The Mentor Effect

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The Mentor Effect: Making a Home for Creatives | TalentZoo.com

4/27/11 4:34 PM

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December 7, 2010

The Mentor Effect: Making a Home for Creatives By: Greg Christensen

About the Author Greg Christensen

This year, about 100 new writers and art directors will spill out of their portfolio schools, looking to land their first jobs. And in about three years, most of those same junior creatives will be looking for work at an entirely new agency. That’s because most junior creatives follow an almost-clichéd trajectory: They get a job, work hard for a couple of years, start building their book, and move to a new shop. That’s not just speculation. I recently conducted a survey of more than 250 junior creatives and portfolio school students. The results show that over 82 percent of them expect to be at their first agency no more than three years. A similar poll among creative directors shows that 94 percent of the CDs have the same expectation of their junior teams. They come on board, log a few years, move on, and everyone seems fine with that.

Greg Christensen is a brand creative at The Richards Group. He came to Dallas by way of Switzerland, after transferring to Geneva from Y&R’s Chicago office. He’s taught at the Chicago Portfolio School, co-authors makinads.com, and graduated from the VCU Brandcenter. Though an upstanding citizen, he once gathered and set fire to 178 Christmas trees in his mother’s field. Find him on Twitter @happygrc or contact him at happygrc@mac.com http://www.richards.com/index.html

But they shouldn’t be. From the agency’s point of view, this is a terrible way to run a company. Imagine a factory or a school that has to routinely replace an integral part of its staff or faculty every one to three years. Once a junior team decides to leave, the costs of replacing them can escalate quickly. Interviewing fees might include roundtrip airfare, hotel accommodations, and dining expenses. There could be headhunter fees, as well as hiring freelancers in the interim. Even when a team can be hired locally, at the very least it means tapping into the working hours of agency principles, creative leaders, and staff that might better be put to use for paying clients.

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So, what if those junior creatives stayed at the same agency? And what if they had reason to? In this same poll, the junior creatives were asked what incentives would keep them at their agencies longer. “More opportunities to do great creative” was the number one reason. No surprise there. But what’s interesting is that being mentored by a creative director is a bigger incentive to junior creatives than a pay raise.

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Creative directors similarly agreed that more opportunities to do creative work is the greatest incentive for

http://www.talentzoo.com/news.php/The-Mentor-Effect-Making-a-Home-for-Creatives/?articleID=8777

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