5 Tips for Hiring Creative Talent
Experlio Today, the market for finding creative talent is competitive and fast-paced. What’s more, creative talent is often highly sought after, hard to find, and difficult to convince to join your business. However, the benefits of hiring creative talent are tenfold for any business.
With their ability to consistently innovate, think critically, and problem solve, they are the kind of talent any business desires. This article is designed to help you ease the hiring process for creative talent to ensure there is a value, cultural, and skill fit between creatives and businesses.
Why is hiring creative talent in such demand today?
Creative talent is so in demand because they simply help your organization stay ahead of the curve. This is because of their ability to come up with out-of-the-box solutions to complex problems, as well as their ability to meditate and ideate on challenges your business faces.
Some of today’s most sought-after skills lean toward innovation and creativity, and some of the jobs where these skills matter most include:
- Graphic designers (one of the most sought after skills in 2021)
- UX designers
- Marketing strategists
- Front-end web developers
- Marketing specialists
- Brand designers
- Project developers
Why is creative talent so hard to find?
According to recent research, seven in ten employers say they have observed talent shortages in their business. One of the key reasons for this is that they struggle to find creative talent. Traditionally, if you’re looking to hire creative talent, the first places to check are job seeker sites like Indeed, Seek, and Glassdoor.
However, these sites’ size means many candidates are lacking in skills or experience, and when you do find one that is the right fit, they are often snatched away by competitors or don’t meet your current business needs.
To remedy these issues, here are 5 tips to help you find and hire the best creative talent.
- Know your business needs and define these requirements for the candidate
- Use in-depth job descriptions
- Craft your companies persona and describe your values
- Engage the talents of job seekers to assess their skills
- Use creative talent platforms like Experlio to source emerging creative talent
1. Know your business needs and define these requirements for the candidate
The first and perhaps most important thing to understand as an employer is what you are looking for. Do you want a marketing problem troubleshooter, inspired project designer, or technical SEO specialist? Whatever the role, knowing what your business is looking for is the first step in attracting the right talent to your job.
Knowing what you want can also improve your internal recruiting decision-making process. When considering potential employees and talent, it can be much easier to determine which candidates will fit best with your business. Remember, the most desirable applicant isn’t always the type of person best suited for the role.
Another small trick you can use to help understand your business needs is to write down and define the skills and talents necessary for a candidate to get the job. Having a list of requirements won’t only help potential hires know whether they should apply. It will also ease your hiring process for creative talent. Remember, it’s still important to communicate these skills and business needs to potential candidates via the job description.
2. Use in-depth job descriptions
One of the worst things you can do when trying to recruit creative talent is used boring and stagnant job descriptions. If your goal is hiring the right creative talent for your needs, it’s important to take the time to write a detailed position description. Make it as specific as possible and refer back to your business needs and skills you defined earlier.
When it comes to listing the skills an individual requires, be conscious of the type of creativity you want to hire. Be wary of posting too many skills in the job description. You may just end up attracting candidates who are jack of all trades, but masters of none. It’s usually better to limit the number of skills you post to ones that are critical to the business, leaving the opportunity for candidates to develop complementary and additional skills going forward.
For example, let’s say you need someone to fill the role of creative marketing assistant. Following our tips so far you would list the necessary skills and responsibilities of the job. Such as copywriting, content marketing, and graphic design. Next, you will define the biggest challenges a person in the position must meet. Attracting those willing to overcome challenges and avoid wasting time on recruits who aren’t ready to commit or demonstrate potential in these key areas.
One final tip, think twice about using weird and different job titles like guru, ninja, and rockstar. Whilst they might attract some candidates, they don’t usually work well with SEO. Instead, it’s usually better to stick to more traditional titles like marketing manager, marketing assistant, or marketing coordinator. Remember, applicants still use traditional terms when they look for openings online, and you may lose potential creative hires when you forgo traditional job titles. You can still use your creative job title in the job description body if you want.
3. Craft your companies persona and describe your values
Building on the work you have already done, it’s time to describe your company and its values. This is the opportunity for you to talk about why aspiring creatives should choose your brand. Make sure to craft your companies persona by touching each of the following:
- Company culture
- Company values
- Workplace and out-of-office events
- Team building and holiday activities
- Job perks and compensations
Attracting the best creative talent is as much about making the position look attractive to them as ensuring it is a good fit for them culturally. Also, don’t forget to give applicants an estimate of their pay. Another key selling point is flexibility, which is a top factor 40% of job candidates look for. If you don’t practice workplace flexibility, now is your chance to make the change. The other selling point candidates look for is purpose-driven work, so make sure to describe your company values and goals.
4. Engage the talents of job seekers to assess their skills
Especially when hiring creative talent, it can be difficult to test potential hires skills before you hire them. This is why we suggest asking potential creative recruits for a work sample. Challenge the candidates to produce a job-specific work sample, tailored to your business and their potential role. For example, you might ask a social media marketer to identify a target audience for a campaign or to prepare a social media post.
Also, especially in the creative industries, it’s commonplace to ask candidates for their digital portfolios. These can be used to assess candidate skills and also their desire to present themselves well to potential employers. However, keep in mind that your goal is to assess a candidates’ talents, not to get free work.
5. Use creative talent platforms like Experlio to source emerging creative talent
Our final tip when recruiting creative talent is to use all available resources at your disposal. Experlio is a great example of such a resource. Platforms like Experlio allow businesses to connect and engage with a pool of emerging creative talent.
Our platform is especially useful for business owners in need of specific creative talent. Another benefit of Experlio is you can quickly find emerging talent with great ideas. This is because Experlio has a feature where creative talent can pitch concepts surrounding business challenges.
How it works is, you post a business challenge to our talent of emerging creatives, who then have the opportunity to pitch their best ideas to your business through our platform. Much like the challenges above, make sure it’s job-specific and company-relevant. Once the pitches are in, you get the opportunity to connect and work with the best pitches. What’s great about Experlio, is even if a candidate is unsuccessful in landing a job, they have still gained some experience and had the opportunity to hone and test their skills on a project.
Find and hire the best creative talent
With these five tips, your business is now able to confidently navigate the challenges of finding, engaging, and recruiting the best creative talent. At Experlio our creative talent platform allows you to hire directly from a pool of the most exciting emerging creative talent. If you are a business that is also excited about hiring creative talent, why not visit our website to learn more about how we can help your business. Or, if you’re creative, why not join our community of emerging creative talent.
Looking for creative talent? Look no further. Discover top emerging creative talent with Experlio.
