Rachel speaks!
Rachel, I want to get back into media
By Rachel
Apr 4, 2008 - 1:05:45 AM

Dear Rachel,
I have been out of the workplace for 20 years now. When I began in the advertising industry, it was 1977. I spent a year and a half at a major rep firm in New York. I was a sales assistant in a radio network for six months, then a sales assistant in spot TV sales for one year. After establishing a great relationship with the buyers I worked with, I moved over to the agency side. I was the assistant to the head of the radio department, as well as having my own radio market list. I then moved on to a smaller agency, where I bought TV air time. I was there for about eight months. I moved to a larger agency, where I held a senior TV buying position for two years. I left the workplace to raise my family. I did freelance buying for my last company for three years during their busy seasons. The kids are grown and on their own. I have the desire to re-acquaint myself with the industry. Do you feel my prior experience would be adequate to get my foot back in the door? What do you recommend?-- Ready to Work

Dear Ready,
You have the basic skills you need to do the job. You've already proved that. So don’t doubt yourself. The problem you face is that many people will worry that you've been out of the workplace too long to be able to swing back in without a huge lot of training.

So you may have some convincing to do.

Working in your favor is this simple fact. The essential qualities that go into making a good media planner or buyer haven’t changed. They're an ability with numbers, knowledge of one's market, a knack for negotiating, and an ability to relate to and work with clients. All of these still matter as much as they ever did.

Yet the changes that have taken place in the media business in the last two decades are mind-boggling, and they've been in the technology. There's the internet, of course, but also the myriad programs media planners and buyers now use in their work.

"I think her biggest challenge will be dealing with the technology," says one Austin-based media friend who herself took off for 10 years to raise her family. "That and convincing people that she is up on the current media situation, or can learn again quickly."

You face two separate challenges, the first being getting yourself sufficiently up to speed on the technology. The second will be getting a job offer.

For training, look into whatever media schooling is available in your area. Any classes you could take would be helpful.

But I think the best advice is to knock on doors of area agencies and try to set up an informal internship for yourself. Offer to do whatever needs doing around the media department in exchange for training in all the new programs and technologies.

There's an old rule of the workplace that the hardest part of always getting your foot in the door. Once the foot is in, the leg follows, then the torso, then the head, and then you're all the way in.

Really immerse yourself in online. It's called the new medium, and it certainly is new since you were working in media, but it's even more. The internet is the super media in that it pervades all media, extending reach into new areas, and links them all as one. You want to learn the specifics of the internet, even if you want to work in another medium, and you'll want to come to understand how it draws all these other media together.

Under the right conditions, in the right shop, and in the right internship, you could get up to speed in a very short period of time. 

The experience should also really restore your self-confidence, which when looking for a job is half the equation.

Now onto job hunting.

First off you want to get around and get known. Join any association of media professionals in your city and network, network, network. If you can afford it, travel to seminars where media professionals will be.

Set up informational interviews at agencies you'd like to work for. When you meet someone working in a job you'd like to get, ask for their advice on how you can get hired.

Contact a good headhunter. They can cut through a lot of the headaches of job searching, and they can talk to you about nuts-and-bolts issues like salary and where'd on the ladder you'll likely have to start.

Pull out that old Rolodex, the one with the dog-eared cards of old associates.

 "If you have any contacts with your old agency, that's a great place to start. They may be the most willing to give you the opportunity to restart your career," advises a New York recruiter.

"Also, think in terms of people who you worked with during those freelance periods and see if you can find where they went."

Then hit the bricks.