Hiring creatives can feel a lot riskier than hiring other roles.
In some jobs there’s easy boxes to tick off. Whether qualifications or experience.
But creatives are hired for their imaginations and ability to think. Which are harder to see, especially if their previous roles haven’t been packed with amazing briefs or opportunities to fill their portfolios.
I’ve seen this myself when hiring, hearing comments like ‘the agency they’re at isn’t great’. The clear insinuation being if that’s where they’re currently working they must not be great either.
It’s something I’d heard myself in the past.
When I was looking at relocating to London from Manchester early in my career I routinely heard comments like ‘We weren’t going to bother seeing you because you work in Manchester, but you’re got some great stuff’ or ‘We thought your book would be sh*t based on where you work but it’s not’. Genuine comments.
There was an article last year by a recruiter which talked about the fact every agency defaults into trying to hire whoever the currently hot creative team is.
This happens with students and grads too. With hiring centred around certain Uni’s or grad courses more than others.
If you’re a Creative Director, then you should be a creative thinker. It’s not very creative to only hire people from the same agencies and backgrounds.
It narrows your pool of talent. And in the case of grads, significantly reduces the broad range of voices we need in the industry.
Your day to day job is spotting the diamonds in the sea of ideas being produced.
That’s the same approach you should take with recruiting.
Find people who can do it, not have done it.
Hire the person. Not the CV.
