About Pat O’Donnell
If you look at Pat O’Donnell’s resume, it says she was an award-winning marketing executive who later became a career coach, consultant, and recruiter. In practice, what she does these days has not changed much in the last 30 years.
- She uses the skills that she formerly used to sell soap and cell phones to teach people how to find the employers most interested in their skills and how to market themselves to those hiring managers.
- She teaches corporations how to find and engage the employees most capable of furthering the company mission and vision.
Like most of you, Pat has been out of work unexpectedly a couple of times in life. She took a subsequent job out of fear of being out of work and found herself in a couple of jobs that were okay, but she didn’t love them.
Then she took a sabbatical to take care of a family member and used that time to figure out how to improve her job satisfaction rate for the future. Her epiphany was to realize that if she invested a lot more time up front figuring out which were the correct companies and jobs to apply to, she would be a lot happier in the role AND be perceived as more valuable by the company.
She has spent years exploring the process of improving job matches and fine-tuning career strategies with a current employer. She now finds work rewarding in a way she had not imagined possible. She’d love to share that learning with you.
Milestones
- Providing strategic career advice since ‘94.
- Successfully recruiting since ‘94. Recruited marketing, product management, sales, IT, HR, OD, trainers, and writers as market demand evolved.
- Pat now has as many clients who seek her out for coaching while working as those who seek her out while in career transition. Note that most of her long-term clients first met Pat while in transition and realized that a strategic partnership with her was going to be valuable throughout their entire career life cycle.
- Left the McKinley Group, Inc. recruiting firm amicably to go on her own after negotiating for no non-compete constraints.
- Frequent presenter to groups at professional associations and universities on career strategies.
Earlier in her career
- Pat spent 20 years as an executive in the advertising industry career in media/market research, target marketing, and strategic planning. Was VP Saatchi & Saatchi/NY before moving to MN.
- On advertising agency team that made marketing history by growing the Tylenol brand’s business in the year following malicious product tampering (’82).
- Won EFFIE (national marketing award from the American Marketing Association) for advertising plan for BVD Underwear. Her recommendations grew the business approximately 20% in the subsequent year (’84) without incremental budget.
- BA Wheaton College, Norton, MA. Student Member of the Board of Directors two years.
