How Well You Recruit Top Talent Today Will Determine Your Agency’s Tomorrow

Your recruitment process can become your competitive advantage.

You need the best and brightest to enhance your agency’s market competitiveness. In fact, since most agencies in their categories offer very similar services, recruiting and retaining better talent than your competition can be a significant competitive advantage for you.

Many firms don’t develop their recruitment philosophy and process as a competitive weapon that can help them grow. Instead, they adopt the approach that recruitment is a one-time event and not an ongoing process. Inevitably, this restricts the talent available to only those people discovered during a specific search.

However, with a philosophy that ongoing recruitment is the life blood of agency success, you will uncover superstar candidates that you would otherwise miss. Over time, finding superstars before you have an actual need and maintaining a relationship with them until that need occurs will elevate your talent base.

You will also significantly shorten the time between when an opening occurs and an outstanding candidate is placed. Further, the tighter time frame will also prevent your existing team from becoming so over-worked and burned out that they resign before the opening is filled. You don’t want unnecessary openings!

Better preparation and commitment to recruitment will attract the best candidates.

Agencies often struggle to handle their recruiting in a manner that positions their firms in the best light with each candidate. They don’t carefully examine how the candidate experiences their process in order to make the strongest possible impression time after time.

This happens because busy staffers frequently don’t place the same importance on recruitment as they do with their client work and new business duties. What’s urgent to them on any given day too easily short-changes the longer-term (and ultimately more important) priority of adding the best talent to your firm. 

Your interviewers may arrive late for their appointed time with the candidate. They’re too often in a hurry and not sufficiently prepared for the interview. They conduct cursory interviews that don’t get to the heart of whether the candidate can do the job or not.

This shows. And the candidate knows it.

Six steps that will improve your agency’s recruitment effectiveness.

1. Map out your recruitment process. Review it closely from a “user experience” perspective… from the very first step through placement and integration into the agency. For each step, analyze what you can do to make a highly positive impression on every candidate.

2. Appoint an official leader for recruitment. S/he will be the director of the overall process and the lead contact for incoming candidates. This person will qualify candidates before they come in for interviews with the team and also administer the requisite competency tests and applications.

This preparation will provide each team member with a complete package of information before the interview occurs. Each interviewer should be prepped so that the candidate does not have four staff members asking the same questions over and over again. Each interviewer should be on time and have an assigned role to dig deeply into specific areas.

Finally, your recruitment leader should be the internal conscience (and enforcer if needed) regarding the importance of recruiting to the agency’s success. Therefore, this should be a senior “Line” person with clout and not relegated to HR.

3. Ensure your agency has a strong presence in the industry in order to enhance your reputation with potential candidates. To proactively drive more candidates to your firm, reputation really helps. Be visible at industry conferences and panels, serve on trade and/or non-profit boards and regularly participate in local PR Council, PRSA and ad club activities.

The more your own people value your organization and sing its praises at industry events, the wider (and faster) your reputation spreads as the place where the best people work.

4. Commit adequate time and resources to your recruitment process. The agency should regularly see candidates at all levels whether there are immediate openings or not. Ongoing interviewing should be part of your schedule and a priority with the senior team. This will open up the universe of potential candidates when you have a position to fill.

5. Understand that basic courtesy goes a long way. Start by setting expectations. Let each candidate know whether the interview is for informational purposes or if you have an actual opening. Provide insight into your timing if you’re looking to fill an open position.

Prompt communication at each step is a must. Your recruitment leader should keep quality candidates engaged and regularly check their temperature. The leader also coordinates making the offer to ensure that this process is thorough, highly personal and makes the chosen candidate feel special.

By not extending basic courtesies, many agencies manage to turn off top candidates at the very moment they should be making these talented people feel important and unique. We see this with unprepared interviewers, candidates kept waiting long after the appointment time, lack of follow-up and other errors. It’s a reflection on your culture.

6. Build your own database of the best and brightest… and keep reaching out to them. As you meet and interview superstars, add them to your prospect database. Include them on your marketing mailings to reinforce their interest in your firm. Meet them for lunch or a drink to continue the relationship until you have the right role.

The bottom line: By adopting the right recruitment process and dedicating adequate resources, you will build a superior team that drives revenue and profits. Additionally, this will provide stronger management support to you as agency owner.

We’re here to help you succeed.

Prosper Group exists to help the owners of independent marketing communications agencies achieve their ambitions and maximize the value of their life’s work.

Our team of former agency leaders and owners focus their deep experience on implementing proven proprietary methodologies across our three practices of agency performance, owner exit planning and M&A transactions in order to drive owner and agency success.

Developed by Alex Halbur/Managing Partner and Senior Counselors John Seng, Rich Jernstedt and Mark Johnson.