The Recruitment Battle

Nicola Clark's article, 'Is Marketing facing a talent crisis', in this week's Marketing Magazine really resonated with us. We understand how important it is to welcome in original minds and passionate creative talent to any workplace and have found that our annual grad scheme is a brilliant way of doing just this. After a competitive recruitment day in August, we took on four new grads ready to give all they'd got to the agency, working on a rota within our Production and Account Team departments.

The consultancy McKinsey, quoted in Nicola's piece, speaks correctly when it says, 'if you sit still, the talent won't simply come to you'. As an example of a more proactive recruitment strategy, in 2010 our Creative department launched a recruitment drive called 'Catch A Creative'. This encouraged people to recommend a friend who specialised in either design, copywriting, artwork or illustration. If they were employed, the friend who recommended them would receive a cash reward.

This was very effective for both parties. For us, there were no huge fees from recruitment agencies and it became a PR stunt. For the public, it gave people that extra incentive to participate. Everyone wants cash, right? In true guerrilla style, we had staff putting up posters in cafes, phone boxes, pubs and lampposts throughout East London wearing red 'Catch a Creative' T-shirts and carrying huge nets. The whole campaign roused attention because it was different, and we had over 100 applications.

I think originality is the key to the recruitment battle; do something different when it comes to securing new talent, and the talent will see that you're creative, unique and passionate about getting new individuals to join your team.