10 ways to land your next communications job

Trish Shortell, a recruiting executive, once interviewed a job candidate who hailed from the same town in New Jersey where her brother lived.

Shortell asked whether the candidate had ever visited a gourmet shop there which made the world’s best chicken pot pies.

“Ah-ha! A connection!” the eager candidate must have thought.

So she later returned and dropped off six gourmet pies at the front desk—in August, when Shortell was off. A colleague stuck them on a shelf and forgot about them.

You guessed it: In time, a lovely scent filled the office.

“Don’t do things like that,” said Shortell, senior vice president at the global marketing and communications company WPP.

Shortell was part of a panel “Getting Your Next Job” at the International Association of Business Communicators world conference in New York. Apart from the wisdom about avoiding dinner drop-offs, here are some tips from the experts:

1. Pick up the phone