Breaking down the gilded cage: the creative industry’s accessibility issue
Forget the top names and the big awards – in order for adland to thrive, it’s time it let more talent in at the ground floor, writes The Hallway senior account director Chris Murphy.
The “talent drain”, “seller’s job market” and “the great resignation” portray a pretty grim picture of the creative industry’s current job market. In fact, the only seemingly-positive updates are the notable achievements of long-established Aussie titans of the industry and, ironically, stories about how they’re all now becoming consultants.
But not much has been said about the other end of the industry. Specifically, the aspiring graduates wanting to start their careers in an agency.
According to a Universities Australia report, over 325,000 Australians graduated from University in 2020. While I may be proudly dyslexic and definitely no statistician, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that this number is probably higher in the post-pandemic world of 2021. Solder this with the fact that we’re all still working from home clearly makes it damn hard for anyone looking to break into the industry at that level.
