Every recruiter has “the email” — the one you screenshot, the one you forward to a trusted industry friend with zero context except: “Read this. I’m speechless.” Here is mine. And I’m sharing this only to educate, not to embarrass this candidate. I pinky promise — and pinky promises are golden with my daughter. I’ve […]
A Peek Into My Media Recruiting World: The $10 Million TV Sales Candidate Read More »
The local television business is changing faster than many executives want to admit. Consolidation. Acquisitions. Budget compression. Corporate layering. Centralization. Hiring freezes disguised as “strategic pauses.” Department heads are managing two stations, three platforms, four new revenue expectations, and five additional job responsibilities — often without meaningful increases in compensation. And yet, despite all of
The local television industry just made several very strategic leadership moves, and the timing is difficult to ignore. First, Nexstar Media Group announced Elizabeth Ryder as Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary to the Board of Directors — notably, an executive deeply tied to major acquisition and regulatory strategy during Nexstar’s biggest expansion years.
*A Survival Guide for Television Station Leaders, Department Heads & Future GMs* Let’s be honest: most television executives were never actually taught how to negotiate compensation. They learned how to increase ratings, lead teams, grow revenue, manage crises, navigate ownership changes, and hit impossible budgets with shrinking resources. But salary negotiation? Most people are just
Salary Negotiation in Television: Play Chess, Not Checkers Read More »
After 30 years in human resources and recruiting — including running recruiting for a large broadcast group and now spending the last 7 years owning my own media recruiting firm, Carver Talent — I’ve come to one undeniable conclusion: recruiting is less of a profession and more of a front-row seat to the greatest reality
The media industry loves to talk about urgency. Breaking news, quarterly revenue, ratings books, FCC deadlines, digital growth, talent wars — everything moves fast. But when it comes to hiring, some media companies still move like it’s 1997: post a job, wait, pray, interview the same recycled applicants their competitors already passed on, and drag
Yes, I’m old enough to remember when resumes showed up in the mail. And get this — we posted job ads only in the local newspaper. Yikes. Actual newspapers and snail mail. Resumes delivered by the United States Postal Service, to an office, in an envelope, on expensive “executive” resume paper that could double as
Recruiting Used to Be a Profession. Now It’s a Software Filter. Read More »
There are certain phrases in recruiting that sound polished, reasonable, and professionally neutral, and still immediately change the temperature of a conversation. In media recruiting, “mutual parting of the ways” is one of them. To be clear, it is not automatically disqualifying. But it is close enough to a disqualifier in practice that experienced hiring
Stop Saying This in Interviews: “Mutual Parting of the Ways” Read More »
The media industry is one of the smallest “big industries” in America. Television, radio, digital, streaming, sales, engineering, creative, executive leadership — everybody knows somebody who knows somebody. There’s no six degrees of separation here like the Kevin Bacon game. In media, it’s usually one or two phone calls before someone knows your background, work
Media Industry Recruiting: 10 Smart Tips, Tricks, and Career Hacks That Actually Matter Read More »
The media industry loves to talk about innovation — AI-powered workflows, digital transformation, audience engagement, revenue diversification, multi-platform strategy. But let’s ask a less glamorous question: when did hiring become so impersonal? If you talk privately with candidates across broadcast television, digital media, streaming, radio, ad tech, and corporate media groups, there’s a recurring theme
Corporate Recruiting in Media: Efficient or Broken? Read More »
