Building a curriculum
When Omnicom's PHD saw a decrease in available strategist talent with one or two years of experience, Stacy Gomez head of U.S. digital operations, instituted Digital Media Boot Camp in November of last year. The program is dedicated to onboarding entry-level employees, but it also works as retention tool focused on search, social, and programmatic roles.
“Instead of waiting for qualified candidates, we came up with a model that accelerates training and gets talent upskilled quickly,” Gomez said. “We knew that if we could do that, not only would we fill the talent gap at that level, but we'd also have such a great advantage in the market.”
In the first month after being hired, participants are assigned a month-long syllabus. Some 15 new hires participated since November, doing 40 hours a week of live and self-guided training classes. An additional 155 recent hires participated for 20 hours a week. The new hires were also given a “running mate," or PHD employees who volunteer to support them during the program.
“During the interview process, we explained what search was, what social was, and what programmatic was to see if [candidates] had a preference and also if they had a client preference they wanted to work on,” Gomez said. "If someone had a huge passion in travel we could match them with Delta or Carnival.”
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One of the biggest benefits of the program is it fast tracks the new hires to be potentially promoted within six months to strategist positions, which Gomez said would normally take a year.
“What I like to say is that they [the new hires] learned three months of content in three weeks," Gomez said. “So if you're looking at it that way, they should be able to be a strategist within two or three months. But we want to make sure that everyone gets the experience. And honestly, there's no way that you can rush experience. You have to be put in different situations, launch campaigns, and do all that. So I provided goals to all of their managers to say what they [the new hires] need to do to get to that strategist level. I'd like it to be around six or nine months versus a year, but this is the inaugural program.”
This spring, PHD is expanding the Boot Camp to include a two-week intensive training course in April with a focus on “cross-skilling buyers in the video space.” The agency is also working on a "Manager Academy" to provide employees with the skills necessary to eventually become a manager.
Removing degree requirements
A trend that has been gaining traction over the past few years is removing the requirement for a degree for certain positions. Agencies like GroupM, Mindshare, Deutsch New York and VaynerMedia have taken steps to remove degree requirements from certain positions.
Commerce agency The Stable has never required degrees; it was founded in 2015 by CEO Chad Hetherington, who skipped college himself. Last week, the agency made its first hire for its #NoCollegeNoWorries apprenticeship program. Over the next 15 months the new hire, Grace Slaubaugh, will work across all departments of the agency, from retail to marketing, according to a statement by the agency. Eventually, the goal is to find a permanent position within the agency for its apprentices, according to its original job post.
The Stable plans to continue the #NoCollegeNoWorries program with another apprentice opportunity in October 2022.
“This initiative certainly hits home for me and is something I’m extremely passionate about,” Hetherington said in a statement. “I feel there is this enormous pressure that if you didn’t go to college you’re not going to be successful in your career—we want to prove that wrong.”
In 2020, VaynerMedia launched its three-month-long media residency program, a full-time program with 9-10 hours per week spent in classes; the remainder involves working with client teams on brand work.
It originally started with 16 residents on the media team but has since grown to offer spots in strategy and creative departments. There are 52 total residents in the program—36 in media, six in strategy, seven in creative and three in analytics. The number of spots varies depending on business needs at the time of the class. After being put on a team, each resident is assigned a “buddy” or mentor who also works at the agency.
Since its launch, 252 residents have gone through the program, which has a 96% retention rate. While the agency didn’t specify the exact salary these residents receive, it said that the pay is above minimum wage.
The program —including benefits—allows for people from 18 and up to apply without having to have a college degree, something Vayner got rid of six years ago when it hired Claude Silver as its chief heart officer. The first thing she did in her role was to eliminate the degree requirement for the agency. “I thought that that was a real bottleneck and why, if we didn't have to have it?” she said.
While a degree isn’t required, the agency wants to see if applicants have relevant experience working in a fast-paced environment, in tech, e-commerce, NFT’s, crypto and other areas that of the agency's focus, Silver said.
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