Maverick Indonesia

The Boot Camp Story

How can you tell if an organization is serious about developing its employees? For consultancies like Maverick, people is a tremendously important asset for the company. Consultancy is a people business, and the growth of a company is significantly determined by the quality of its people.

At Maverick, we consider developing our employees a priority. Earlier this year we launched a ‘training passport’, which essentially consists of compulsory training materials for all of our consultants. These training materials are divided into periods, i.e. for entry-level consultants, they are required to undertake twelve training sessions in the first three months of joining Maverick.

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Click of the Week #36: Irawan Santoso

“Not just an ordinary journalist, but one who comprehends the law,” wrote Irawan Santoso describing himself in a nutshell. How true!

His last post was on Themis, the Goddess of Justice, whom he said was respected by the big guys in the Indonesian law sector from the likes of lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution to Supreme Court Chief Justice Bagir Manan.

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Our Newest Mavericks

Aditya, Sharon, and Ney

Maverick is starting 2008 with three new associates that will strengthen the eclectic mix of talents in our office.

First to usher in the new year with us is Sharon Issabella Atmadja, a honors graduate in Communication Studies from The London School of Public Relations. “It has been my long-time dream to work in a PR firm, so hopefully this will be the beginning a meaningful journey,” says Sharon. Sharon was a PR officer in ASCOMAXX, an automotive magazine, before joining Maverick.

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Maverick wants Mavericks

In our 5th year of operations, Maverick has grown immensely from a staff strength of six to 38. We have been operationally profitable from launch and are now more ready than ever to expedite our business growth.

We currently have an opening for two junior-level consultants (fresh graduates or those between entry level and three years of working experience). We like book smarts, but we are more interested in hiring street smarts. It’s an advantage to have experiences working in PR, but we also like to work with young people with knowledge, lots of energy, drive and a can-do attitude.

Why should you consider working in Maverick? Because we are unorthodox and enjoy taking on unconventional challenges. Merely executing conventional PR practices well isn’t enough to keep us happy. For a relatively young firm, we have been able to implement innovative practices that even more established firms can only talk about. We were, for instance, one of the first companies in Indonesia to start a corporate blog and built a web-based media monitoring service that enables clients to measure their PR output and share of voice in editorial space. We have also been championing Corporate Social Leadership instead of Corporate Social Responsibility for both our clients and ourselves.

So if you think you’ve got what it takes to be a Maverick, send in your resumes and a cover note to maverick@maverick.co.id.

Short-listed candidates will be called for an interview.

Children helping children

I know some parents who prefer to celebrate their children’s birthday in an orphanage. When asked, these parents said that they have the best intentions to teach their children to love other people, share happiness with their friends, and also be grateful of what they have.

Ask your children to participate in this fundraising activity and tell them that they are also capable of making a difference to other children’s lives.

If you don’t have any children, I’d appreciate if you could pass this message to your circle of friends…

PR Practitioners in Indo: A Sad Case?

An article published yesterday in Bisnis Indonesia stated the urgency for PR practitioners in Indonesia to increase their competencies. As somebody who’s making a living from being a PR hack, this article without doubt caught my attention.

Ex-PR of Pertamina Ridwan Nyak Baik, as quoted in Bisnis, said that in Indonesia “there has got to be a strong effort to increase the competency and professionalism of PR practitioners to counter the attack of foreign workers”.

Fair enough, but please tell me something new. With the increasingly open job markets, practically everybody face similar obstacles.

What I found quite disturbing in the article was when Ridwan quoted a report from the National Profession Certification Body (Badan Nasional Sertifikasi Profesi) which basically was saying that currently there were 1,000 PR practitioners in Indonesia, in which four of them were categorized as experts, 39 possessed mid-level skills, and 957 had no skills at all.

Questions were popping out of the confused tiny little brain of mine:

1. I know that some Indon PR practitioners hold international certifications, but as far as I know (and please correct me if I’m wrong), there is no certification system available for PR practitioners in Indonesia. Where did the numbers in the report come from?

2. How did the report define experts, mid-level practitioners, and zero skills practitioners (why even bother calling someone a practitioner if he/she possesses no skills whatsoever)?

3. When did the national body issue the report? It amazed me how Bisnis Indonesia could bluntly quoted Ridwan without even bother to include the year and title of the report. So much for being a “trusted business reference”…

I have a strong interest in the development of PR practice in Indonesia. And shall the report is accurate, it is definitely a sad case for all PR practitioners in this country. Anybody out there know the answer to my questions? I’d also be interested to hear from you on how PR practitioners could advance themselves.

“They’d call me a dirty old man…”

My lazy Sunday brunch with a few friends was turned into a heated discussion over an article published on yesterday’s The Jakarta Post (29/04) titled “More sex please, we’re British”. Read the complete article here.

I have nothing against interracial/multinational marriages, but I’m personally sickened by the insensitive and ruthless comments given by Sheldon Archer as follows:

“Let’s face it; every middle-aged man has a fantasy of making it with a young girl – just ask Bill Clinton. Here in Indonesia fantasy can become fact.” You don’t take this as a compliment, really.

“I married a child.” Yuck.

“I had to become a Muslim to marry. I just mumbled a few words I didn’t understand. I’m not religious and Yuyun isn’t serious about religion.” This is what I meant by insensitive and ruthless.

And here’s a gem…

“There’s a bit of hero worship. They like white skin.” As one of my friends put it, “I’m jumping up and down with fervent-hero-worship joy.”

I’m writing an email to Srikandi, a non-profit organization in Indonesia for local women who are married – or were married – to foreigners, to ask their views about this. Will keep you posted when I hear from them.

Update 1 May: Srikandi is currently developing a written statement outlining their views about this article. They are not too happy though… A representative from Srikandi was replying to my email saying that “the article is truly degrading Indonesian women”.

In the article, Sheldon also said that people would call him “a dirty old man” back in his hometown, Sheffield. What would you call him here? But before you answer, please also visit this website to get a better sense of the sort of business he’s running.

Light in a dark tunnel

Despite the low quality of the Indonesian media houses, as mentioned by S. Leo Batubara of the Press Council here, Dewi magazine recently won a silver award for the Best in Design category during the 6th Asia Media Awards 2007 held in Manila.

The event is organized by Ifra, a leading association for newspaper and media publishing, and is aimed to “acknowledge excellence among individuals and organizations that have embraced new technology, innovative thinking and creativity in the Asian region”.

Well done, Dewi. Hope that your achievement will soon be followed by others.