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OK, so the
results of this poll won't change the world, but they
should provide interesting info, and they could be
funny:
How much time did you spend being
interviewed in your shortest interview ever?
Did you get the
job?
Click anywhere
in this box to answer — it will only take a
minute. Watch for the results in the next
issue.
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TREND WATCH
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Baby BoomersBaby Boomer Pros
Redefine Retirement Born in 1946, the first baby boomers turn
60 this year, entering the home stretch toward
retirement. Born between 1946 and 1964, 78.2 million
Americans make up the baby boomer generation, and they have
changed the world in many ways, driving “every significant
cultural and marketing trend for 50 years, from Howdy Doody to
the Beatles to the Ford Explorer,” according to
BusinessWeek.
Just as they have demanded more
from their lives and experiences up to now, boomers are also
demanding more from their golden years. They are not
going quietly into a retirement of shuffleboard and
bridge. Instead, they are reconstructing the concept of
retirement to include the fulfillment they get from work,
either by pursuing a new career, starting a business or
adjusting their current position to give them more time for
other interests.
“Now people are thinking of retirement
as a beginning, not as an ending,” said William D. Novelli,
who became executive director and CEO of AARP after retiring
from Porter Novelli in 1990, in a speech to the Institute for
Public Relations. “About half our 35 million
members now work. Some full time, some part time, some because
they want to, some because they have to, but it is not just a
function of age anymore. There are four key elements that the
oldest boomers tell us they see as essential for a satisfying
life — work, economic security, good health, and personal
fulfillment.”
Increasingly, employers are reading the
writing on the wall and realizing that as the demographics of
the country shift, their business could be affected across all
departments and on the bottom line. “Brain drain” is a
significant concern — employers realize that seasoned staff is
the keeper of their institutional memory, understanding not
only how their systems and company work, but, because of their
positions and experience, grasping the bigger picture as well
— their markets and the business as a whole. They provide
depth and stability along with their skills. A baby boomer that
retires fully takes not only a pension but years of
institutional knowledge with them.
As a result, it’s
also in an employer’s best interest to find ways to keep baby
boomers involved in their business. Here’s a look at
what vibrant, engaged, older employees are looking for as they
transition toward full retirement at some point in the
undefined future:
- Flexible work
arrangements that still provide substantial, important work
to do
- Job-sharing
- Ongoing career
development opportunities, including training, tuition
reimbursement and temporary assignments, which recognize the
importance that older workers place on lifetime
learning
- Part-time
options
- Retirement
savings vehicles and pro-rated benefits for part-time
employees, including health insurance and prescription drug
coverage
- Flextime
- Months-on/months-off work
schedules
- Telecommuting
- Phased retirement
plans, which allow a company’s retirement-eligible workers to
continue working at, for example, half time for half salary
for up to three years while collecting partial pension
benefits
Some employers are making more
progress in adapting than others. The AARP recognized
Stanley Consultants, Inc. as #1 among 50 diverse employers
that made its list of the 2005 AARP Best Employers for Workers
Over 50. Stanley’s workplace-leading programs include
phased retirement arrangements that enable employees to reduce
work schedules before full retirement, a “time off bank” of donated vacation time which employees
can use to care for family members, and a 401(k) plan that the
company contributes to — regardless of employee
participation.
According to
the AARP, by 2015, one-fifth of the work force will be 55 or
older, so “the times, they are
a-changin’,” and to keep
the boomer generation engaged and contributing, employers will
be changing as well. This shift will benefit all
employees as they work in teams that offer diverse expertise,
whether it comes from recent training or years of experience.
Thanks to BusinessWeek,
the Kansas City Star, Baseline and the
AARP.
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| THE
BASICS |
Ace an Interview
Prep and Practice
Help You Stand Out in an Interview
You’ve
landed a great interview — now what? How do you make
sure you shine? Follow these steps to present a strong
case to a potential employer for why you are the right person
to join their team.
1. Do Your
Homework — First, research the industry,
noting the leading companies and any trends in the space.
Next, learn as much as you can about your target company.
Start by reviewing the company’s website. Look at recent and
archived press releases, management bios, and the company’s
mission statement. Study the company’s products and services,
and put some thought into how you might communicate messages
about the company and what it offers. Review the company’s
advertising, noting the audiences it targets for each product
or service. Then go beyond information provided by your target
company. If the company is public, review its stock
performance and read analyst reports.
2. Focus
on Personal Details — Dress professionally, and check
your shoes for scuffs. Makeup and ties/accessories
should be moderate. Make sure you have fresh breath, but
don’t chew gum. Turn off your cell phones and other
electronic devices on the way in. Organize clean copies
of all of your materials neatly — no messy portfolios or
messenger bags.
3. Arrive Prepared —
Check the news right up to a few minutes before you walk in
for the interview, in case something has changed that
day. Be prepared to discuss many facets of your
potential employer’s
business.
4. Get to the Point — Limit
small talk and jump right into light conversation about the
industry or the company, to show you’re a candidate with
focus.
5. Talk Your Key Message
Points — Use the skills you’ve learned in media
training sessions to deliver your own “key messages,” instead
of viewing the interview as a Q&A in which you answer only
what you’re asked. Talk about your strengths, your
successes, challenges you enjoy — and why you are right for
this position. Be sure to have anecdotes ready to
support key points.
6. Listen — Pay
close attention to what the interviewer asks and the topics
they want to cover. They may be giving you clues as to
what’s really important for this position — team approach, a
new perspective, etc. Adapt these subtle clues into your
part of the conversation.
7. End Strong — Stand, make direct
eye contact, give a solid handshake and thank your interviewer
for their time. Summarize briefly why you’re interested
in and right for the position. Close by saying you hope
to speak to them again soon.
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| IN THE
SPOTLIGHT |
Internal Audiences
Unlikely Lesson:
Of Pixels and Internal Audiences
It’s amazing as a communications
professional how much you can learn from each position you
hold, even the ones that don’t seem like a perfect fit. A
mid-level manager who had spent her early career working with
business-to-business and high-tech clients (on both the
corporate and agency sides of the fence) found herself outside
her comfort zone at a video game company. The pop culture vibe
and young, energetic staff seemed like a dream come true, with
a catch — she didn’t play video games.
Thus her tenure
at this particular company brought many new experiences and
skills — how to reach the secret level and find hidden cheats
in the hottest new game, creative ways to make a particular
game stand out at the incredibly loud and intense video game
industry convention, how to correctly use a whole new language
of slang and terminology. Once she mastered the
technical aspects of the position, the rest was familiar —
writing press releases, pitching reporters, the logistics of
editorial deadlines. She thought her ability to play the
games would be all she added to her skill-set from this
position.
And then the company began planning for the
national launch of a megatitle — a top-tier, top-secret game
developed for a new gaming system. This was a corporate
team-building exercise unlike anything our PR pro had ever
experienced. The entire company mobilized for months,
planning and preparing, writing computer code and testing
every scenario in the game, designing signage and plotting
ship dates. At the communications planning
meetings, the internal section of the PR program was very
elaborate, with detailed elements customized for each internal
audience.
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To help keep the game
testers and programmers, who were working around the clock,
motivated, she worked with the diner across the street to
develop a new sandwich themed after the game for delivery at
all hours.
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Each floor had a décor
manager bringing the theme of the game to the entire
building through decorations.
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For the mailroom
personnel that carried the brunt of packing and shipping
hundreds of copies of the game to reporters for pre-launch
reviews, game-themed chocolates mysteriously appeared in the
mailroom for energy.
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As the launch date
approached, the entire company kept up with the countdown
through daily e-mail updates on the game’s progress and
small gifts delivered to their desks — a mug, a screen
saver, a t-shirt.
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On launch day, the
mayor renamed the street outside after a character in the
game, and the whole company gathered in the motion-capture
studio for a launch party, complete with the local radio
station broadcasting live and employees dressed as
characters from the game for
pictures.
The PR pro has moved on,
along with all of the company’s other employees, because just
like the game, the company burned bright as a white-hot star
for a while but then faded and is now gone. But she took
with her from that position a new understanding of the vital
importance of internal communications and the value of taking
the extra time to think about each internal audience and how
to reach them effectively. The game launch experience
bears similarities with any corporate team that joins together
to meet a specific goal or deadline, even if it does not
include the motion capture of football players and animals or
24/7 shifts spent playing a game to find and correct every
software glitch. Though the video game launch was “over
the top,” this PR pro has made a point of finding small and
inexpensive, but informative, ways to reach internal audiences
in every position she has held since.
Career lesson:
Never forget to think about those working beside you — keep
them as informed as your external audiences, and make sure
they know how much the company appreciates their
commitment. It’s an investment that always pays back
more than it costs.
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| INDUSTRY
FOCUS |
Pharma Challenges
Pharmaceutical
Communicators Face Unique Challenges
You only have to read or
watch the news to know that pharmaceutical industry
communicators are facing a tough environment right now.
Lawsuits, production problems and pricing are some of the
issues that garner significant coverage. And the public
is paying attention. In a nationwide Harris Poll in October
2005, just 9% of respondents agreed that the pharmaceutical
industry is “generally honest and trustworthy,” down from 14%
in 2004.
The media clutter surrounding these negative
stories makes it very hard to focus on the positive
contributions and significant advances for patients coming
from the pharmaceutical industry, which has done more in the
past 50 years to improve human health than any other industry
in history.
In addition, pharma, like other
industries, is adapting to change brought about by
technological advances and pressures from the global
marketplace. As a result, pharmaceutical corp. comm.,
PR, marketing and branding pros face a unique set of
challenges, summarized here from several pharmaceutical
industry publications*:
- Shorter product
life cycles. What used to be a 12- to 15-year
life cycle for a newly approved drug is now estimated to be
a five- to six-year cycle, giving companies a shorter window
to develop, establish and build their brand.
- Pricing
pressures. Longer and more complex approval
processes, along with an aging population, make pricing an
ongoing challenge.
- Access
issues. Tied to drug development costs and
pricing issues, who can or can’t get treatments is a
hotbutton topic.
- Safety, testing
and reporting questions. Growing scrutiny of
how drugs are tested and how safety results are reported
could result in changes brought about by regulation or
government pressure.
- Perceived
trustworthiness. As polls show, the industry
has much work to do in order to communicate lasting positive
messages about how it operates and how it helps
patients.
Pharma industry
communicators are taking a fresh look at their strategies and
tactics, strengthening approaches that work while developing
creative new ways to communicate positive messages about their
companies, products and the industry as a
whole:
- Giving the industry a
human face, focusing on the thousands of people working to
develop and market effective treatments for patients
- Providing solid,
accurate information that is consistent throughout the
industry
- Extending the product
life cycle by keeping the brand in the mind of the
customer
- Communicating
effectively with physicians, with emphasis on cost benefits
for them and their patients
- Building alliances and
joint programs with patient groups
- Understanding and
effectively communicating the specifics of each disease area
to educate consumers
- Building brand image by
simultaneously appealing to rational motives and addressing
emotional needs
- Embracing and
communicating the fact that not every drug works for every
patient, and encouraging consumers to talk to their doctor
for all therapeutic options
- Maintaining an open,
honest dialog with consumers about drug development costs as
they affect pricing, and about clinical trials and safety as
they affect drug usage
- Focusing on how the
industry is improving the quality of life for the better for
many patients
*PharmaVOICE, PharmaVOICE
View on Marketing, and Pharmaceutical
Executive.
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Discovery consists in seeing what everyone
else has seen but understanding it for the first
time. 