How Creatives Get Jobs
Put your advertising lessons to work to sell yourself

Most creative people do their worst work for themselves. When it comes to marketing their skills, the vast majority of art directors and copywriters are still stewing in old molds. They send a resumé with a cover letter and ask for an appointment to show their portfolios.

But there are a hundred ways to approach a prospective employer that are more direct, more exciting and certainly more unexpected than that.

And the first rule is to throw out all the rules.

Take your resumé. Better yet, toss your resume. Why even have one, when what you really want is to show people your ads? If you’re proud of your book, what you want to send out is a mini-portfolio.

You and the copy machine can create a 12-page opus that contains a sampling of your best stuff (including a one-paragraph resumé with your phone/e-mail/snail mail address info) that will automatically eliminate two-thirds of the old mold steps.

In this scenario, the great opportunity is page one. If you treat it like an ad instead of a letter, you can grab your target by the lapels and talk right into his face.

Here’s what one guy put on his page one:

My name’s Kevin…

For every day you work, I work two.

Those 30 concepts you came up with? I had 60 billion.

When you head for the bathroom, I hold it.

So the next time you pause to catch your breath, ask yourself: "What was Kevin doing last night, while I was sleeping?"

(Sleep better. Call Kevin Kaplan at (212) 258-5729 or e-mail me at <kevkaplan@aol.com> or snail mail me at 254 E.72 St. NY 10021. I have a fire in my belly to do great stuff, and there’s nobody I’d rather do it for than you.)

Just consider how much quicker, more powerful and effective a well-executed mini-book can be.

It eliminates the preliminaries and cuts right to the chase. And there’s another bonus: In the big agencies, friends tell me that an innocent looking 10 x 13 manila envelope with a mini-book usually sails right past the secretaries, mail rooms, and human resources people and lands right on the desk of the addressee on the same day it arrives.

Even if your mini is black and white and only shows a portion of your total book, you’re miles ahead of where you’d be with the usual letter, phone call and resumé.

After all, it gives you a chance to tempt the prospect for a real fact-time meeting. That’s where you can deliver your package in its full glory.

But if there’s a little hesitancy in the back of your mind that won’t let you go full throttle in this new direction, there are some more conservative techniques that can help you.

Consider a headline for your resumé. Right up there, over your name, over your history, on the top line of your resumé, you can put a headline that is sure to attract anyone riffling through a stack of look-alike resumes. Imagine one, tasteful, self-positioning thought like:

Cattle Rustler’s Grandson Seeks Copy Job! or I Can Be Useful on Day One! (then list computer skills or some other kind of smarts to prove it.) Or, Ready to Re-Locate!

No matter which approach you take, you can be sure of this: Ninety percent of the job-seekers you’re competing with will be buried in a stack on a desk that will be permitted to age for a while before being unceremoniously chucked into a recycling bin without even rating a respectful pass through a shredder.

Look, you’ve learned a lot of good lessons in the years you’ve been in the advertising business – now put them to work. Find an original way to market your most valuable product.

Dennis Altmanis an advertising consultant and a UK Professor of Advertising and Public Relations

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