Essay 1226

One more comment responding to the AdAge perspective presented in Essay 1205…

> Hold on. How does recruiting and hiring minorities in itself make an agency “edgy”? Recruiting and hiring creative people with amazing portfolios who can display a versatile range of skills makes an agency edgy. It’s just that agencies and recruiters could do a much better job of reaching out to a wider variety of talent, i.e. thinking beyond just the portfolio schools and more well-known collegiate programs like U. of Texas. Additionally, colleges need to do a better job of getting with the times and bringing in real-world talent from agencies as guest instructors -- not just using professors who used to work in an agency 20 years ago shoveling history about Burnett and Bernbach. How about having students work on campaigns for real (or fake) clients so they can build up their books when they go out into the real world for a job? There are some great ideas here and I completely agree that the ball is in the agency/recruiter/university’s court for finding, nurturing and hiring talent. However, excuse me for saying something that may or may not be considered politically incorrect, but I feel obligated to extend myself as much as possible to seek out and hire TALENT first and foremost -- regardless of a person’s skin color. And guess what? I’ve still got myself quite the diverse agency anyway. — Boca Raton, FL