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Laid Off Copywriter Starts His Own Industry Business

If nothing else, Erik Proulx is proactive.   We like that.    Erik is a former senior copywriter at Arnold, Boston, who was laid off as courtesy of the economic downturn.

According to an article in AdAge, Erik started his own business.   He first set up a blog and now is converting that blog into a destination site where advertising industry job seekers and advertising industries can hook up.   Excellent idea.     It is a match making site, or, if you will, online dating, sort of, that actually makes sense.

So far, more than a thousand readers are regulars on Proulx’s blog, Please Feed the Animals.   We can’t imagine how many readers will visit when he activates the job matching mechanism.  It should be pretty exciting, and I am sure all the media pundits will pick up on the site so that its popularity will grow.   It is one of those accidents in life, the proverbial lemons into lemonade, that may prove a remarkable success.   American business lore is fileld with stories about quirks for fate that were turned into major successes.

We certanly hope Proulx either offers background checks online or encourages employers to conduct preemployment screening of the potential candidates.  Let’s face it, not all laid off workers are created equal.   Some are very talented souls who merely fell victim to the economic melthdown.  Others were agency deadwood, and the downturn was the perfect excuse to get rid of them.   So, with that in mind, there are treasures out there, waiting to be hired, true finds, and then there are…the others.

The American ability to innovate is one of the more optimistic signals in these dire times.   More than bailouts and sell offs, it is our inherent talent for deivising new ideas and building buisnesses around them that demonstrates our true endurance and our ability to prevail.     Good luck, Erik, and may all the unemployed advertising people find on your website some gainful employment.

Check them out before you hire.

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.

2 replies on “Laid Off Copywriter Starts His Own Industry Business”

Gordon, the issue you raise is about screening candidates is an interesting one. I don’t want to be responsible for putting frauds in front of hiring companies. But I keep coming back to the same fundamental reasons for evolving PFTA in the first place. First, it’s really not my place to be judge and jury on that issue. Who among us hasn’t rubbed a former employer the wrong way at some point in our careers? But the bigger issue is that talent is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps there are agencies or even client-side marketers who would be best served by someone who wouldn’t necessarily pass my own talent test. My goal from this isn’t to be a headhunter or a recruitment specialist. PFTA is by no means putting its seal of approval on every candidate who posts his or her resume. My only goal is to give out of work advertising talent a venue to put their best-selves out there for hiring agencies (or even client-side marketers) to find them, without the expense of headhunters.

Thanks for picking up the story. Hopefully some of the hiring companies will use your service to do their own checks.

-Erik