quarter show double-digit declines--media buyers relate that ad spending is actually picking up in some areas of media, notably spot television.

While there has been much suffering among media buyers and planners during this recession, it's been less than in other areas of advertising, in large part because media departments remained relatively lean after the last recession. When this downturn came, agencies simply had fewer positions that were considered expendable. That led to fewer job cuts, and those cuts came relatively late in the ad recession.

Meanwhile, recruiters say media people with one or two years' experience will be the most in demand when the job market does recover.

During this recession, many agencies held off on hiring college graduates, so there’s a gap in those media people with a couple of years of media department experience.

“As soon as hiring comes back, these people will be in very short supply,” says O’Hare. “That gap over time will creep up the ranks. Then it’ll be senior planners, then it will be supervisors, then associate media directors and on up through.”