Thunderclap | Advertising and Marketing Recruiter

When you bring business development strategies to recruiting, it's the perfect storm for success.

Advice & Thought Starters

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Recruiters, find agency talent through marketplace triggers

Howdy! The other day I wrote about how account changes and other marketplace triggers can help agency job-seekers find their next great gig. This should go without saying, but many of those same triggers apply to advertising agency recruiters as your shop looks for its next leader.

< head nod >

I know. That isn’t particularly brilliant, right, as it relates to filling your vacancies and lowering your time to fill. So, in my own humble attempt to help, here are three quick thoughts that dig a little deeper into triggers and go beyond recruiting basics…

Let’s take a look at just one common marketplace change: a competitive agency losing a piece of business. Recruiting 101 suggests you may want to target folks at that agency. However, there are a few nuances to that idea.

Leverage the client side staff change as an agency recruiter

Take advantage of the step before the loss. A new CMO, VP or director of marketing usually means the agency who has that business will probably lose it in the future. To me, this client-side change is more valuable to an ad agency recruiter than reading on Adweek that someone has lost business. Because it gives you more time to build relationships with great candidates and potential agency hires at the shop which currently has the business. You also gain the advantage of potentially being first to reach out to a candidate.

Share the client side change with your own agency’s new business team

This is a great way for HR and talent recruiters to add value to an agency. While it’s easy to think your new business guys are on it, there’s a lot for them to keep track of. They might have missed this news. It’s also a smart way to help your agency.

It never hurts to have more people looking for more pitch opportunities. And if your agency is a good fit for the business…someone else will read in Adweek about YOUR shop winning something.

Target the talent the agency keeps after a layoff

Layoffs happen as a result of lost revenue. Unfortunately, we’ve all been there. Good people get put out on the street. But if the agency perceives that someone on their team is really exceptional, they’ll do everything they can to keep him or her. This means re-assignment to an existing business. Or perhaps a short stint in new business. Identifying these people is not easy. But with some savvy detective work using you and your agency’s network it can be done.

Anywho, hope this helps. And if you’d like to chat, give me a shout. Thanks!

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Two other relevant posts

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Find a new agency or client-side job through job triggers

Hello there, job seeker. No doubt about it. Places like LinkedIN are terrific places for online job listings. But what about the step that happens BEFORE a job is posted? You know, the thing that triggers the employer’s need to fill a position. The thing that gets the ad agency recruiter or client side HR involved and looking for great talent?

What’s the reason the job exists? Here’s a quick look at common triggers on both the client and agency sides.

Look for these client-side triggers to identify future job openings

These things typically are leading indicators there will be employment opportunities on the client side:

  • New CEO, President or CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)
  • Existing staff promotions / departures
  • Exceptionally large business gains or losses
  • Bad business results
  • Office location changes
  • Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Macro economic indicators
  • New funding sources

Recognize the signs agencies will be looking for new talent

Looking for a new agency gig? This list of triggers is not all that much different from the client-side list.

  • New pieces of business
  • Existing staff promotions / departures
  • New senior managers
  • New department leaders
  • M&A
  • Missing digital / big data / social media capabilities

Get ahead of your competition and give yourself more time to win the job

One could ask, “why should I even identify these triggers?” Glad you asked!

It doesn’t matter if you are searching for a client-side job or an agency one. Here are just two reasons why identifying triggers can put you in a better position to get that coveted new job:

  • Give yourself more time to win the job. Generally speaking, with more time, you can craft a better strategy for how to differentiate your candidacy, get in front of the agency or client-side recruiter, and put your pitch in front of the hiring manager.
  • Get ahead of the competition. It’s a race, right? As soon as the job is posted, the employer and recruiter will be flooded with calls, emails and letters. By seeing the employer’s future need, you can beat the massive influx of resumes and dramatically increase the chances of being properly considered.

Reflect the trigger in your customized job pitch

This trigger is news and someone — or a whole team — is going to be hired. What is it about you that’s relevant or important to the recruiter? For example, have you worked in this category (and what kind of impact did you have)? Do you know the person who’s been hired? Do you have experience the agency doesn’t have?

If this news won’t trigger a job for you, share the news with a friend

Maybe it’s a better fit for them. Perhaps they have the category experience you don’t. Being nice and good pays dividends. Wrote the fella who gets most of his business through repeat and referral sources.  I suspect you know people who will return the favor and keep an eye peeled for you. Or heck, maybe even hire you in the future.

Anywho, hope this spurs you to think about your job search a little differently. For more career-minded thinking on this website, check out the career blog post category.

Photo credit: Anders V  via photopin

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How to use agency credentials to attract and retain people

One of the reasons I think agencies ask yours truly to help them find senior-level leaders is because I bring a new business mentality to the idea of searching for the right professional. Thankfully, for the sake of paying my mortgage, this idea could use a lot of unpacking and can go in lots of directions. But today, I want to spend time on an idea that could be useful and differentiating to your agency as it looks to attract and keep the best staff.

Do you use your agency’s new business credentials when you pitch prospective new employees?

Not many agencies do. They often let the agency’s website do the job. Or they just ask their new business team for a set of standard credentials.

And I wonder how effective that is. Because things like websites or new business credentials are built with many purposes in mind.

How could standard agency credentials be made into recruiting credentials? What could we emphasize in credentials that will help convince someone to join your agency?

The usual things like agency location, size, client list and capabilities could all be tweaked, calling out the details and benefits to someone figuring out whether to work for your agency or your competitor.

For instance, things like broad client list and capabilities can mean career flexibility, footsteps, and an augmentation of existing skill sets.

Of course, the agency’s work itself is a key reason why someone might join the agency. So, case studies are helpful. But I’d abbreviate them. And also tell stories about the people behind the work. We’ve got an opportunity to tell prospective staffers why people are attracted to or stay at their jobs:

  • impact/involvement/making a difference
  • fit/agency culture
  • support
  • training opportunities
  • career mobility
  • stability
  • lifestyle
  • and more

One could easily argue success stories around the above aren’t case studies. Maybe they’re really more testimonials. It doesn’t matter what we call ‘em. I tend to think “testimonials” run the risk of being hacky, canned and unbelievable. So, I like adding a bit more depth to the idea. Stories about people’s successes at the agency, based on the things that they care about. Complete with career-based results metrics. Stories like these are easily worth throwing in a set of Recruiting Credentials.

Having these kinds of stories in your head are fantastic tools when you’re speaking with a given candidate. They add a lot more weight to your pitch. Featuring stories like these on your agency’s website could be a good idea, too.

Anywho, hope this gets you thinking about interesting ways to find and keep your next great leader!

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How to make Human Resources more valuable to the agency

I wrote a version of this post years ago for a new business audience. But as this website reflects my humble shingle’s recruiting capability, this post needed revisiting… Enjoy!

Your human resources function. Nothing could be more important in the billable ad agency world than the people you have working at your agency and on your clients’ businesses. All of those tired old quotes about talent are true. Word!

But you know, there just might be opportunities to make HR work a bit harder when it comes to impacting new business and agency revenue. Today’s post will share a couple of new business thought-starters around new staff hires and the onboarding process.

We should, of course, mention when you bring someone new to your team, there’s potential for a slippery slope here with regard to confidentiality, non-compete clauses, ethics, etc.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting you participate in shenanigans that wouldn’t please your mother. Or get your new employee in any legal trouble with their old agency. But a new hire can lead one to ask questions that can impact the new agency’s new business efforts:

  • Does this new person know a client not working with their past shop that might be looking for an agency in the future? It could be at a shop before their last one. Or it could be a rumor they’ve heard. Or related to a job they’ve heard about before they took yours.
  • How might the new agency leverage this intel?
  • What’s the sense of urgency here?
  • Is this just a chance to fatten up your agency’s mailing list, or could something else need to be done?
  • Are there resources or suppliers the new person might know that are worth meeting?
  • Should this hire have an understanding how new business was done at their previous agency, how were they successful? (And what can that mean to you?)
  • Is this a chance for the agency to announce to clients you’ve made a new hire?
  • Might this be newsworthy to the media? It is a blurb for your website? Your social media?

Asking questions like these will pay off with more senior hires, as it will bear fruit faster. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask that young millennial or freshly minted grad the same questions. You need a mixture of people in your network of lead generators and “friends of the agency” to earn more referral pitches. And who knows, that millennial may move client-side one day.

So, consider adding a new form or two to your new employee onboarding process. Yours truly has had the pleasure of working at two great big shops: Ogilvy and FCB. And neither one of them leveraged the many intersections between agency HR and new business.

Many agencies don’t bother. Yet so long as it’s above-board and not getting anyone sued, it’s definitely worth exploring.