Market report

Yeah, okay—you’ve heard me kvetch about HR before, and I’m struggling with them again this week.

(First: trying to get an intern hired. The process that ticked along just fine six months ago with HR doing nothing except ensuring that all the legalities were adhered to and extending the actual offer has now slowed to a crawl, since a “Talent Acquisition Partner”* has been inserted into it. I can’t access online applications directly, but have to wait for Ms. TAP to send them to me. So far, aside from the ones who applied to other internship openings and have neither awareness of, interest in nor qualifications for what I need done, she has forwarded only one application. From someone in Texas. Who requires visa sponsorship. “Oh, oops—I missed that,” was the response when I queried her on that, since I can no longer view the actual applications at all, where work status is clearly stated. The one candidate I knew to be qualified and interested, because he was referred by a Georgetown entrepreneurship professor, didn’t make it to me until I asked where the application I knew he’d submitted was. After I interviewed the candidate, I asked Ms. TAP to move this along post haste, and so far have had nothing but crickets in reply. Summer is indeed i-cumen in, but it’s fast a-waning, too, pet.

*No, I am not making that title up. I’m sure the director spent many hours agonizing over the decision to call an assistant recruiter a Talent Acquisition Partner.

(Second: trying to get information on benefits, specifically on regulations around the retirement plan. The benefits “manager” has form WRT non-responsiveness. She generally doesn’t reply to inquiries until you’ve sent at least two emails and dropped by her office. And that’s when she’s not out at some conference or workshop, aimed no doubt at improving her evasion skills. Hon: I’d like the information before I actually hit mandatory retirement age. Or die.)

But today I’m turning my guns to the other department that, in my experience, just cannot seem to get their ducks on a single body of water, much less in a row. That would be Marketing. And in this organization, Marketing seems even scattier than in others I’ve worked in.

As in: every single time I’ve been involved in a project that requires marketing support, word has come back with much hand-flapping that “there’s no bandwidth” in the department.

God give me strength—what do they do?

A couple of weeks ago there was a long-overdue “shake up” in Marketing, and the director has left the company. But those who remain…well, I’m still asking the question in the preceding graf. One fellow, with an MBA in marketing from Drexel, went through the first iteration of our ideation course but never seemed to grasp the notion that a business idea needs to be feasible and it needs to be capable of generating income. He actually submitted one of his pitch competition ideas to me. The submission wouldn’t fill the back of a cocktail napkin, omitting such things as who’s already doing this, what the revenue model would be and level of effort to stand it up. Also, pro tip: consider, before touting an idea for professional networking functionality, that one of the people to whom you’re pitching it is running a platform that he considers already covers this feature set.

But there’s another marketing person—not a recommendation for the MBA program at American University—who signed up for the second cohort of the class, could not be arsed to introduce herself or post assignments to the online collaboration platform, didn’t show up to the third class, and waited a week to respond to my email asking if she’s not going to continue with it. (Recall that we’ve forked over a lot of dosh to the instructor, and that we’ve already witnessed nearly half the class just shrug it off.)

And here is her week-later reply:

Seriously? The wavy red lines in Microsoft products are your friends, cupcake. Pay attention to them. Because this makes you look like an ignoramus of the first order. Do you send out marketing materials looking like that?

Plus: she spelled my name wrong. My first name. After I’ve corrected her multiple times. What kind of marketer does that?

Well, the answer to that question, children, is one who’s worked here for several years.

So, here it is, hump day, and I can’t decide where to plant the gelignite—HR or Marketing. These are not good choices.