News

Recruiters urge agencies to look beyond adland for fresh talent

The ad agency talent squeeze needs to be addressed by agencies looking beyond the industry for talent, a panel of leading industry advisors has warned.

Cassie Sellars, Virginia Hyland and Nick Williams

Cassie Sellars, Virginia Hyland and Nick Williams: “Unfortunately we spend a lot of the time in this industry training up and attracting really good young talent then we let too many of them leave”

Nick Williams, founding partner of Williams International, warned that the Australian advertising industry had become a “net exporter” of talent in the middle and senior levels creating a serious gap that needed to be addressed.

Speaking at Mumbrella’s Secrets of Agency Excellence panel about the talent challenges facing agencies, Williams said the net needed to be cast wider to keep new talent flowing into the industry.

“There is a variety of reasons for that, from how bad we are at valuing experienced people over 40 or how bad we still are at offering flexible work conditions for people in the parental period or attracting people back after they have had their leave,” Williams said.sage-2016_-sage-2016_cassie-sellars-virginia-hyland-nick-williams

“Of a funnel of 100% of people who come in to our industry, I wouldn’t like to guess but probably less than 30% are in the industry 10 years later. To counter that exporting of talent we need to import.

“We need to get better at importing people from other industries.”

He said that where he has looked at getting people from outside advertising into the industry, there has been initial interest from agencies but they are then scared away by the prospect of having to train people up.

“Unfortunately we spend a lot of the time in this industry training up and attracting really good young talent then we let too many of them leave,” he said.

Virginia Hyland, founder of HM Group, said that many middle and senior managers in their 30s became disenchanted with the industry.

“Once you hit the 12 year mark people tend to leave the industry and a lot of women over 35 go ‘it’s too hard’,” Hyland said.

sage-2016_cassie-sellars-virginia-hyland-nick-williams-miranda-ward

“I have always found personally that importing staff from overseas, they are the ones actually who are the least loyal to the business – they come in for a bit and then they are looking for the next fast opportunity so they leave”

“Instead of us trying to make them work the way we’ve always worked and the way we were brought up we are trying to figure out what does work in this day and age.”

Cassie Sellars, managing director people and culture at we.people, said that importing staff to fill gaps could be a counter-productive measure.

“I have always found personally that importing staff from overseas, they are the ones actually who are the least loyal to the business – they come in for a bit and then they are looking for the next fast opportunity so they leave.”

Sellars also said that the advertising industry was underestimating companies such as Atlassian, Amazon, Google and Facebook as competitors for talent, while Hyland said it was failing to sell itself.

“We are a really supercool industry in that way but no one really sees it. As an industry we are not selling to our staff what a great opportunity it is.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Get the latest media and marketing industry news (and views) direct to your inbox.

Sign up to the free Mumbrella newsletter now.

 

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up to our free daily update to get the latest in media and marketing.