Rachel, I’m being lured to a big agency

Dear Rachel,
I work at a small, do-it-all agency in the Deep South. The other day a recruiter got in touch and pitched me on joining a big-name media agency in New York. I am ambitious, so my initial reaction was very positive. I’m ready to move on, so this comes at the right time. But then I began having second thoughts. What might I be getting into? I thought I’d check with you first to learn what sort of questions I should ask. Sign me Everything’s North to Me

Dear Everything,
I love to get letters like yours, and I am so glad you wrote.

You may be ready to move on, as you say, but bigger is not always better in the media buying trade, and that’s more so today than ever.

There are some great large agencies in New York-Horizon Media comes to mind—where they recruit talent and nurture that talent for the long haul.

People who join stay on and on, and for all the best reasons. They are well paid, well treated and work in a creative environment. There you are a person, not a number.

But too many of these big holding-company agencies are not good places to work these days.

They are operating on paper-thin margins and are under huge pressure from clients to cuts costs. Whatever they were once, they function more and more like the sweatshops of old.

When someone leaves, they’ll fill that still-warm chair with a fresh warm body from the street to churn out the work, and churn out the work they do, always on deadline, typically understaffed.

Another issue is the rising dissatisfaction among clients with their agencies. More and more accounts are under review, as clients pit agency against agency to get the most work at the least cost.

When a big agency loses a major account, bodies fly. People are put out on the street, no matter how good they are at their jobs.

You do not want to be working at a place like that.

As for the questions you should be asking, the first is about turnover. If you get dodgy answers, stop there. End the conversation.

But also do your own research. Go through the archives of the trades for stories about the agency in question.

Talk to headhunters. They have their ears to the ground, and they know the history and the trends.

You just never know. The agency this recruiter is repping may be just the place you want to be. But you have to find that out on your own.

Yes, you can always bounce back from a poor job decision, but why bother when with a little bit of research you can land just the job you want?

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