STANDSTILL agencies have a recruitment need.
STANDOUT agencies have a recruitment strategy.
Recruitment is difficult at the moment for many agencies (even in these challenging economics times). It’s more important than ever to get it right.
As they grow, STANDSTILL agencies react to their immediate needs and pressure points. As a result they often recruit for the wrong roles in the wrong order. This can leave the agency owner trapped doing the things they really should be delegating.
STANDOUT agencies grow their team in the right way. They follow a recruitment strategy:
1. Agency Admin – Firstly they recruit for, or outsource, their admin such as bookkeeping etc. Paying people to do these tasks is a big decision for early stage agency owners, but it pays off and allows them to focus on client delivery.
2. Client Fulfilment – Soon they reach a point where they can’t manage all the work on their own. Recruiting people to do this for them, particularly the lower level execution work, is a key step in growing the agency and lifting themselves out of the delivery.
3. Agency Operations – Once they have a team in place to manage fulfilment, STANDOUT agency owners then look to add operational roles. Finance becomes a bigger job as you grow, as does people management and office management. At Cactus we encourage our agency clients to add a marketing manager as soon as they reach this point.
4. Client Strategy – With the client delivery and agency operations teams in place, the agency owner is usually left responsible for the strategic part of the client relationship. Maintaining links with senior clients remains important, but at this point they can look to appoint some more senior people to take the responsibility for client strategy. This enables them to extract themselves from the day to day running of the business and potentially set themselves up for exit.