Capitalizing on the Chaos in the Advertising and Marketing Hiring Market

The Great Resignation, AKA the “Big Quit,” “The Great Reshuffle,” or just even talking how it relates to “The Future of Work,” has been well documented in the annals of business press since employees started leaving the workforce during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To some extent, marketing and advertising agencies have a leg up on other industries, as they are no stranger to staffing challenges. Many agencies have been forced to choose between turning down business because they could not staff it or maintaining an expensive and bloated workforce “just in case.” Either way, these methods of “keeping up” are bad for agencies, they’re bad for employees, and they’re ultimately bad for clients and customers.

Expertise on Demand and the Hybrid Work Model

Alas, all is not doom and gloom on the hiring horizon. The pandemic-driven shift to remote/hybrid work models has come at an unprecedented time of fragmentation across the marketing landscape. The confluence of these two significant events has created new opportunities that benefit both employers and employees while allowing for a dynamic shift in the way marketing talent is sourced and hired.

A recent report from LinkedIn shows a 63% increase in marketing jobs on the platform in the past six months, with more than 17,000 remote marketing jobs posted between 2021 and 2022. Clearly, this trend will continue as the perpetuation of remote and hybrid work models allow organizations to bring in the best outside talent––in a freelance or contract capacity––while maintaining the operational efficiency and flexibility of a small in-house staff.

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Capitalizing on the Chaos

Forward-thinking organizations are taking advantage of this on-demand/hybrid work model to reap benefits that may not be immediately obvious to traditional marketers.

1. Leverage Specialty Skill Sets

The marketing generalist is a dying breed. The proliferation of new channels is so fast, and the growth of new opportunities is too vast to be done proficiently by a single person or even a team of marketing generalists. Intelligent marketing teams are bringing in domain-level expertise across specific disciplines to help them target and reach existing and new audiences. From creators and influencers to media planners, programmatic advertising buyers, and content producers – today’s successful marketing teams are built around specialists who can create and deliver messages in new and effective ways.

2. Test New Channels

With on-demand marketing resources at your disposal, testing and experimentation have never been easier. Agencies can add a qualified expert in social media, SEO, Pay-per-click, video, or content marketing, and conduct experiments with little to no ramp-up time. And all marketing teams owe it to themselves and their clients to explore all the latest options available to you. If it doesn’t work, move on to something new. And if they are successful, efforts can be scaled exponentially with just a few clicks.

3. Establish New Centers of Excellence

It’s tempting to think of these new hiring trends as an opportunity to swap in and out interchangeable mid-level workers. However, taking a top-down approach and hiring senior and CMO-level marketers allows companies to quickly establish expertise in new markets or provide new lines of service virtually on-demand. The “Great Resignation” has freed up much of the senior talent that may not have been actively seeking new opportunities in the past. The growth of digital staffing platforms makes sourcing talent––from SEO experts to CMO-level candidates––faster and more efficient than ever before.

4. Expand Your DEI efforts

Diversity, equity, and inclusion in the advertising business have come a long way since the “Mad Men” days. However, it still is a real challenge that agencies and corporate marketing departments are working to rectify. A recent ANA study suggested that “Ethnic diversity (among its members) is poor from the senior level on down, especially for African-American/Black and Hispanic/Latino workers.” Agencies that offer a remote/hybrid work model are no longer bound by geography. Hence, hiring managers now have access to a significantly more diverse talent pool. Online talent marketplaces attract candidates from all backgrounds that may not have considered your organization in the past. With the availability and evolution of digital hiring tools, we can help make the connections necessary to get the best people in roles where they can do the most good.

5. Improve Operational Efficiency

The office of today has no bounds. Building a hybrid team provides the expertise, scalability, and operational efficiency necessary to compete in a noisy, crowded marketplace. This allows organizations to identify and capitalize on the potentially game-changing opportunities, reaching their desired audience while eliminating the need to take on more risk in the form of full-time employees.

New Rules/New Tools

Long review and vetting processes, slow onboarding, and lengthy ramp-up periods are hallmarks of a past era and will ultimately lead to failure. Traditional methods of sourcing marketing talent, in the form of recruiters, job boards, and word of mouth, don’t cut it anymore.

The move to marketing on-demand and remote/hybrid models is not just a desperate action to backfill resources in response to the shift in the employee/employer power dynamic. Rather, it’s a fundamental change in how we as marketers, agencies, and employees operate. And it requires a new set of rules––and tools––to be successful.

Arming companies with access to digital marketplaces that make it easy to find and hire great marketers is fundamental in keeping up with the constantly evolving marketing landscape. With  digital tools at-the-ready, organizations everywhere can now hire expert marketers that can simply walk in the door (or turn on their laptop) ready to make an impact from day one.

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