Adweek published content on hiring in Adland, which inadvertently highlighted greater obstacles for true diversity beyond the anti-DEIBA+ vibe prevalent today, including:
• Fewer opportunities for entry-level talent counters contrived and performative stunts involving minority internships, erecting special high schools, and embryo recruitment.
• Searching for established talent with hybrid skills favors seasoned drones already in the workforce. The advantages will continue to go to White men and White women by virtue of their existing industry dominance.
The White advertising agencies actively hiring position themselves as “integrated”—although the term does not refer at all to racial and ethnic integration.
Associated hiring practices may seem new, but the end results are the same old same old.
In short, the shops tagged as “growing” are expanding systemic racism.
As Ad Industry Sheds Jobs, These Agencies Are Growing—and Hiring
As a new class of hirers reshapes the agency workforce, junior talent has fewer ways in
By Audrey Kemp
Layoffs, restructuring, and vanishing entry-level roles: the past year has brought little relief for agency talent navigating a volatile job market.
Since January 2022, staff-level jobs at U.S. ad agencies have declined by more than 10%, according to Live Data Technologies. Entry-level positions are being hit hardest, as agencies automate routine tasks and lean more heavily into AI.
The industry has yet to recover to its pre‑2023 peak of 228,000 jobs. Ad agency employment now sits at around 219,500 jobs, down nearly 4% year‑over‑year.
Following cost-cutting efforts at WPP and Interpublic Group—including hundreds of layoffs and sweeping reorganizations—and ahead of the latter’s acquisition by Omnicom, holding companies are increasingly adopting AI and offshoring functions to boost efficiency amid mounting profit pressures.
While executive- and director-level roles have remained relatively stable, junior talent looking to break into the ad industry are facing a shrinking pipeline of traditional entry-level roles.
“We’re seeing the erosion of the apprentice model,” said Jay Pattisall, principal analyst at Forrester. “Agencies are playing the role of editors now—orchestrating workflows, managing creators, content pipelines, influencer strategies. That requires seasoned professionals.”
AI-related job skills are also becoming standard; mentions of AI in global job listings for advertising and marketing roles have jumped more than 67% year over year, according to a recent report from Autodesk.
As the agency job market shifts, a new wave of independent and private equity-backed shops is hiring in earnest—and reshaping the profile of ad industry talent.
The New Agency Hirers
Independent full-service agency Known is currently hiring for 30 open roles, representing about 7% of its workforce. The hiring spree comes as Known is growing between 20% and 30% year over year, according to CEO Kern Schireson.
“It’s driven by demand for the things that we do—and that’s inseparable from the talent we hire,” he said.
DEPT, a global agency backed by PE firm Carlyle Group, is seeing similar momentum. It is growing double digits and has more than 130 open roles across the Americas—nearly 10% of its regional headcount. Most of those roles are mid- to senior-level.
Croud, a digital agency backed by ECI Partners, is hiring for 11 to 15 roles in the U.S., accounting for about 10% of its U.S. headcount. Open positions span mid- to senior-level, including planners, media buyers, analysts, and social strategists. Multiple director-level roles are open.
On the creative side, new shop Cape Agency recently made its first full-time hire and is recruiting for another full-time role, as well as eight fractional roles. Most are senior-level jobs in creative, strategy, and account management, though mid-level positions are expected to open soon.
And Nice&Frank, a 23-person creative agency, has seven to 10 open roles across creative, design, account, production, and strategy—primarily mid- to senior- level.
“Director-level talent is our sweet spot,” said Cape co-founder and CEO Casey Ritts. “People who are confident decision-makers but still love rolling up their sleeves.”
What They Have in Common
Many of these shops have commonalities that set them apart from the legacy agency business.
DEPT and Croud both have PE backing, fueling their investment in more senior talent as they experiment with AI. Both agencies, as well as Known, offer modern, integrated services with capabilities in data, technology, AI, commerce, influencer, and other growing media channels.
“We’re not a holding company. We’re an integrated, end-to-end business,” said Carryn Quibell, CEO of DEPT Americas. “Gone are the days of agencies with layers and layers of management and red tape.”
Integration, plus the fuel of PE investment, is allowing these agencies to grow organically by landing clients in one area and expanding the scope from there.
“We don’t tend to win $40 million AORs,” said Quibell. “We tend to win with an area of expertise like commerce and see those clients expand.”
On the creative side, clients are flocking to small, nimble agencies like Cape and Nice&Frank, which can deliver great work quickly—without as much overhead.
“In the smallest organizations, hiring is often funded by good work and over-investment,” Forrester’s Pattisall said. “They don’t suffer the same commercial model issues that large, scaled holding companies have to deal with. What CMO doesn’t want to hire a startup that’s willing to do twice the work for half the price?”
The New Skill Sets
As these agencies create new models that work at speed, they’re looking for a different breed of talent than the classically trained agency employee.
Kris Tait, chief business officer at Croud, said that though the agency is recruiting holding company talent, it is looking for people with hybrid skills that understand how to translate creative work across social platforms, “not just get the creative and put it in the platforms.”
“We need people that are open to this new world,” he said.
Schireson said Known, which receives up to 4,000 applicants per open role, has a job requirement that every employee—from legal to analytics—uses AI in their daily workflow.
“If you were an analyst spending 80% of your time crunching numbers and 20% thinking strategically, now you get to flip that,” he said.
In addition to embracing new tech, agencies want talent that’s curious and able to work cross-functionally.
“The question is, what is your mindset?” said Schireson. “What is your personal story that demonstrates to us that you have what it takes to engage and collaborate?”
“Nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen over the course of the next five years, but if you…lean into the change and the evolution, you can win,” Quibell added.
What About Junior Talent?
As agencies experiment with automation and prioritize senior and mid-level hires, junior talent are left without as many avenues to break into the industry. To combat that, agencies are broadening their internship programs and recruitment pipelines.
Croud recently expanded its 12-week summer internship program globally, giving underrepresented, early-career talent experience with clients, projects for their portfolios, mentorship, and exposure to agency talent. The agency has also partnered with COOP, a fellowship program that supports first-generation college grads, helping it recruit from schools like Columbia, Emerson, and NYU. And it has dropped degree requirements to broaden its applicant pool.
Other agencies are changing the way they train junior talent once they have broken in. At DEPT, for instance, new hires choose a subject to “major” in and another to “minor” in, allowing them to develop cross-functional expertise from the get-go.
At growing creative agencies, the path to bring in junior talent is less clear.
Cape Agency is in the early stages of hiring junior talent, working to establish a formal internship program through university partnerships. And Nice&Frank, which began with a mostly senior team, is starting to focus more on bringing in and providing support to early-career talent.
“Our youngest employees tend to hit us with the hottest takes that keep us rethinking how we’re growing a new kind of agency,” said Nice&Frank co-founder Graham North.
While these agencies are searching for ways to bring new, young talent into the fold, the reality remains that these roles are shrinking—which could lead to a dried up industry talent pipeline down the road.
“There are secular and structural things happening in our industry,” Schireson said.
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