Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Notes from 5/14/2010 - with The Creative Group

Welcome to new OCA member, Laura Broyhill. Laura is a sales / marketing / product design professional and has more than 15 years of experience building unique brands and sales channels in the consumer market.
She also owns her own wholesale company which manufactures high-end, green garden accessories. Be sure to check out her site,
Rainrock.com.

Last week's featured guest speaker was Terah Brossart, an Account Manager from The Creative Group. Terah and one of her colleagues, Maria Scheleen,
visited us last year, and we were very glad to have Terah back for a return engagement.

Terah introduced her TCG, which is part of Robert Half, the world's largest staffing company. Because they're connected to such a large entity, they can offer things like health care and free online training. On the flip side, however, TCG also provides personalized service, as their Seattle branch (one of 30 locations) has 4 people looking to staff creatives.

TCG has over 600 active companies that they work with to staff with contract help. This ranges from 2-person operations to companies such as REI to the likes of Microsoft (though Terah was quick to point out that only 11% of their business stems from the latter.)

As for current trends, Terah has seen more work materialize recently. "In the past 3 months, we're actually seeing multiple offers." Of course, a lot of these are in areas that are in demand, like motion graphics, UI, and information architecture. Another trend is that companies looking to hire are moving away from marketing generalists and are rather searching for people who have specialized skills, such as CRM, SEO, and Social Media.

Social Media has been one specific area of growth, in terms of employment. TCG has placed "marketing coordinator-level" employees, who can help, while companies look to sort out how to exactly play in this new space. Also hot in this area are research and analytics.

Terah also made a point to the group that, if we see a full-time position at a company they work with, she is more than happy to help, by looking to get in touch with a hiring manager to make a recommendation. It's all about relationships, and she sees this as an easy way to "pay it forward."

Contact Information:
Terah Brossart: terah.brossart@creativegroup.com
601 Union Street, Suite 4300
Seattle, WA 98101
206/749-9046

Former OCA members, Wes Youngquist and Lane Bueche, were also on hand to introduce their new creative marketing agency, Motherlode. They've teamed up with Jim Zimmerman, also an OCA alum, and the three are doing well enough that they're looking to hire some freelance help in the digital space. Specifically, they're searching for an online producer and flash and web developers. The agency has, what they call, an "inside out approach" to marketing, as two of the three have been successful in executive positions on the client-side.
If you think you might fit the bill, feel free to get in touch with any of the three.

No comments:

Post a Comment