Jules Melbye is leading direct placement services to clients and senior-level marketing talent as the newly hired director of executive search for Antenna, a Minneapolis-based marketing consultancy.
The hiring of Melbye, who has more than a decade of experience in executive search, and the addition of the expanded service offering rounds out Antenna's portfolio of full- and part-time consulting services, interim marketing leadership and staff augmentation.
Melbye has worked in executive search with the former McKinley Group and in SkyWater Search Partners' sales and marketing practice group. Her experience also includes corporate recruiting at IBM.
"I love being a networker and connector with people so that they can find work that they love," Melbye said.
Antenna, founded in 2006, offers "marketers on demand" to companies of all sizes. Antenna has 18 internal corporate staffers and 80 consultants. The company offers benefits and personal development and has served close to 100 clients in recent years including 3M, Medtronic, HealthPartners and Radisson.
Antenna works across marketing disciplines, including growth strategy, innovation, product marketing, branding, digital marketing, communications and market research, Melbye said. The company describes itself as "built by marketers for marketers" with founder Brendon Schrader and other key leaders having worked extensively in marketing.
Q: Why should a potential client or candidate work with Antenna?
A: There's such a need with the talent market being so tight now. Antenna is clearly the leader in the marketing space. No one else is at the center of the marketing community and has the unique service offerings that Antenna does. There is a white space in here. I'm in this space because there's no one clear person who owns it.
Q: What's affecting marketing staffing besides the tight labor market?
A: There's a big buzz around the gig economy now. A lot of millennials are going into gig types of positions. A lot of the 50-plus have had great experience at major corporations and now want to give back in a consultative way. As they move between contracting, consulting and full-time roles, it creates challenges for the corporations to find and engage the right type of talent.
Q: What appealed to you about this opportunity?
A: Once I figured out that I wanted to go back into executive search, the clear choice was Antenna because they offer all of these other services. We're building a one-stop shop so no matter what the client needs I have more of a suite of offerings.
