MEET THE ADVERTISING TEAM
In our last installment of “Getting to Know…” we join our all-star foursome — Elizabeth Beasley, Sarah Cayson, Carrie Crawford, and Adriane Lilly — to learn more about this incredible team of individuals and their work at HQO.
Tell us about your roles here at HQO:
Sarah: Elizabeth, Carrie and I -- Account Managers -- are the primary point of contact for clients/ law firms/ employers and the bridge between them and the media outlets. It is our job to be very detail-oriented in proofing and reviewing while also being time-efficient. We’re here to make life easier for our clients.
Adriane: My position as Data Manager mainly supports the ads team. This includes intake of new orders, uniform data entry, and researching ways to streamline project management. Having been both an ad manager and billing specialist in the past, I am able to ask myself “what made me super frustrated in that role and what kind of help would I have wanted?” I’m also good at telling bad jokes and oversharing the details of my family life with three kids.
My goal is to allow the Ad Managers to focus on providing high quality customer service even with a growing ad volume by enacting automation and providing an extra set of eyes and hands for the more tedious and repetitive but highly significant tasks involved with PERM advertising.
Elizabeth: Adriane also provides support for the Smartsheet application we use for all the tasks that are required to take the ad placement from start to finish.
Carrie: Elizabeth & Sarah accurately summed up the Ad Manager position. I’d like to add that Adriane’s role has allowed us to become more uniform and efficient in our processes.
How do you feel HQO bridges the gap between employers and people seeking citizenship?
Carrie: That's a complicated question, and I'll do my best to answer succinctly. In employment-based immigration, PERM is typically the first of three steps to obtain permanent resident status (a green card). This process can take up to 10 years or longer, depending on the foreign national's country of birth. After receiving the green card, a permanent resident is required to wait five years before applying for naturalization. In other words, if obtaining U.S. citizenship is a marathon, and we're only privy to the first mile.
Adriane: In addition to a substantial financial investment from an employer and the integrity of a law firm, a recruitment ad represents a person and their immigration journey. When something goes wrong, it’s not simply a missed deadline or a typo. It can mean roadblocks for someone’s access to a green card.
What value does HQO Advertising bring to the PERM process?
Adriane: We save the law firm time and money in at least two ways:
1) We get those agency rates, which allows the client to advertise at little to no added cost.
2) We aren’t billable. If it takes three hours to research a tiny town where it seems that no one has read a newspaper in the last seven decades to find the right supplemental recruitment, that’s time we spend so the legal team doesn’t have to. And we smooth over the wrinkles in the process -- like explaining to a rep why a barely legible faxed copy of a crinkled up classified page with a mystery stain over the top corner simply isn’t going to work. That’s the behind the scenes stuff we handle.
Tell us a little about your background.
Elizabeth: I was born in Virginia and raised in Florida and southeast Georgia. I graduated from the Savannah College of Art & Design with a BFA in Graphic Design and worked for several years as an art director in the advertising field. For a season I worked with my husband and father-in-law running our construction company while also raising our two sons. I began working with HQO about 8 years ago which gave me a lot of flexibility and allows me to continue to do freelance design on the side.
Adriane: I’m an Atlanta native. I graduated from UGA with my BA in English. I started my professional career as an immigration paralegal with a large firm full of wonderful people. Having my first child made the long hours impossible, and I had to make a career change. I also went back to school at Georgia State and took lots of graduate classes in English with a focus on Southern Literature. It was amazing, and I loved (almost) every second of it. As I started my thesis, I realized how difficult a future in higher education would be as a mom. Luckily, I still had some connections from my paralegal days, and this led me to HQO. I’ve been working with them for six years.
Sarah: I was raised in North Mississippi. I earned my BA in Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi then worked for several years in radio advertising, which included business to business sales, ad copy writing, etc. That experience is what lead to applying at HQO - because I had the advertising background. Discovering a work from home position was a nice surprise. I’m so grateful for this opportunity, and I’ve grown so much since starting here..
Carrie: I grew up in Augusta, Georgia. After completing my bachelor's degree at Mercer University, I wasn’t quite sure what career path I wanted to pursue. I applied for an immigration paralegal position at Paul Hastings LLP in Atlanta and got the job! During my time there, I became fascinated with the immigration process, and eventually went to graduate school to study American immigration history. I have two Master's degrees (Georgetown, 2010; and Emory University, 2016).
Adriane: Carrie and I worked together at Paul Hastings.
How does your background and experience inform your work at HQO?
Elizabeth: As a designer, I am trained to value details, which is an advantage in my job since there are many fine points to handle with each job placement.
Adriane: As a paralegal, I worked with people in the green card process on a very personal level. I helped them document their entire immigration history. I researched birth documents and visa types and hunted down tiny passport stamps. I loved the research and the attention to detail, but even more pertinent, I learned the vital importance of documentation when it comes to the immigration process.
Sarah: My background in radio sales and advertising helps me to relate to the media contacts we interact with every day -- I can see things from their perspective. It’s helpful having an idea of what they need to be sure we move through the process as seamlessly as possible.
You all work remotely, and across different states, what’s that like and how do you stay connected?
Elizabeth: We use Google Hangouts to share information with each other concerning placements of ads, market research, etc.
Sarah: Yes! It’s a central place to brainstorm and take care of issues.
Carrie: Yes—I agree. Our regular “hangouts” are key to maintaining a great work relationship. We also chat over the phone and have monthly video meetings.
What are the challenges you face in your work?
Sarah: Attention to detail is important to ensure we don’t miss anything. However, the most challenging things are what we don’t have control over - like ads that don’t run when or how they're supposed to.
Carrie: Yes--Sarah's right. PERM recruitment is a delicate process; even the smallest mistakes -- omission of a word or missing punctuation in an ad -- can have serious consequences. We do our best to ensure everything runs correctly, but errors do occur, and when they're outside of our control, it can be quite frustrating!
Elizabeth: Working from home I have to be deliberate to get out of the house a couple of times a week to maybe work remotely from a coffee shop or go to lunch with a friend. You don’t want to become isolated.
Adriane: The biggest challenge is managing an unpredictable workflow. Some days only three ads might trickle in. The next day might include ten orders in the first hour.
Carrie: Yes -- telecommuting has many advantages, but it's easy to overdo the work hours if you're not careful.
What do you like most about your job?
Elizabeth: The women that I work with and the flexibility that working remotely provides.
Carrie: I like to work in my pajamas.
Adriane: I like being able to suggest changes or new directions and feel like I have a boss who is responsive to that and open to discussion.
Sarah: It's hard to pinpoint one thing because I really love this job! I’m able to work from home but still have a community bond with my coworkers. It’s a rare and great thing to work with such a supportive group of people and make friendships, all while being able to take care of our families.
We think it’s pretty obvious that our team is made up of exactly the right people to serve our niche market, and we hope it’s apparent in our service to our clients. With our respective backgrounds and experiences, we are able to meet your expectations and even anticipate them more often than not. More than anything else, we strive to make our clients’ lives easier. We hope you enjoyed learning more about us and you are now patting yourself on the back for choosing such a solid team to handle your PERM advertising needs. Good job, you!
Thank you for joining us for our third segment of “Getting to Know HQO.” Let us know if there are more things you’d like to hear about in our upcoming discussions - we’d love to hear from you!
Collaborative work by the HQO Advertising, LLC team.