The Story

It’s no secret that the banking industry is not known for excitement. I think it could be–it should be, maybe–but it’s not.

A brief conversation around the office today made me realize it even more.

So we’re hiring for a graphic designer. We simply posted the job description on craigslist–big here in Portland (and most other places with electricity). I made the bold prediction we’d get 10 responses within 3 hours.

Turns out I was wrong.

We had 25.

And 70 within 2 days.

But that’s not the interesting part. This is not a post about how amazing craigslist is.
I was chatting with Jesse, who mentioned that when he was at Umpqua Bank, they were also looking for a designer. They posted, he thinks, on Monster.com, and not craigslist (probably a mistake, in my opinion, but that’s another post). He told me it was a couple weeks before they had even a few candidates to review.

Why the slow response? We think we know. We think it’s…

…the word “bank.” What kind of cool, new-economy hip graphic designer–the ones who will do the great, envelope-pushing work–want to work at a bank? Well, turns out apparently they don’t. Can you blame them? As far as a graphic designer is concerned, banks are where great design careers go to die. Nothing hotter than a portfolio full of privacy notices and statement stuffers, right?
I think that’s too bad. I think there’s an opportunity for banking to be cool, exciting, and full of innovation. But until we get everyone proving that story, well, the industry will remain largely stuck in the past decades.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Other, Bank Branding, Credit Union Branding, Rants, Bank Marketing, Credit Union Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.