Hiring creative in Denver (employment, marketplace, guidelines)

[Quietude]

First conceding that it's a problem many other places and that there may have been a national change in the two years since I explored any other marketplace... I continue to be staggered at how dumb Denver area companies are about hiring in-house creative positions. Unless they have established staff to guide the process, companies looking to bring in graphics, web, marketing etc. staff have a tendency to be colossally misguided and ignorant about it.

They have only vague notions of what they want from the hire, even vaguer notions of who to hire to get them, and often either no idea how to implement and support the position... or worse, a rigid list of ideas that are wrong, outdated or just peculiar.

I write partly as a frustrated job-seeker, but also as someone who has professionally consulted on building such departments for companies, guiding hiring, platform and equipment acquisition, policy and planning guidelines, etc.

It's even more frustrating to watch the same companies relist the job month after month, knowing that they get dozens if not hundreds of applications, among which are surely good to very good to ideal candidates... if they had an effing clue of what they were looking for/at.

The bottom line is that most companies that have only worked with outside providers are on bizarre unicorn quests for what they think is a right hire... or, worse, have imbibed one too many webinars, magic business books or someone's spouse's outdated and unchallengeable opinion about how to do it.

And then they pick someone... and it doesn't work out. Which is of course the fault of all of us creative flake-a-doodles, not them.

Insert scream here.

[Mike from back east]

Hard to believe this is only a Denver problem .... is this better put in the Employment forum?

[Quietude]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Hard to believe this is only a Denver problem .... is this better put in the Employment forum?

There's ongoing discussion there. This is an observation about local firms, and barring my minor caveat these are not levels and types of problems I've seen elsewhere.