I found this post in my email draft box and to be honest, it’s bloody ancient … however given it gives a great insight into what some people/companies think planning is – or is in danger of becoming – I thought it worth putting up.
Before I rant though, I have to thank Niko who found it for me – though why he didn’t write about it is beyond me, because his venom makes rattle snakes quake in their, errrm, boots.
Now I want you to imagine your perfect planning job.
Go on, imagine it.
Who would it be for?
What would it involve you doing?
What clients would you work on?
Would you be spending oodles of time exploring the weird and wonderful?
Would you be talking to clients about amazing ideas that could change their fate?
Would you be developing stuff that impacts life as well as advertising?
Would you be dealing and collaborating with interesting, talented individuals?
Would you be respected and evaluated by actions, not words or powerpoint docs?
Would you be mixing with cultures and communities and finding out the real issues in their life – and better yet – helping come up with ways to change them, all with the support of your immediate team and client?
Would you be associated with things that impact culture and create a legacy and blueprint for the future?
Well if any of these ring true, you won’t be interested in this job:
Look at it.
LOOK AT IT.
Being highly numerate and having IT skills [read: EXCEL, WORD & POWERPOINT] are at the fucking top and creative thinker and integrity are at the bottom.
[So is ‘sense of fun’, but after reading through that list, you know pretty much that’s where it would be if you ended up taking the job]
This isn’t a planning job, it’s a prison sentence and yet this is the actual job description for a planner that was placed on LinkedIn a while back.
I am beyond grateful that I don’t even know what an ‘Excel with pivot table’ even is … so I pray for whichever poor bastard ended up taking the gig, because it contravenes everything a planner is – and should be – and the fact they will know they’re in a situation that basically guarantees they have no chance of ever being able to show what they can do must be devastating to the extreme.
OK, so maybe it’s not that bad.
Maybe it’s just a really badly written job description and the actual gig is OK.
Let’s be fair, most job descriptions sound pants when they’ve got every minute detail written down in them.
Seriously, look at your current job, I bet you’re doing many – if not all – of the things detailed above in some way aren’t you?
Oh who am I kidding, that job sounds shit – I mean if the company behind it knew what planning was really about, they’d of at least written it in a way that made all the nasty stuff sound like a support to the good … but no … they gave it pride of place, which is a massive indication that they don’t know what planning is nor do they value what a planner can do and add, other than fee justification to clients who treat the agency as a production supplier for averageness. Ahem.
To be fair, the job description I use for planners would probably look just as bad as the one I’m dissing.
You see the things I focus on are less about technical capabilities and more about their approach and attitude to life.
Personally I seek people who have experienced a varied life … have points of view based on what they’ve seen, learnt, tried and failed at … have a real empathy and understanding of people. All people. Not just hipsters or others in the ad industry.
I adore folk who have worked/tried 2 or 3 industries before entering adland … who have the same “best friend” they’ve had for decades … who have smarts but aren’t desperate to prove it and are open about what they know and what they’d like to know.
Without doubt, I value people who are entrepreneurial, inquisitive, honest, decent, continually open to learning new things and [a bit] socialistic in their values over someone who has fantastic excel spreadsheet chops … but hey, that’s just me.
Saying that, I appreciate if I put all that into a job description I’d probably get visited by the mental police rather than planners/interesting individuals, so for me, the key criteria I use when looking/judging people is …
1 Empathy [the ability to truly relate and understand the needs/wants/fears/loves etc of people – not just the specific consumer category]
2 Ingenuity [the ability to discover new ways to do/explore/prove/understand ‘stuff’ with business/financial relevance]
3 Opinion [having one – preferably because of what you’ve done in numbers 1 and 2]
4 Action [doing stuff, rather than just saying stuff]
… mainly because to have those characteristics, you’ve probably lived life – rather than a lifestyle – and have experienced highs, lows, crap jobs, great jobs … stuff other than JUST advertising!
Don’t get me wrong, industry – and academic – knowledge is brilliant, but if you can’t use it to relate to a Mum with 3 kids who survives on $100 per week, I’m not going to be interested … and that’s maybe why that LinkedIn job description bothers me so much, because it’s literally that, the description of a job and for me, great planning comes from people, not a bunch of process-focused, tangible attributes.