Meet Ava Wirtz – Sales & Marketing Support Specialist

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

Introducing Ava Wirtz, our Sales & Marketing Support Specialist at Buyer. Read her reflections and experiences after joining the Marketing and Partnerships team.

We are excited to announce the newest member of our Marketing and Partnership team, Ava! As our Sales and Marketing Support Specialist, Ava adds magnificent value and has a kind and delightful spirit, greatly supporting our overall efforts.

Ava is known for her helpful, collaborative, and supportive nature. She consistently goes above and beyond to contribute to the team’s success. Her research insights and methodical approaches undoubtedly drive our sales and marketing initiatives forward.

We asked Ava some questions after a few months of being on the team, and this is what she had to say:

Tell us about your background and what sparked your career journey.

“I graduated from James Madison University in May 2024 with a degree in Media Arts and Design, concentrating in Creative Advertising, and a minor in Human Resources Development. During my senior year, I gained hands-on experience as a social media intern, and after graduation, I completed a summer internship at a marketing consulting firm in Boston. These experiences, combined with my interests, motivated me to pursue a career that would allow me to leverage my background, ultimately leading me to Buyer Advertising.”

How would you describe your experience working at Buyer Advertising?

“My first few months have been fantastic. My team is incredibly collaborative, and I’m enjoying the opportunity to learn more about the various strategic solutions here at Buyer. I’m excited to see how the research I conduct moves through the process from start to finish and contributes to supporting my team. It’s been incredibly motivating to work at an agency with individuals who are both highly knowledgeable and deeply passionate about their work.”

What are a few personal tidbits about yourself you’d like to share?

“I grew up in Medfield, MA, just around the corner from our office in Needham. Family and friends are incredibly important to me. I love traveling, especially when it means visiting my college roommates, as we now all live in different states. I always look forward to catching up with them up and down the East Coast. I also enjoy spending time outdoors, especially when the weather is warm—whether it’s spending time at the beach or taking my Maltipoo for a walk.”

Please join us in extending a very warm welcome to Ava! We are thrilled to have her on our team and look forward to her continued positive impact.

Employee Referral Programs – An Oldie but Goodie.

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Why Do So Many Recruiters Ignore Friends and Family?

My very first job post-graduation came about from an employee referral. My friend called me up a week or two out of school and asked me what I was up to. Since I had a freshly minted English degree from a state school, I promptly replied, “Nothing” and the rest is history. I got a job through a referral.

Seems like a no brainer, but I can tell you very few companies invest in Employee Referral Programs like they should. I hear the same excuses; employees should already be referring, or it’s too complicated to track across various locations, or getting the program synchronized with HRIS is a nightmare, and the list goes on. Regardless of the perceived obstacle, there is no greater recruitment tactic with a better ROI than a well-executed Employee Referral Program.

Studies show that organizations that use Employee Referral Programs have average retention rates close to 50% and can save companies thousands of dollars per hire. Employee Referrals tap into an exclusive talent source – your people who, when properly motivated, become sales sharks, separating your jobs from the competition. In fact, a Harvard Business Review conducted a study that found 70% of “Better Candidates” were acquired from referrals.

As a bonus, Employee Referral Programs test the strength of your Employer Brand. The candidates your employees refer are typically those they see as a good fit for the organization. And an employee’s view of your culture provides valuable feedback and allows you to adjust or re-evaluate your branding efforts accordingly.

Simply asking employees to hit the streets and recruit is not enough. There are proven methodologies, incentives, technologies, promotions, and tricks of the trade that will ensure your success. And you guessed it, we’re here to help. Contact Buyer Advertising today to learn more about our unique approach to executing a successful Employee Referral Program. I may not be your friend, or your family, but you can trust the guy who started his career with the help of a referral.

Joel Glick
Managing Partner
Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates to you. We cultivate unique Employer Brands, and our industry-leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the entire hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service.

A Good Agency Services What They Sell.

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No Ticket Required

Tickets can be good, like tickets to the playoffs – go Celtics, or tickets to a new theme park, Universal’s Epic Universe, here I come. And tickets can be bad, like “I didn’t think I was driving that fast, officer?” ticket, or how many high school raffle tickets do I have to buy so I don’t look cheap even though my kids graduated years ago? And then there’s the worst kind of ticket, SaaS support tickets.

Modern technology is great, but we all know it will eventually break, and when it does, dealing with an anonymous support center that requires you to create a ticket to resolve your issue is no bueno. You have no relationship with these automatons, and they seldom have personal insight into your unique situation. You just submit your request to fix your problem and hope you hear back before your boss asks why the career site has a frowny face on the browser screen.

At Buyer Advertising, we don’t make our clients deal with the bad kind of tickets. If there is ever an issue with any part of your media recommendations or tech stack, our clients just e-mail, call, or text any one of us, and we get to fixing the problem immediately. It doesn’t matter if it’s our proprietary software, Talent Engine, or a third-party software or job board, we support everything we sell because our clients deserve it.

If you hate tickets as much as I do, unless it’s two tickets to paradise, contact us today to learn more about our recruitment solutions supported by dedicated people who can turn any frown upside down.

Joel Glick
Managing Partner
Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates to you. We cultivate unique Employer Brands, and our industry-leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the entire hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service.

How Well Do You Know Your Target Audience?

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“Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica”

For all the fans of the TV show The Office, I’m sure you remember the episode when Jim made fun of Dwight by emulating him for the first few minutes of the show. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then please stop reading this blog and come back after you’ve watched season 3, Episode 21.

OK, for the rest of us cultured TV consumers, let’s continue. In that episode, Jim transformed himself into Dwight with a pair of four-dollar glasses and by mimicking Dwight’s appearance, mannerisms, speech patterns, and characteristics.

Although Jim used his knowledge of Dwight to mock him, he also inadvertently utilized an effective advertising practice called Persona development while reciting one of the most memorable quotes in recent TV history.

Luckily, in our world of Employer Branding, we don’t use Personas to drive our office mates mad. We use Personas to ensure our clients’ Employer Value Proposition uniquely appeals to their target audiences. We also use Personas to personalize hiring processes for diverse types of candidates like seasoned RNs or newly minted physicians.

A lot goes into creating an effective Persona beyond combing your hair forward and donning a mustard-colored shirt. There’s conducting research, identifying patterns, creating detailed profiles, naming the Personas, and finally testing and refining the work. That’s why you need the proven leader in Employer Branding, Buyer Advertising, to help you navigate this creative process so you can be a winner like Jim.

Fact: If you know what kind of bear is best, but still not sure if Personas should be part of your next Employer Branding strategy, then contact Buyer Advertising today because bears eat beets and Buyer builds brands.

Joel Glick
Managing Partner
Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates to you. We cultivate unique Employer Brands, and our industry-leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the entire hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service.

Your Agency Should Be Protecting You

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“You want us on that wall. You need us on that wall.” 

I may be dating myself, but do you remember that movie, A Few Good Men, when Col. Jessup, portrayed by Jack Nicholson, blurted that line out in a fit of rage? He was right. We all need resolute people to protect us from harm. Of course, he then went on to admit to ordering an inadvertent murder, but I digress.

Now, in no way would I compare what we do in recruitment communications with the important work of our US military and law enforcement, but in our little world of recruiting, I think one of the most important jobs of Buyer Advertising is to protect our clients from unscrupulous salespeople.

We see it all the time. A direct sales rep hammers an unsuspecting recruiter under the cloak of “providing consultative best practices” and then long story short, the final recommendation is to simply spend more money. Or my other favorite is when the salesperson pitches locking up a customer for years on end with the promise of saving money, which seldom works.

Ask any job board how to achieve better results, and the answer will always be the same: “SPEND MORE MONEY.”  So don’t do that. Arm yourself with a proven recruitment marketing agency, and let us protect you from getting oversold. We do this for a living. We know best how to spend your budget to achieve optimal results. We have the skills to negotiate the best deal on your behalf, and we are gluttons for punishment. It comes with the job like a doorman behind the velvet rope. No one gets in unless we think it’s in your best interest or they are good looking – just kidding.

Talk to us today to learn more. We’ve got protective agency people ready to block those time-killing salespeople so you can focus more on what matters most: hiring.

Joel Glick
Managing Partner
Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates to you. We cultivate unique Employer Brands, and our industry-leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the entire hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service.

Diversity Matters

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Does Your Agency Have a Diverse Mindset?

Diversity matters in all aspects of life including recruitment marketing. The other day, we had a performance meeting with one of the largest job boards on the planet and they revealed an interesting stat about our purchasing history with them.

After analyzing the buying habits of their top recruitment marketing agencies, this job board revealed that Buyer Advertising was number one in consistently purchasing the most diverse collection of products offered by this board on behalf of our clients. That means while most agencies were concentrating their clients’ dollars primarily on traditional job postings, Buyer Advertising was consistently spending our clients’ dollars across all product offerings casting a wider net and increasing candidate results.

Why do this when it must have been easier to take a client’s money and to simply dump it into one product? Well in advertising, like life, diversity is good, and our metrics show that diverse media buying significantly achieves better results.

At Buyer Advertising, our philosophy has always been to develop, uncover and utilize the most diverse combination of recruiting solutions to create the most efficient way to connect our clients with quality candidates. So, if you think being ranked the best in product diversification within a single job board is impressive, just imagine what we do beyond that.

Ask around (not our competitors, they lie 😊), and you’ll hear Buyer Advertising has always been an early adopter of diverse and emerging recruiting solutions from Job SEO, Programmatic Media Buying and Track-to-Quality Metrics to Virtual Recruiting Assistants,  Behavioral Display Advertising, and AI-Powered Sourcing and Screening.

Our commitment to diverse recruiting strategies is an integral part of our agency culture, but what else would you expect from the agency with the half Irish, half Chinese, Jewish guy from the suburbs of Boston. Contact us today to learn how Buyer Advertising can infuse the power of diversity into your recruiting efforts.

Joel Glick
Managing Partner
Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates to you. We cultivate unique Employer Brands, and our industry-leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the entire hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service.

Meet Taylor LaCasse – Relationship Development Associate

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Introducing Taylor LaCasse, our Relationship Development Associate at Buyer. Read her reflections and experiences after joining the Marketing and Partnerships team.

Taylor recently joined our Marketing and Partnerships team as a Relationship Development Associate at Buyer. Taylor brings unique knowledge as someone who has worked in healthcare Talent Acquisition and understands the nuances and challenges TA faces today. With a genuine passion and care for helping others, Taylor’s commitment to fostering meaningful relationships aligns perfectly with our team’s mission. We are confident that her skills and insights will help us continue to grow and strengthen our partnerships across the industry.

We asked Taylor some questions after a few months of being on the team, and this is what she had to say:

What led you to where you are today in your career?

“I graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Science in Health Management and Policy, focusing on Public Health, and a minor in Psychology. While my background is in public health, my career began in healthcare recruiting, ultimately leading me to recruitment advertising and marketing. This journey sparked my passion for helping companies attract top talent through strategy and creativity. My foundation in healthcare and psychology has shaped my approach, allowing me to build strong relationships and bring a unique perspective to recruitment marketing.”

How was your job search experience, and what ultimately led you to Buyer Advertising?

“It was underwhelming, with antiquated application processes and lack of communication from employers. As a healthcare recruiter, I saw these talent acquisition challenges firsthand. While I enjoyed the fast pace, I grew more interested in solving recruitment issues from a broader perspective. This led me to Buyer Advertising, where I now use my recruiting experience to help HR and TA professionals improve their strategies for lasting success.”

Now that you’ve been in your role for a few months, how has it been working at Buyer?

“My first few months at Buyer Advertising have been an exciting learning experience, filled with opportunities to explore employer branding, campaign strategy, and creative ways to connect companies with talent. I value how Buyer encourages new ideas and growth. It’s rewarding to consistently help clients enhance their candidate experience, build stronger employer brands, and achieve long-term success with data-driven strategies that improve pipelines and reduce costs.”

What are a few personal tidbits about yourself you’d like to share?

“Outside of work, I love staying active—whether taking Pilates classes with friends or going for long walks around my neighborhood in South Boston. My favorite place in the world is my beach house in Scituate, Massachusetts. It’s where I’ve made some of my best childhood and adult memories with my family.

Family and relationships are at the core of who I am, which also translates into my professional life. Growing up in a large Italian family, I’ve always valued strong connections, meaningful conversations, and quality time with loved ones. Sharing meals and experiences has always been a big part of my life, which is why I love exploring new restaurants. In my current role, I bridge my innate passion for building authentic connections, understanding people’s needs, and helping them find the best solutions.”

Please join us in welcoming Taylor to the team! We look forward to seeing her contribute to our collective success and are excited about the fresh perspectives she will bring.

It’s Expensive to Build an Employer Brand, Right?

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“Yep, It’s Made with Bits of Real Panther So You Know It’s Good.”

Many of us fall victim to perception versus reality, equating high cost with high quality. We cling to this belief as we ignore examples to the contrary, like an expensive Rib Eye that was tougher than expected, or a luxury car that left us stranded, or that “must have” designer handbag with the frayed edges after just six months. When expensive things go bad, we often brush it off instead of learning from the experience because hey, expensive still means quality, right?

When it comes to advertising, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You don’t need to spend big money to create a great Employer Brand. I know this because I’ve been creating Employer Brands for more than 30 years, and I can honestly tell you that cost is not indicative of creativity, or authenticity for that matter.

If you’ve recently shopped Employer Brand development with a recruitment marketing agency or one of those new employer branding firms, usually from overseas, you may have noticed that the quotes can get up there, typically in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Furthermore, many of those firms promote rigid processes that rely on multiple layers of qualitative and quantitative research, and they tell you that if you don’t follow this proven methodology, you are doomed to fail.

This one-size-fits-all creative approach is simply not true. Don’t get me wrong, if you insist on going cheap, your brand will be unoriginal or uninspiring at best. However, if you allocate a respectable budget (it’s less than you might think) for a creative team to do what they do best, and arm them with the necessary insight, a good ad agency will be able to produce an authentic Employer Brand at a reasonable price.

The truth is the success of your new Employer Brand relies on the creativity of your partner agency and the information you give them. That means we need you to share as much as you can about your goals, brand pillars, target audience personas, brand standards, and above all, your Unique Selling Proposition (we can only make up so much😊). This may sound like a lot, but here’s where it gets interesting.

It’s our experience that most of our clients already possess a large degree of this information and if you know the right questions to ask, you’re halfway there. That saves you money because most of the expense in Employer Brand development is tied to the amount of research required to fill in the blanks, and to hedge your bets you guessed right.

So, if you appreciate the finer things in life like Brian Fantana from “Anchorman,” but now don’t feel compelled to overspend on your new Employer Brand, increase your odds of success from 60% to 100%, every time with Buyer Advertising, for less than you might think.

Joel Glick
Managing Partner
Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates to you. We cultivate unique Employer Brands, and our industry-leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the entire hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service.

Effective Source Analytics

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

What is Good?

That is the first question we often ask a new client during the Honeymoon phase. After listening to answers ranging from dark chocolate and long walks on the beach to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and puppy Sploots, we share a laugh, often debate, and then clarify the question: what is a “Good” candidate?

In our industry, there is no greater question to ask a client because the answer will determine how we measure our success together. If your recruiting partner neglects to discuss the definition of source effectiveness, then I’d start asking some tougher questions.

Just like in kindergarten, there are no wrong answers. Some clients think it’s all about the hires, while others give credit to simply passing first-round screener questions. The reality is, classifying a candidate as “Good” is often an aggregate of multiple disposition statuses in your hiring funnel.

From our perspective, since there are numerous variables that affect the actual hiring of a candidate, certainly beyond the control of today’s online sources, including time, benefits, cultural fit, or even a moody hiring manager, it’s best to focus on multiple indicators to judge source ROI.

This can get complicated as your agency must know how to track, collect, combine, analyze, and report on a combination of sources and down-funnel data to be an asset to your organization. Without this level of granularity, you are simply spending money indiscriminately, and no one wants that except for the job boards.

At Buyer Advertising, we will never assume what “Good” means to you. If we did, then we’d be bad at our jobs. Want to know more about our unique approach to source analytics or simply curious about puppy Sploots? Contact us today. We’ve got some questions for you too.

Joel Glick
Managing Partner
Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates to you. We cultivate unique Employer Brands, and our industry-leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the entire hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service.

The Power of the Ad Agency Relationship

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Seeking a New Relationship?

I was talking to a client the other day about the power of relationships, and she shared a funny anecdote. She said she once worked for a large ad agency in NY and had a boss who told her that the client/agency bond should be so strong that if your client ever wound up in jail, you should be the first person they call for help. Now, obviously, this is an extreme and humorous example of the importance of relationship building in support of our client’s success, but the sentiment of the story is 100% accurate.

In today’s day of what seems like endless agencies morphing into self-serve, cloud-based SaaS vendors, take heart that a few of us in the business still believe in the importance of serving our clients with insight, expertise, urgency, compassion, and above all else friendship, as we help them succeed.

Why Partner with Us:

  • A dedicated agency that becomes an extension of your team
  • An experienced partner with a history of supporting similar clients
  • Experts in optimizing recruiting processes and technology
  • A resource to recommend, set up, and optimize your tech stack
  • A media-agnostic partner that removes the guesswork from advertising
  • A trusted partner to devise hiring strategies based on goals, time, and budget
  • Experts in Employer Brand development
  • A conduit to stay up to date on recruitment trends
  • A resource for supply, demand, and relocation data
  • An advocate to negotiate on your behalf
  • A support team that services media, technology, and integrations
  • A safeguard against investing in underperforming solutions
  • An advocate that improves ROI with analytics
  • A wall between you and aggressive third-party marketers
  • A financial resource to simplify and consolidate billing
  • And a…trusted friend

So, if you seek a true partner who still believes in the power of relationships and the importance of holistically helping clients win, regardless of the challenge, contact Buyer Advertising today. And if you need help getting out of jail, too, don’t worry; I know a guy.

Joel Glick
Managing Partner
Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates to you. We cultivate unique Employer Brands and our industry leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the entire hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service.