Client Resource - Creative Recruitment

The task of attracting the best Creative talent can seem like an impossible challenge. Where do you start? What does a good designer look like on paper? But fear not, we specialise in recruitment in the Creative sector and can share insight on how to attract, recruit and retain the best talent for your team.

The difficulty in recruiting great Creative talent lies in the fact that it isn’t simply a skill matching exercise. Since design is so subjective and each agency fosters its own creative culture, finding the right talent is less about ability and experience and more about attitude and creative thinking. First, we must question what makes a good designer. In my experience, it’s an innate curiosity, a constant drive to learn, a passion for problem-solving, patience and clear communication. These skills might not be obvious on a CV and that’s why the interview process is so crucial in enabling us to read between the lines.

When it comes to interviewing, nothing beats sitting down with a candidate for a face-to-face meeting and allowing them to talk through their portfolio. Immediately, we get a sense of how they think and how passionate they are about their craft. You can tailor questions to suss out their hard skills if they are important to the role. Still not sure? Set them a creative task and review the response. Allow them to talk through their approach, concept development and final outcome. You’ll really get a sense of what they could bring to the company as well as their investment in the role. This is particularly great for designers working client-side (or in-house) as having worked on only one brand, often with stringent guidelines, inhibits these candidates. Setting a task offers them an opportunity to show how they would adapt their style and creatively interact with your brand. 

It goes without saying that this sort of recruitment process is lengthy but investing the time upfront will result in hires that fit the mould of your company and stay for the long haul. This is where working alongside a trusted recruitment partner who really understands your company culture can add value and free up your time. We sort the wheat from the chaff and only put people under your nose that are relevant both practically and culturally.   

A good recruitment partner knows the industry that they recruit for and more importantly, we’re genuinely interested in it. We attend events because we want to, we ask you about your latest projects because we care. We are able to map career paths for candidates because we have a well-rounded and unbiased standpoint. Likewise, a good recruiter takes time to get to know everything they can about your business AND your people. Allow us the time to extract a proper brief, invite us into your workspace and let us interact with a few different staff members – it’ll help us build a picture of your culture so we know intuitively what works for you.

We recruit all manner (and all levels) of Creative roles here at The Candidate from Graphic Designers to Digital Designers, Advertising Creatives, Artworkers, Retouchers, Animators, Videographers, Photographers and production/studio support staff. If you have a live Creative role that’d you’d like to discuss today, please feel free to call our Creative Recruitment Team on 0161 833 1044, or brief us here!