Sunday, July 17, 2005
An Idea for Agency Staffing
I was speaking to Dick Thomas, the former CEO of Frankel, at a cocktail party this weekend about the agency model in general, and he said something so obvious, its genius.
Dick suggested that a staffing strategy for superior talent could possibly come from an ilk of lost stars—women and men (primarily women) who had given up their promising careers to become stay-at-home moms. He suggested that the creation of an agency environment that uses these mothers in a part-time fashion while giving them benefits that would truly help them at home and make their lives easier would create a staff of highly motivated, talented, and eager-to-be-stimulated people.
That’s absolutely brilliant.
According to the US Census, there are over 13 million women who are stay-at-home moms in the country. Even if we assume that only 0.25% of them were in marketing, and that 20% of that 0.25% were exceptionally good at what they did, it still gives us 6,500 amazing candidates to choose from. And I’d prefer a pool of 6,500 exceptional, motivated, experienced and interested candidates for part-time work than 100,000 unknown resumes any day.