Martin Tripp Associates career Archives

Five key mistakes firms repeatedly make when recruiting senior executives

OliverLuft

MTA media headhunters Hiring the right senior talent into your business can be a time-consuming and expensive process. That’s where engaging the right executive search team to source talent can be crucial – it’s a time-saving and, ultimately, cost-effective process.

Time and time again we see hiring managers do things that, in the long-run, set them back. Common mistakes get made and, if not put right, they can repeatedly cost the hiring firm.

Here’s a quick and easy guide to the type of mistakes that occur time and again when recruiting senior executives – and the simple steps that can be put in place to rectify them:

Media recruiting: managing your career starts at the bottom of the ladder

Martin Tripp

This article first appeared in Press Gazette

At the end of last month’s column, I wrote: “That thing they always said about treating people well on your way up because you might need them on your way back down is really true. I can think of a number of people who struggle to get work because they burned so many bridges in the past.”

I have written little about the importance of maintaining good relationships in your career; cynically, it might be called career management. A great many people in business

Careers in journalism: what have I learned in fifteen years as a media headhunter?

Martin Tripp

This article first appeared in Press Gazette

Last month marked fifteen years since I became a media headhunter. Much of that time has been concerned with careers in journalism. Which begs the question: what, if anything, have I learned in that time? Here are some things I didn’t know back in 1996:

Media recruiting tips: graduates beware

Martin Tripp

This article first appeared in Press Gazette

I have just watched BBC3’s “Up for Hire.“ Four young unemployed people were given an opportunity to show how they would work under different circumstances. I found it quite depressing: not least because it served to underline prejudices about media degrees and media graduates.

Kirsty, one of the four candidates, had graduated in Newspaper and Online Journalism. She was disappointed because she had “paid a lot of money” and couldn’t get the job she wanted in the media. She also mentioned she didn’t like being “told off” or in a team: “I like working on my own really – that’s got something to do with me wanting to be a reporter.” The inability to take direction or collaborate seem pretty large barriers to entry in any career – especially journalism.

Empathy and understanding are the key to editorial success

Martin Tripp

This article first appeared in Press Gazette

In the fourteen years I have been a headhunter and media search consultant, I have been lucky to have worked across an astonishing range of titles and products: from Horse & Hound to The Financial Times, from heat to AOL. We have recruited journalists for Reuters in Russia, Euromoney in the US, and, toughest of all, Saga in Folkestone. Bella, Men’s Health, The Jewish Chronicle; all boast current editors recruited by us.

Media recruiting tips: going freelance

Martin Tripp

This article first appeared in Press Gazette

Last month, I wrote about the positive reasons for changing jobs at the moment. But not everyone gets to choose; redundancies and closures are happening across every sector of the media, and, as a result, more and more people are being forced to go freelance. With this in mind, I asked a few editors what they thought were the golden rules – the media recruiting tips – of establishing yourself when new to the market. It seems to boil down to the following freelance tips:

Media headhunters’ perspective on journalists working as academics

Martin Tripp

This article first appeared in Press Gazette

Over the next three months, I’ll be writing about journalism and academia, from opposite ends of the spectrum. Next month, I’ll try and give some guidance to aspiring journalists on what they might seek in a degree course. This month, though, I want to briefly give a perspective – held by us as media headhunters – on the attractions that an academic career can have for experienced journalists.

A small seismic shock was caused at the Guardian last month when Emily Bell resigned to head up Columbia University’s digital programme for post-graduate students. At the time, she said that this was “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help reshape the future of journalism”, and she is part of a growing trend.

Media jobs: journalists working in PR, poachers turned gamekeepers?

Martin Tripp

This article first appeared in Press Gazette

Apart from the money, what is the attraction to for journalists to swap media jobs and work in PR?

After all, journalists perceive themselves as troublemakers: news is what people don’t want you to print. The aim of PR is to achieve the opposite.

Moving jobs in a recession

Martin Tripp

This article first appeared in Press Gazette

It’s September: the kids are back in school, the holiday in Cornwall seems a distant memory, and you are back at your desk. Again. Writing captions on unfunny photographs of minor celebrities. As every year before, you start to think “there must be something better than this”. You log on to pressgazette.co.uk to look for new media jobs.

Except this is September 2009. If you are lucky enough to have a job, the last thing you are going to do is look for a new one. The economy is shot, advertising revenues are in freefall, and the world has suddenly gone risk averse. Why on earth would you think of moving jobs in a recession, when nothing is certain and the worst position to be in is “last in”?

Tag: career