Competition. It's good for the soul.

Job markets all over the country are suffering right now, so the last thing I want to do is complain. This is more of an observation about hiring trends specific to the advertising industry. When the economy was booming, the way to move up in the ad world was to get a foothold in some entry level peon position somewhere and work your tail off until you accrued a couple of years of solid experience. After a few years you could move up. It was a common practice to switch agencies to get peach positions with higher pay and more responsibilities and because of this, and because of the good economy, the entry level positions were plentiful, if not profitable for the recent grad. When I graduated in 2007, the recession had hit hard and people were being laid off left and right. I job searched for a calendar year with only 3 interviews the entire time. Due to my fantastic writing skills, one of those interviews was for GSD&M, however it seemed that they mostly wanted to mentor me and give me (very much appreciated) resume advice and then move on to candidates who they were serious about. I ended up taking a job in the marketing department of a seamless rain gutter manufacturer which was far from my starry-eyed dreams of a glamorous advertising job. However, it was a paycheck, and it was experience, and it has aided me well in my career. After I lost that job I was tossed back into the waters of a (somewhat) more forgiving job market. The agencies who had all had massive layoffs were finally regaining clients and opening up their doors once more. However, the feeding frenzy is, if anything, even more violent now than before. This is because in 2007 people were laid off who had years, like a decade or more, of experience and had lost six-figure positions. These people have been on unemployment, working freelance or as consultants, even waiting tables to make ends meet and now they're willing to take that $30,000 position just to get back into the ad game. These are the people I'm up against now. I'm confident that the market will stabilize, and these people, the elders, mentors and legends of my generation will find their way back up to where they belong and those entry level positions will open up once more, but in the meantime, it's a bloodbath out there, so I'm bringing my A-game.