Are you hiring a marketing team to help your startup get off the ground? Or maybe you’re running a well-established company that needs advertising professionals with fresh perspectives. Either way, it’s tough to find advertising personnel (with proven track records) who you can trust to showcase your products and services in their best light.
With a recruiter who specializes in filling advertising positions, you can take the biggest part of the burden off your shoulders — but you’ll need to choose a recruiter with the right set of skills. We’ll show you more below.
What Does an Advertising Recruiter Do?
Advertising recruiters are specialized recruiters who focus on recruiting for roles within the advertising industry: copywriters, ad designers, art directors, brand strategists, media buyers, etc. Advertising recruiters typically hire a mixture of entry-level employees all the way up to upper-tier talent, depending on their clients' needs.
Key Characteristics of a Good Advertising Recruiter
Every advertising recruiter needs a broad set of skills and characteristics to be effective. The following are some of the key characteristics to look for when you need staffing support from an external recruiting firm.
An effective advertising recruiter:
Has Excellent Communication Skills
Recruiters need strong communication skills to clearly explain open positions, market them to job seekers, and work effectively with clients. But beyond that, these skills will help them bring in the best candidates. Communication is crucial in advertising, so if your recruiter has these skills, they're better positioned to find candidates who are also great communicators.
Utilizes the Right Recruiting Tools
Finding people qualified to fill the highly specialized roles within advertising firms and marketing departments requires a special set of tools. Advertising is a fast-paced trade — one expected to grow by 10% between 2021 and 2031.
As such, advertising recruiters need to know where to go to find the best talent to fill these roles. Their recruiting toolkit should include traditional outlets, like LinkedIn and other types of social media, as well as specialized job boards devoted exclusively to people in the advertising and marketing industry.
When you need advertising recruitment, rely on top recruiting tools like Hunt Club. Hunt Club is a search firm with an extensive network that gives businesses access to more than seven million passive candidates. Learn more about how we can find your next advertising hire.
Has a Deep Understanding of Your Organization’s Needs
Like all types of recruiters, your advertising recruiter needs to boast a comprehensive understanding of your organization. Teamwork is a huge part of advertising, with marketing professionals like writers, artists, designers, and other creatives all working together on digital marketing or traditional media campaigns. In order to find and hire the right talent, your recruiter must have enough knowledge to find the ideal cultural fit and collaborator for the team.
Has Strong Networking Capabilities
Many jobs are never advertised; rather, they're filled quickly and quietly through the power of networking. Thus, a good advertising recruiter needs to have strong networking capabilities. This is particularly true when you’re sourcing from among passive candidates: those who are not actively engaged in a job search but are keeping their options open nonetheless.
Leverages Referrals for Faster Hiring
As mentioned above, many jobs aren't publicly advertised — and this is because they’re filled through referrals.
Your advertising recruiter needs to be able to leverage referrals. Not only do referrals typically lead to faster hires (as opposed to wading through dozens or hundreds of applications), but they can also lead to better quality hires because you’re sourcing these referrals from the top talent you’ve already hired.
Has Efficient Workflows
Staffing agencies and recruiters with inefficient workflows will prove difficult not only for you to work with but for potential candidates, too. Pay attention to what candidates say about the application and screening process. An organized recruiter is more likely to attract candidates that are great hires than a disorganized one
Benefits of Using an Advertising Recruiter
No matter which roles you need to fill, working with any recruiter will have advantages over working through the direct hire process in-house. A good advertising recruiter will prove invaluable when you need specialized staffing for a startup, ad agency, or marketing team.
A skilled advertising recruiter:
Saves Your Organization Time
Think about all the tasks that go into a strategic recruitment plan: creating the job description, finding places to list the job description, promoting your job posts, sorting applications as they come in, shortlisting people, scheduling interviews — the list goes on.
A recruitment firm handles all of this for you.
This adds up to enormous time savings, which is particularly beneficial when you may already be short-staffed.
Gives You Access to a Larger, Specialized Network
A big part of a marketing recruiter’s job is to network. Their network helps them bring in everything from qualified entry-level candidates to candidates that are an ideal fit for senior-level positions. You may have a large network of colleagues of your own, but many of these people aren't active job seekers — or may not have the specialized skill sets you need. Suppose you’re looking to round out a marketing team, but your business doesn't focus specifically on advertising. In that case, much of your own network will consist of industry contacts unrelated to advertising.
Has One Goal: Placing the Right Candidate in the Job
Whether you work with an advertising recruiter or an executive search firm for creative recruiting,.you and your recruiter share a common goal: to find candidates who are the right fit for your company's open advertising and marketing jobs. You’ll enjoy the advantages of a trusted partner who can fill roles quickly and efficiently with the right people.
Guides You Through the Interview Process
Whether your company is a startup and you’re just learning the ropes, or your company has not yet developed an internal interview process, a headhunter or advertising recruiter can help guide you through the interview process. They will help your team identify which questions to ask, which qualities to look for, and how your human resources manager or hiring manager can assess individuals before hiring them.
Potential Drawbacks of Using an Advertising Recruiter
There are many perks to staffing advertising agencies and marketing teams with an advertising recruiter — but there can be some drawbacks, too. Let’s take a look.
It’s Challenging To Understand Your Business as Well as You Do
Day after day, you and your team are immersed in your business. You’ve done the work, spent the time on business development, you know the culture in and out — and it’s tough for an outsider to gain that kind of understanding of your business, then use that understanding to find the perfect candidates.
Hunt Club takes the time to understand your business, your open roles, your culture, and more. Through Hunt Club, you’ll enjoy white glove support from professionals who have done what it takes to fully understand your needs.
The Advertising Recruitment Process Can Be Time-Consuming
Quality recruiting agencies like Hunt Club do all of the extra work for you, freeing your in-house team up for other tasks and saving valuable time and resources.
Tap into Hunt Club’s Network of Potential Advertisers
With advanced technology at our fingertips and a wide-ranging network, we can source and qualify the advertising talent you need. Art directors, writers, designers, strategists, and other creatives — count on Hunt Club to find the talent you need.
Contact us to learn more or to start filling your open roles today.
