IT Career Speaker Series: Kirsten Thompson and Annie Odell, Creative Circle 3/3
Channel: Mason Heller
Date: 16/02/2012

Kirsten Thompson and Annie Odell joined us this week to talk about their work at Creative Circle, a specialized staffing agency representing advertising, creative, marketing, visual communication and interactive professionals on both a freelance and full-time basis.

Kirsten:
Kirsten has been working as a Recruiter at Creative Circle for close to 4 years, and has specialized in placing candidates on jobs ranging from creative director to web developer, for both ad agencies and in-house clients. Prior to joining Creative Circle, she worked at the ad agency Publicis for 5 years as a Project Manager. Clients included Washington's Lottery, HP, Citi Bank, Safeco Insurance and Coinstar.

Annie:
Annie is a recruiter for Creative Circle, spending her days matching up developers, designers and creative professionals with job opportunities, for both ad agencies and in-house clients. Prior to working at Creative Circle, she spent 7 years in the radio industry doing marketing and promotions roles for Jack-fm, MOViN 92.5 & 100.7 The Wolf.

Kirsten Thompson and Annie Odell described Creative Circles targeted approach to recruiting - matching candidates with job opportunities. They described the difference between being part of the creative circle network and getting announcements vs. coming in to do an intake interview. They outlined the process to do an interview or a refresh interview as your skills change. They like to meet with candidates to better understand the candidates job interests, technical skills, directions for the future and soft skills.

Kirsten and Annie spoke about the need for soft skills.: good communication skills, especially working with clients conveying technical information in a clear way. Reliability and regular communication, meeting deadlines, ability to work in a team.

Creative Circle has non-exclusive agreements, encouraging their candidates to work with other staffing agencies.

They work with job descriptions that require very targeted requirements and ones that require broader requirements. Entry level jobs are starting to pick back up a bit with more full-time placements than a year ago. More junior placements are improving. Internships and client work is really important to you resume. Also doing work for clients pro-bono or free-lance projects to build your portfolio and reference list with professional projects.

They described how to relate experience from previous career experience. Find a balance between including information that relates to your general job performance and ability to work effectively with others. Telling a story about your work, what you can do and why. Grouping your short-term contract work together under "Freelance Contract Work" or "Microsoft, A-dash Contract" with inclusive dates and descriptions of projects.

Talking about technologies - they see lots of requests for Drupal, Expression Engine, and Site Core

--- Description written by Brian Bansenauer ---