North West Advertising Agencies: The Attraction for Candidates

Emma Burke, Agency Recruitment Manager at The Candidate with over 7 years recruitment experience, blogs about it’s just so much better working agency-side!

When the Marketing department asked me to write a blog post this month on the subject of what is going on in North West Agency land, my immediate thought was “blimmin’ heck, how am I going to find the time to write a blog post when we are so busy recruiting for them all?!”

And then I thought, well, I’ll just write a post about how busy we are, and how positive it is looking for North West based Agencies!

With client side businesses increasingly looking to bring their digital, creative and marketing expertise in-house, it would be right to think that agencies haven’t got a hope in hell of not only retaining talent, but also growing their client base. However, judging by the amount of roles we’ve received within the last few months due to growth, and new client wins, it’s clearly a very exciting time to be agency-side.

So what is the attraction of going agency side?

I spoke to a PPC Manager who said that they were exclusively focusing their search on agency-side, ignoring any client side opportunities. After I’d closed my jaw upon hearing this, I asked why? The attraction for her is that she finds that agencies invest heavily in technologies and support and develop their employees, as well as offering variety to work across multiple brands and sectors, as well as varying budgets.

It’s also a great opportunity to be part of an established PPC team, where there are people you can bounce ideas off, where there’s always someone around if something goes wrong and agency teams tend to have a more relaxed and creative culture. You also tend to get the bigger picture of entire campaigns and get to be part of brand new things, testing the latest developments.

Our top 5 reasons for going agency side are:

1. Training, support and investment into the development of people and teams is greater as service is their product. This is different to client side because their product is what they sell, not the people that market it.
2. Get the opportunity to work across multiple campaigns, clients and products as well as meeting all sorts of different people who approach things in their own unique way. This tends to be different from the singular approach from many client side roles.
3. Having more people in your own team that do a similar role allows for the development of ideas and fine tuning of campaigns. If you’re the only one doing PPC for example, then you’ll not have that opportunity in the office.
4. Because clients demand so much from their agencies, and each agency is striving to stay one step ahead of others, you are never far away from the latest ideas and products that agencies have to adopt. It’s a cool way to test new things on your client’s behalf.
5. Advertising agency culture can far exceed client side’s attempts at creating a great culture because of the activities that agencies get up to. These normally include great nights out, away days, jollies from suppliers, client hospitality or training events. If these are for you then maybe an agency job is right up your street!

You only need to read the regional publications to learn that the North West is becoming increasing popular for Marketing Services Agencies, with agencies creating satellite offices here or relocating their Head Offices. Therefore crucial senior appointments are being made to spearhead growth and professionals from London are making the move “up North” to firmly settle their roots in one of the beautiful localities that we have to offer. It truly is very exciting!!

The Candidate is working with some incredible agencies, working on roles spanning a variety of different disciplines and levels. We’re growing our team here to ensure that we are connecting with the best people and providing them with the best opportunities on the market. 

It’s exciting, but busy! Believe us, we love being busy! There’s a buzz in the office and the agency team here is growing, and we desperately need more people!

If you want to be part of something truly exciting and love being busy, please get in touch as we're alway looking to add new talent to the team!

Read about why you should work for us here. 

Read our other blogs here.

Check out our latest digital jobs here.

Take a look at our latest marketing jobs here.

Read all about our creative jobs here.