Why I hired a cab driver for my media department…

…and why the recruitment industry needs a total shake up.

The first time I lived in Mexico (in the 80’s) I was VP and Media Director for McCann-Erickson. We were huge, 350 employees, media alone had 60 people. We bought something like 5% of all the advertising in the country and 9% of all television prime time.

Turnover –at least in media—was a problem.

One day, a guy called Ricardo Escamilla walks into my office accompanied by one of my AMD’s. Ricardo had worked briefly at some ad agency but had been driving a cab for 2 years. He had to earn a living somehow.

I spoke to Ricardo about half an hour. Then I stood up, shook his hand, gave him the typical Mexican embrace (handshake, 3 pats on the back, step back, handshake) and told him he would begin tomorrow as our newest media supervisor.

Here’s why:

1. Cab drivers deal with uncertainty on a daily basis. You wake up, get in your cab and have no clue where the day is going to take you. That is certainly a good trait to have in a media department, where you have no clue what special requests a client will have today.

2. Cab drivers are flexible and used to optimizing on the fly. You are driving down one street when you see a huge jam. What do you do? If you are a professional, you “analyze” all possible courses of action (Do I keep on going? Turn into that street? Do an illegal u-turn?) and take action. If the action doesn’t work… you take another action… until you solve the problem. The willingness to change and the ability to analyze possible actions on the fly is great in media departments. Plans can be altered by negotiations and one needs to put everything back into the strategy sometimes in minutes.

3. Cab drivers are not scared. In my first year in Mexico –on a fateful October 16th—a gang of about 10 people held up McCann (in our old Chapultepec office). I had an Uzi pointed at me about 2 inches from my left eye AND THEN got hit on the head with a gun. I didn’t flinch. And I still remember the day. Dude… cab drivers see that on a weekly basis! The ability to keep calm while clients or bosses yell at you (it happens) is key.

4. Good cab drivers understand hard work. If they don’t work, they don’t eat. If they don’t work hard, they don’t make enough money to save.

5. Finally, good cab drivers understand customer service. One word: Tips.

Honestly, Ricardo was not the super-duper role model to end all role models.

For one, he would regularly show up at 9:00 am, straight out of his cab, still wearing his gun and he couldn’t spell “that good”.

Today, your headhunter or HR director would probably not even call him, much less give you his resume as a viable candidate. Yet, he became Associate Media Director at McCann and when I left, went on to become Media Director at Saatchi & Saatchi and beyond.

Today, many headhunters have frankly turned into entitled demi-gods who obsess about whether or not every single word in your resume is crisp and spelled right or “you will never work in this town again”. Job descriptions are 2 page long and basically require an entry level candidate to be able to pilot a 787 or build an entire computer using paper clips.

My advice: focus.

Focus on what is important:

1. Which 3 to 5 skills does the candidate have to bring to add value to your clients? Not 52 bullet points. Three to five.
2. Will the person fit the culture? At McCann a gun-toting cab driver fit right in.
3. Will the person have your back?
4. Does the person show a burning desire to do better?

And here’s the challenge if you’ve read this far. I would love to work with a recruitment company that is applying AI –seriously applying AI—to improve recruitment, find the hidden gems, and improve people’s lives.

That would be a labor of love.