What you need to know: 

• The tides have turned in adland's job market and it's left many on the receiving end of widespread job cuts.
• Those closest to the talent market say its return to a more normalised power balance between employer and candidate, but that it feels especially harsh after given only recently agencies were throwing big dollars and super-sized perks just to keep roles filled. “It's not normal to have that much opportunity around," says Lea Walker, founder of talent consultancy, Mrs Walker. "Everyone probably got a little bit greedy."
• Sustained macroeconomic doldrums have pushed the balance further towards employers, but Advertising Industry Career's Adam Elliot thinks it will swing back towards talent "next year" once things pick up. 
• For now, the more expensive senior ranks are feeling the brunt of cost-out job cuts as agencies react to weaker client spend but junior intakes are also stalling - veteran creative talent recruiter Esther Clerehan says both trends will impact the industry going into the future, creating a vacuum.
• Talent leaders from IPG Mediabrands, UM and indie shop Bench Media say candidates are now focusing more on work-life balance and values alignment rather than 'chasing money'. 
• Recruiters say it's not all doom and gloom. There are several key areas and disciplines that are still underserved. 
• But all things are cyclical, they say, and now is the time to upskill and cross-skill to avoid swimlane traps that are inevitable in a rapidly changing environment.

Reality bites

A turbulent job market has left many in adland feeling like sitting ducks – and it's the speed of turnaround from name your salary and perks to getting ghosted that's particularly stark.

What we're now seeing, according to those who sit between candidates and employers, is a return to something approaching business-as-usual.

In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, “We just had this blip of outrageous opportunity, and everyone probably got a little bit greedy," says Lea Walker, who now consults via her own firm, Mrs Walker, after heading recruitment for US creative giant Wieden + Kennedy.

"There was a lot of movement. Everyone quit their full-time jobs and went freelance. There was just an abundance of opportunity – they were all printing money, freelancing two or three jobs at a time,” she tells Mi3. “It's not normal to have that much opportunity around.”

Combined with “recession-y” macros, says Walker, it’s no surprise talent is feeling the pressure of the job hunt – and senior ranks are among the hardest hit.

“You can look back over the last 50 years of statistics, and every time there are cuts, there are disproportionately more senior people [axed], because they make a bigger difference to the bottom line.”

Walker's peers agree. IPG Mediabrands head of talent acquisition, Monique Black, says the funnelled structure of the job markets means senior people have been more susceptible to cuts because, by volume, they have fewer opportunities to begin with.

While its “definitely harder for candidates” now than it was a few years back, Black says we’ll have to wait for economic challenges to pass before we can see if the dynamics are changed for good – but she’s doubtful.

Adam Elliot, co-founder of industry job platform Advertising Industry Careers (AIC), says it's just the latest swing of the pendulum.

In the last year or two, "companies were paying crazy salaries to poach staff, and this year, many are culling," per Elliot. "The impact is very much linked today to macroeconomic factors of inflation and interest rates, which has unfortunately impacted marketing budgets and the knock-on effect is being felt by publishers and agencies.”

While the current moment does feel especially harsh – the worst seen in 30 years according to a number of his contacts – Elliot is confident the market will return to the favour of candidates next year “as the industry picks up again”.  

Which could be read as 'sit tight' for those seeking a better deal. But it offers little comfort for those who find themselves jobless – and there are plenty. Creative talent veteran Esther Clerehan says she and other recruiters are “getting a lot of calls” from people who are very worried about their future.

“The job market has shrunk. The market of people looking for work has definitely grown, and they’ve got a higher level of anxiety than just ‘I’m in between jobs’, because there are fewer jobs.”

Consolidation impacts

Cycles aside, there are broader structural shifts at work.

“We have a globally retracting business model. Agencies are getting smaller and smaller and making less money than they used to. There is more competition, and networks are falling in on each other,” explains Walker. 

“Whole agencies are smashing together, and the level that is most impacted by that contraction is obviously going to be increasingly senior people, because you only need one leadership team when two agencies come together.”

At the other end of the hierarchy, Clerehan says that agencies are hiring less grads and juniors too – and that could spell trouble in a few years’ time when “there’s no mids” to keep agencies moving. She reckons at both ends will have a "long-term impact".

'Not AI'

It might be intuitive to label AI as the culprit for the slow down at the junior end. But Clerehan reckons that’s not so much the case – at least not yet. Nor did anyone else Mi3 spoke to attribute any significant flux in headcounts to the new tech, though most agree that it’s coming.

Instead, Clerehan says agency’s dwindling junior intakes are more to do with the workloads of mid and senior level staffers who in a tight market are “too thinly spread to train”. The consequence? “If you don’t bring them on, we don’t have future mids, and we don’t have future seniors.”

Revised expectations

As ever, the employee’s loss is the employer’s gain, and the surge of eligible talent on the market has played into the hands of agencies that still have jobs to fill.

Black says it’s made IPG Mediabrands much less reliant on headhunting, because people have started responding to job advertisements again. “We don’t have to chase after every single individual – they’re coming to us a bit more," she tells Mi3.

That was exemplified in a recent LinkedIn recruitment campaign the group ran following UM’s Federal Government win. The agency was flooded with hundreds of direct messages, from disproportionately senior – and often overqualified – talent.

The surge in applicants has been accompanied by a shift away the “purely finance based decisions” that characterised the Covid era when juniors were asking for $90k and two-year 'veterans' were seeking $150k, per Shilpa Jayakumar, who works alongside Black as talent acquisition partner for UM. Once a mainstay of any agency gig post-2020, flexible work arrangements are becoming a luxury – and one that candidates will sacrifice cash for. Which may be as a result of relocating away from inner city suburbs.

“There was a period where we were sort of seeing a lot of people just essentially chase money. Now [they’re] looking at all of the other factors that come into play, to go, 'yes, okay, there's other roles offering me $10k more, $15k more, but I have a really great team where I'm getting really good work-life balance, flexibility, and remote working'," says Jayakumar.

Jayakumar says candidates now place a greater emphasis on values alignment in areas like diversity and inclusion, reconciliation action, and pride: “They're really asking very targeted questions to get that insight into [whether] you actually care or it’s a corporate exercise for you to have as a checkbox thing.”

All of that's to say the bidding wars are off, and agencies no longer need to throw up every  perk under the sun. Two years ago, creative and media shops were funding everything from fertility treatment, through gender affirmation leave, to $4,000 referral bonuses even for staff who have left. Then there were slumber days, home office funding and laundry services. 

They may not all have been axed – but they're no longer having to push them as hard.

But while some agencies suggest applicants are less money-focused, AIC's Elliot says many are "frustrated at the lack of transparency around salary information for the roles they are applying for".

"Many start the process to find out they are in a different league once they get an interview," he adds. And that's when they're lucky enough to hear back – Elliot says the "the larger growing issue candidates face is the lack of feedback on their job application". I.e. many are getting ghosted by prospective employers after they send in their application. 

Top heavy

Indie shop Bench Media is hiring. Senior people and culture manager, Nicole Jurke, has observed a similar trend and suggests the increased interest in flexible and remote work has given indie agencies and edge over multinationals that may be restricted by more rigid frameworks.

Jurke says the response to her job ads has been “phenomenal”. She's also observed “a lot of more senior people applying for the not so senior roles”.

With competition so high, Creative Natives founder Ryan Kelly argues that the onus is in part on the candidates to “start applying a bit more initiative” in their job search – and that’s the same advice his agency and in-house recruitment firm has been giving job seekers.

Mining Seek, he says, won't cut it. "You’ve got to work harder for these jobs because there's more competition. That doesn't mean it's the end of the world. It just means you've got to network; you've got to build your online brands; you've got to do all of these things which take time and take work.”

Bottom line is talent cannot afford to be complacent. “We don't know what the next 12-18 months looks like." Naturally, he says, "I wouldn't wait until I was made redundant before I started proactively speaking to people.”

Opportunity knocks?

Despite the jaundiced outlook, recruiters suggest there’s a silver lining.

The changing shape of the advertising industry might mean agency headcounts are leaner, but there are also more ways for people to apply their skills.

Per Walker, advertising talent now enjoys “more options than ever before” when it comes to ways of working.  

“20 years ago, if you had a career in advertising, you only had a career in advertising. Now you can go in-house [or] marketing side, or go to a platform, or to a tech company… In some ways there are more opportunities, because there are more creative outlets than ever before.” Though she admits that might feel “less available to senior talent”.

On transferrable skills, UM’s Jayakumar says that employers are increasingly open to hiring candidates who may not have the “technical skills” but bring other qualities to the table.

“How do we make it a little bit easier to work with the talent that's available, rather than waiting forever and over-complicating this role? Is it better to have the right personality, the right person who can adapt and learn the technical skills instead?”

In a similar vein, Bench Media co-founder Ori Gold points to revolving door between advertising and adtech.

As he sees it, the influx of redundancies in global agency networks and media companies reflects “a bigger transformation from traditional to digital and from the local media owners to more the global tech platforms like Salesforce, Google and Amazon ... there's a lot of media planners and buyers, account managers, client services-facing roles that are getting positions in those companies,” per Gold.

The in-housing trend remains relatively buoyant, with more client-side roles opening up as big brands look to consolidate their creative and media activities within their own four walls.

Then there’s consulting, which Clerehan says is no longer just a stopgap between permanent gigs.

Likewise, 'fractional' roles thanks to a surge in consultancies and independent operators, making contract and rolling work a lot more available and “a lot easier to get” because “it’s not as formal” as it once was.

Micro models

The normalisation of contract work goes hand in hand with the growth of the independent agency sector, where the emergence of ultra lean, boutique shops has given way to a model that relies on a steady pool of freelance partners.

“It's a different market,” Clerehan emphasises. “You might not get another permanent job. You might find that you operate between two or three or more, you're a preferred contractor or a preferred consultant to a few of the small indies, or you become one of the small indies – because we've seen the market change [and so] it's not as daunting to start up an agency as it was 10, 20, 30 years ago, you just need a laptop, a mobile and a client.”

Supermassive, Pembleton and Bureau all fit the micro bill, with the likes of creative hotshop Bear Meets Eagle on Fire, now a key part of Telstra's bespoke agency +61, proving the approach need not preclude landing some of the biggest campaigns and accounts.

While some big brands are consolidating with agencies and partners touting end-to-end capability, Lea Walker (who knows Bear Meets Eagle on Fire and its founder Micah Walker reasonably well) says many CMOs are increasingly willing to work with “a community of suppliers and partners” rather than an agency that claims it can do it all.

“That's opened up a bit of an opportunity to return to specialisation and craft”, as opposed to the generalisation of the past two decades, per Walker. “As the demands increased, we became all things to all people, and so agencies became a little full of generalists.”

She says the newer model has served some of the world’s most successful agencies, including the UK’s Uncommon and US-based Mischief.

“It does feel like a handful of grownups have broken out and just gone, ‘I'm just going to be the thing I'm good at for the people who want that’, and they’re building really interesting, bespoke, agile little business that don’t have any of the muscle memory of the old school.”

With marketing budgets increasingly under scrutiny, Creative Natives' Ryan Kelly says the smaller guys can do more with less – and that’s not limited to the newcomers. It's made some of them more immune to the sweeping cuts that have hit the networks, he suggests.

“Smaller agencies that have fewer costs, lower overheads, and all of that can actually help to operate a profitable business," per Kelly. "Whilst they might not be doing amazing [numbers], those businesses don't necessarily need a load of clients.”

What's hot?

For those looking for a role, or wondering just how safe their seat might be, the good news is that there’s still a broad cross section of skills that are hot in the current market.

Data from the Advertising Industry Careers platforms suggests four categories are in the highest demand across the advertising and media piste:

• Business dev, sales & account management
• Adtech, digital & search marketing
• PR, copywriting, journalism, publishing
• Admin, support & human resources

For media agencies, IPG Mediabrands' Black and Jayakumar say that digital and programmatic skills remain high on the wish list, but that “disappearing” linear skills like TV trading also still have an important place – and they’re increasingly hard to fill.

Jayakumar adds that the highest level of employability is at the mid-tier levels, where talent are typically harder to get because they’re “held onto tightly” by their employers.

Bench Media’s Gold likewise sees demand for technical skills like programmatic trading. But on the flipside, he says the expanding remit of agencies – as they look to secure “more share of wallet from the client” – has opened up more opportunities for senior, strategy-focused roles that can connect the dots between traditional and digital media.

On the creative side, Esther Clerehan says digital and social roles are usurping demand for more traditional creative remits.

“Follow the money. That's where the clients are putting the money, so that's where the growth is.”

At the broader level, Lea Walker thinks that the bulk of the opportunity now lies with the independent agencies rather than the networks – though she qualifies that her view could be skewed by a high level of relationships on the indie side.

Creative Natives' Kelly backs that hunch, noting that smaller shops have been “punching way above their weight” in terms of recruitment. For candidates, he says “those so-called smaller businesses are probably a safer bet in this market than perhaps the bigger agencies”.

What now?

In a weak market, talent has to make its own luck. Per Clerehan, that’s now much easier to do.

“I remember when the ads were in the papers. It's all LinkedIn now. You are following companies; you’ve got your personal brand and profile out there; you're active.”

Upskilling, particularly given the pace of change in media and marketing, is also vital, per Kelly.

“I have a lot of sympathy for people at the moment, but I think that people need to understand that the space we're in is going to be volatile… those that evolve with the market will be more relevant versus those who stay in their lane.”

Part of that, says Walker, is planning in advance for the latter season of your career (something Australian Marketing Institute CEO Bronwyn Heys has said time and time again.)

“It's a combination of the industry not looking out for you at a certain point, but also people not looking out for themselves purposefully at a certain point.”

“I'm coming across a lot of people that hadn't planned for this phase of their career. They just kind of assumed there was always going to be more jobs and more work – [but] there’s only one ECD.”

More on that, and the broader outlook for adland’s senior talent, in part two next week.