What a year! What a decade!
We in media have definitely been on a roller coaster ride the last ten years and it seems that it’s not letting up any time soon. This year saw so much change and disruption with countless mergers and acquisitions (hello Vice and Refinery; NY Mag and Vox Media; PopSugar andGroup Nine, Greatist and Healthline, and Bustle and … everything else), employee revolts (rock on Deadspin and Hearst employees), and tons of layoffs.
I was one of those laid off (on April Fool’s Day no less!). But it proved to be no joke — it was in fact an open door. I immediately launched Talent Fairy, the recruiting agency I have always dreamed of starting but never had the guts to leave my media jobs to do.
That’s the great thing about losing a job. It forces you to go back to your roots and ask yourself: If I could do anything what would it be? If I could redesign my career, how would I redesign it?
What’s unique about my new career path is that I also get to help other people define theirs. In addition to taking on corporate clients (a big THANK YOU to those of you who hired me as a newbie recruiter), I have also have had the joy of working one-on-one with nearly forty editors and writers as their career coach.
I love talking to editorial peeps — as well as the hundreds of talent I have interviewed for roles this year — about what they want in their next media gig, their dream jobs, and where they feel their editorial skills are transferable — and where they fear they are not. Of course all of those conversations are confidential. But I find them so interesting and telling about our industry and its fabulous (often unrecognized) talent that I wanted to let everyone else in on it, too.
The 2019 Talent Fairy Hiring Report is my attempt to do just that. We (that’d be me and my fab assistant Shaye; thanks Shaye!) asked editors, writers, and other editorial and marketing creatives to take the survey this October and November and 145 of them did. Download the report: FT Hiring Report 2019. Or click on the image below:
I hope that the results resonate with you. Whether you are a player in this industry and it gives you comfort to be in good company (editors make the BEST friends) or as a hiring manager because it will inform your hiring practices as we move into 2020. Either way, we can all agree it was one helluva year.
Cheers to the incredible new decade TK!
Chandra
Chandra Turner is founder and CEO of Ed2010 and Talent Fairy. She is a talent recruiter specializing in the content and media space. She also offers personalized career coaching for media professionals at all stages of their career.
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