When it comes to working for a large company vs. a small company, I’ve learned that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, it’s just different grass.

My first advertising job out of school was for an agency that had about 12 employees, and only seven of them were in the Chicago office. Later I moved to a larger agency, we had about 60 people in our division, and a few thousand among all of our agencies in the building.

I think there’s a general misconception among college students that a larger company is always better than a smaller company. In my experience that isn’t always the case.

One of the things I loved about working at a smaller company early on in my career was that I was able to get experience in so many different parts of the business. Not only did I implement campaigns, I also helped with invoicing, marketing our own company and hiring our interns.  All of the different experiences I had at the smaller agency helped me at the larger shop when I worked with other departments because I had a better understanding of what their needs were. Plus, the smaller agency clients were willing to try just about anything, and we could get new initiatives up and running in very little time. Sometimes, new projects with larger clients were like trying to move the Titanic. Also, in a smaller company, you get more of an opportunity to take ownership of projects – whether it’s being the lead on a client initiative or taking on an internal project.

On the flip side, the larger agencies almost always give you the chance to work with more well-known clients. And to be honest, a big-name client will always stand out on your resume and in that respect is a huge asset to have.¹Larger companies also tend to have better overall benefit packages, and from what I’ve seen the compensation tends to be a bit higher (but not astronomically so).² There’s also more stability (losing a client doesn’t mean losing your job) and often more opportunities to transfer to another department or another location. Working at a larger company may mean that you are able to focus on a specialized area, which can be great for building up your skills in that specific area at the expense of being the jack-of-all-trades.

Personally, I had a lot of success starting at a smaller company and moving to a bigger one, but the common wisdom tends to be that it is always easier to start at a bigger company and then transition to a smaller company later on. Although that is almost too obvious to mention, the flip side is that if you play your cards right, you can also move up from the smaller agency to the larger agency. Think of it like baseball – sure some players go straight to the majors, but just as many if not more come up through the minor leagues.³

1. I rememberone of my favorite managers I ever worked with had worked previously for Disney.  Every time we went into a kick-off meeting with a new client, we would have everyone introduce themselves.  My manager would always mention that had been head of affiliate marketing at Disney, and I could tell instantly that no matter what impression the client had of my manager before that moment, they had a very different impression of him afterwards.  It was an asset he possessed that could completely change the tenor of the room, and that would command the attention and respect of the client. [↩]
2. My experience was that the smaller agency paid more with the entry-level positions, was around the average for the manager positions, and was lower for the upper-level positions.  The larger agency didn’t pay as well for the entry-level spots, but the upper management compensation was more than a comparable position at the smaller agency. [↩]
3. Keep in mind, however, that the baseball analogy isn’t entirely accurate.  The level of play in Major League baseball is markedly higher than that in minor league baseball.  However, in the advertising world (and in business in general), the smaller players can easily compete on the same level as the larger players when it comes to quality, and in many cases can provide better service than the larger players.  Bigger agencies tend to perform better with clients that need work on a larger scale, but with regard to quality there isn’t an inherent inferiority. [↩]

This one came from one of my old managers.

If you go on a date with someone, you wouldn’t ask them to marry you on the first date, right? So why do you think you’re going to get the job based only on the resume and cover letter?

The purpose of the resume isn’t to get you the job, the purpose of the resume is to get someone to call you back.  That’s it.  You’re not trying to convince anyone of anything besides the fact that you’re at least qualified for the job.

You’re not trying to tell every detail of every job experience that you have ever had, and saving a few gems for the phone interview isn’t a bad thing. Just make sure you’re tailoring your resume and cover letter with the purpose of getting the call-back, not the job offer.

A lot of students that I would talk to asked me what my typical day was like.  I would always respond that I didn’t have a typical day, but I did have a fairly typical week.

My general feeling is that if my job was so routine that I did the same things every day, I probably wouldn’t be too happy. But a typical week sounds about right – just enough routine to know what your responsibilities are, but not so much that you’re merely a laborer.

When I was at my first agency, I was in charge of hiring the interns. That meant I would have to go though hundreds of cover letters deciding who had the skills and interest that would be valuable to our agency, and set up phone or in-person interviews with those people. And one of the first things that I noticed was that nearly every cover letter sounded exactly the same.

The problem was that too many people were playing it safe in their cover letter. They would remove jokes and antidotes because they might risk not sounding professional, and by the end of the editing process the cover letter was stripped of any and all personality. Now, instead of sounding professional, they sounded like a robot that spits out cover letters.

When it comes to a cover letter, don’t just talk about your qualifications – that’s what the resume for. Instead, include a bit of a narrative about yourself. Don’t be cheesy, but find a way to grab my attention and tell me a story. Give me something that makes me say “I want to know more about this person.”

If you find yourself just putting the bullet points from your resume into paragraph form, you’re on the wrong track. But if you’re talking about a lesson you learned from a previous internship and how that made you want to get into a specific line of work, that’s probably a lot better.

Sometimes you are going to get an invitation to interview for a job that you’re almost 100% sure you don’t want. When you’re in that situation, my advice is to take the interview.  There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, sometimes the job description that was posted online or sent to you over email just isn’t well written. It can be hard to fully explain what a job entails¹, and HR people are usually a few steps removed from the actual job they are trying to describe in the job posting.  Let’s face it, HR representatives have a lot of great qualities, but they’re not usually trained to be creative writers. So it’s a good idea to at least talk to someone about the job and make sure it’s something you’re not fully interested in.  And, just maybe, you’ll find that the job description was lousy but the actual job is pretty good.

Second, even if you don’t think you would like the job,  you are missing out on a great chance to get some interview experience by not doing the interview. Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m condoning wasting someone’s time, but the reality is that you can’t be sure that you don’t want the job until you talk to someone about it and ask some questions (see paragraph above). So if there’s even a shred of a possibility that you could be interested, take the interview. Get the practice in explaining your skills, asking and answering questions, and overall just getting comfortable in the interview situation.  It will be well worth the effort.

1. This is especially the case with entry-level positions – not so much because it is hard to describe the work, but because the company basically has to explain the work to a lay person who hasn’t necessarily been in the industry.  HR people love to use jargon, and a recent college grad who is still pretty green won’t necessarily know what all the buzzwords mean. [↩]

Let’s envision two scenarios.

In scenario #1, Joba Seeker responds by saying “well, it’s been pretty tough, I’ve had a few call backs but nothing I was really interested in, and I haven’t been on an interview in a couple of weeks.”

Now, in scenario #2 Eager Beaver responds “things are going pretty well.  I’ve had a handful of call-backs and interviews in the past few weeks, and I even have two job offers right now that I’m considering. However, I really like your company and want to make sure that I find the best possible fit for me.”

If you’re an HR person talking to Joba Seeker, you probably think at the worst that he’s picky, and at the very least he’s not in demand.  Now, look at Eager Beaver – with a couple of offers on the table and a fair amount of interviews, even without asking any other questions, there appears to be something about this person that is in demand.  You don’t know what it is, but based on the interest from other companies, Eager Beaver already has a head start because other companies are interested in him.

I’m not saying you should make up offers that aren’t real.  Don’t lie.  But also, don’t do yourself a disservice by not letting the person on the other end of the table know what your situation is. You don’t want to be arrogant about it, you just want to give them an honest assessment of where your job search stands and how in demand you are as an employee.

This bit of advice may seem oxymoronic in a way, and I guess it probably is.

The conventional wisdom (and nearly everyone you talk to) will tell you to cast a wide net in your job search.  Send out a lot of resumes, look at all opportunities, consider things you wouldn’t normally consider.  That’s all fine and well, and logically it makes sense that the more jobs you apply for and the more you are willing to consider, the more responses and opportunities you will receive.¹

However, after I graduated, it took me seven months to find a job.  And in that seven months, I went from casting a very broad net² to doing a very targeted search (almost exclusively online advertising jobs).  And what I found was that the more specific and targeted my search, the more serious interest I received from employers.

It’s really an issue of relevancy.  When you cast a wide net, you might get more interest, but it’s probably not as relevant to what you want to do.  Granted, these are still opportunities worth exploring, but they’re not as likely to be jobs you are enthusiastic and passionate about.  And having enthusiasm and passion is critical not only in landing the job, but also in loving that job.

Once you tailor your search down to things you’re really interested in, your success rate (that is, the percentage of places that call you back for the jobs you’re really interested) will tend to go up, and you’ll probably be able to present yourself more effectively for those jobs than for something you’re not as interested in.

1. I am avoiding using the phraseology “more success” here because I don’t think casting a wider net necessarily means more success unless you define what success means.  Basic math brings this dichotomy to light.  If you “cast a wide net” and send out 500 resumes, and you get 50 responses, then you might say you have a success rate of 10%. But if you take a more targeted approach – sending out 50 resumes and getting 15 responses, you might say you have a 30% success rate.  In the first case you have more total responses in terms of the raw numbers, but in the second case you have a higher percent response rate.  So you may consider more total responses as more successful, or you may believe that few responses but from higher targeted jobs equals more success. [↩]
2. Case in point: I nearly went to an interview to do insurance sales. [↩]