Help Wanted
Jim Milliot -- 5/1/00
Recruiting and retaining employees has never been more challenging
In 30 years of publishing I've never seen the employment situation so volatile," observes Dan Farley, publisher of Harcourt's trade division that has offices in San Diego and New York. A roaring economy, low unemployment and competition for talent from Internet and other content-oriented companies has created a staffing conundrum for many publishing houses. Despite the consolidations that have hit the industry, it's taking longer and longer to fill many positions. "It's a sellers' market. People with some experience and a decent track record have more job opportunities now in the industry than I've seen in years," notes Esther Margolis, president of Newmarket Press.
Margolis, who operates a small publishing house in New York, is accustomed to losing people to larger houses--she recently had two people move to Simon & Schuster and one to HarperCollins--but she says it is harder than ever to find and keep qualified employees. "Young people would usually stay with me for at least two years, but now it's hard to keep them for just one year," Margolis says. The problem of finding and retaining employees is far from limited to small houses. A survey conducted by PW that drew 60 responses found that 75% of respondents from companies with revenues of more than $100 million thought the lack of qualified candidates is a major industrywide problem. Jane Friedman, president of HarperCollins, says the recruitment and retention of new talent "will be a key issue for the future of publishing."
HarperCollins, like nearly every publishing company, has lost staff to dot-com companies. Bill Barry, formerly senior vice-president of corporate development at Random House and now president of IDG Books, says that since the advent of Internet companies, there has been "a sea change" in hiring and retention practices. "The dot-coms are very aggressive in building their staffs and they have targeted the publishing industry as an area to find qualified people," Barry says, explaining that the skill sets the Internet companies are looking for, such as content editing, are the same skills found in publishing. Bert Davis, who owns Bert Davis Publishing Placement Consultants, ech s Barry: "Media companies are the perfect targets for dot-com startups."
Davis has broadened his client base to include Internet and other industries that deal with intellectual property, as has another major publishing employment agency, Lynn Palmer Executive Recruitment. Susan Gordon, owner of Lynn Palmer, says, "Candidates have more choices than before, especially those who are willing to take a risk or relocate." With more options available, it is becoming more challenging to fill positions, Gordon notes. While information technology positions are the hardest to fill, the PW survey found that more than 50% of the respondents in editorial and marketing divisions consider finding qualified people a major problem. In fact, one of the most difficult areas to fill is publicity. "There is a very quick turnover in publicity," notes an executive from a major New York publisher; "start-ups are looking for public relations people and they provide a young publicist with an opportunity to accelerate her or his career." "Experienced publicists are being scooped up by dot-com businesses who are paying almost twice what we can offer," reports the marketing director at another large New York company.
It is no surprise that the number one problem cited by survey respondents and people interviewed by PW in luring people into publishing is the industry's infamous low pay scale. Approximately 93% of survey respondents said that low salaries was the major barrier in bringing new talent to the industry. Moreover, a number of respondents noted that it isn't just the low pay that makes it hard to find and keep good people; the amount of work people are asked to do for that money drives talented people away. "In general, the workload is disproportionate to the compensation," one production manager comments, while a general manager at a mid-sized house observes: "We expect too much and offer too little. We still think that the privilege of working in publishing is compensation enough. Not everyone has a trust fund to fall back on." And despite Random House's plan to raise entry-level salaries to $30,000 (see sidebar), most publishers concede they will never be able to compete with Internet companies solely on a compensation basis. "We're not going to get into the game of trying to match offers from the Internet companies," a major publisher says. HC's Friedman notes that book publishing's "salary structure will never be like companies in the new economy. We need to find other ways to appeal to today's young people."
According to the PW survey, competition for talent from Internet companies has only exacerbated the hiring dilemma. Forty-five percent of respondents said they have had problems finding applicants for more than two years, while another 40% said the problems began about two years ago. Harcourt's Farley notes that he recently lost an employee who left to be a writer, and a second one who moved to an advertising firm. "Young people see ceilings in terms of how far they can go in their careers, especially as some units shrink," he says. Others agree that the perception of book publishing plays a role in keeping people away. "Compared to Internet companies, publishing is considered archaic. Internet companies are more exciting and very young," says the associate director of publicity at a major New York publisher. A production manager for another major publishing company put it more bluntly: "Lots of crap is being published today that makes the business less appealing from the get-go." "Publishing d sn't have the social cachet it once had," says another survey respondent. Still, while a number of people believe book publishing has lost some of its glamour, others say it remains an exciting field. "Publishing has lots of glamour, but salaries are low," notes Helene Atwan, director of Beacon Press. "Publishing still has the ability to attract first-rate people who believe in the power of books," contends Jed Lyons, publisher of Rowman and Littlefield.
Glamorous or not, there is widespread agreement that the industry has not done enough to promote itself among young people, particularly on college campuses. There is no industrywide recruitment initiative, and only a handful of companies have their own programs. Publishers have long relied on publishing programs at NYU, Stanford, Denver and Radcliffe to fill their ranks, or, as IDG's Barry notes, "publishers act like airline companies used to act when they simply hired former military pilots. They are much more proactive now, and that's how the publishing industry needs to be."
Friedman says she is very interested in beginning a college recruitment program for HarperCollins, and Random House chairman Peter Olson also says he hopes to broaden Random's efforts in that area. Two Association of American Publishers initiatives are underway. The more comprehensive program is taking place under the aegis of the AAP's diversity program, which is developing a new brochure about the publishing field (it will include opportunities in new technology at publishing companies), creating a new Web site and producing an interactive video. While the programs are being developed to encourage more minority hiring, the materials could be used for general outreach programs. The AAP's trade executive committee, meanwhile, has invited a number of speakers to address the question of the industry's hiring practices at a May 9 meeting. "We think it is an important enough topic that it needs to be examined further," explains Scholastic's Michael Jacobs, chairman of the trade committee.
One of the speakers at the meeting will be Newmarket's Margolis, who, along with Applause Books' Kay Radtke, held a one-day publishing seminar earlier this year at their alma mater, the University of Michigan. Margolis said the seminar drew more than 70 students, most of whom "were completely ignorant about what publishing is all about. All they thought about were editorial jobs." Margolis is a firm believer that the industry needs to become more active in recruiting college students, even if it means developing "guerrilla" outreach programs.
A more aggressive recruitment policy is necessary because, as PW's survey illustrates, publishers find it more difficult to recruit new employees than to retain them. The head of the children's publishing division at a large New York publisher notes that "the talent pool is a mile wide and an inch deep," meaning that he interviews many more people for positions than are qualified. "The best people are going elsewhere. Even with higher salaries, we can't compete with the dot-coms," he says. With the growth of high-tech companies, "the talent pool has dwindled," agrees Atwan. "People have many more options now, and publishing can still be a slow career advancement industry." The corporate administrator at a nonprofit publisher reported that she had to hire a new production person who had fewer skills than the previous employee at the same salary because the job had been open for three months. A number of survey respondents reported that many jobs have remained unfilled for a long period of time.
Power to the People
The low unemployment rate and the rise of Internet companies, with their stock-option plans, has created a different mindset among today's younger workers, and is starting to change the thinking among some managers. Barry observes that young people "are being brought up in an equity culture," while Barry's boss, IDG Books chairman John Kilcullen, adds that people today "want to be stakeholders in the companies they work for." The ability to provide equity to employees is one reason IDG Books went public, Kilcullen says.
While the number of publishers that offer stock options is growing, the industry will never match the potential that Internet startups have to make millionaires out of their employees before they reach the age of 30. "While we don't offer a place to get rich, we do offer the world of books," Friedman says. Friedman says it is up to management to make the work environment as interesting as possible. "We have a lot of creative people who like to branch out into new areas. We need to encourage them to blend their talents" in different areas of the company, Friedman says.
The importance of giving employees a chance to grow within the company was ech d by several other executives. Kilcullen says that one reason he chose to base IDG Books in California and not New York is because he wants to create a hybrid company that isn't saddled with the culture of a traditional publishing company. "We have no legacy to uphold," Kilcullen notes. He is emphatic about hiring employees who are entrepreneurial and who are interested in exploring different opportunities. "We don't buttonhole people in one track," Kilcullen says, noting that the company is forming a new Internet division and is inviting interested employees to apply for positions. Farley says that publishers "need to show that people can learn here and move up. Employees certainly feel more in charge of their career now than in the past."
Lynn Palmer's Gordon tells PW that with the number of job opportunities available, quality-of-life issues are becoming more important, something that can work in favor of publishers. While startups offer the chance for riches, they also mean long hours and a grinding schedule. Valerie Rock, associate publisher at Chronicle Books, says that within the last few months she has seen candidates who previously.had turned down jobs at Chronicle for dot.coms return. She speculated that some employees at startup companies are burning out and "are looking to get back into a work pace that allows them to have a life." Bert Davis notes that he recently placed an executive at a professional publishing company who turned down offers from two startups that offered more money, but which also meant extensive travel.
Bert Davis executive vice-president Sally Dougan says that many people are "looking for new career models, and that fits well with all the changes that are occurring in the industry." Fewer and fewer people are hired through the "old boy network," Dougan says, explaining that with accountability issues on the rise, managers can't afford to hire someone who may not be the best person for the job. The type of executive most in demand now is one "who manages change well," Dougan tells PW.
Even as publishers look to develop new programs, such as in-house training, mentoring and educational development, many acknowledge that they will always be dependent on people who have a love of books. Rowman and Littlefield's Lyons says that when he hires, "I want people who are looking to get into publishing first, and for a job second. There are still plenty of students coming out of college who aren't just looking for stock options."
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