HR & PEOPLE MASTERMIND: Are You Actually Hiring with Growth in Mind?

“We’ve had this project land, so we need an X, Y, Z.” If that’s how hiring happens at your agency, you’re probably not hiring for growth. You’re hiring in a panic.

Sarah White, from Smile Digital Recruitment, works exclusively with independent agencies. She’s spent enough time inside agency hiring processes to spot the pattern.

Agency owners focus on the project that’s landed this week, not the team they’ll need six months from now. They scramble to fill today’s gap instead of planning for tomorrow’s growth. 

Good candidates then get lost in slow processes, managers get pulled into endless interviews, and hiring starts to feel harder than it should.

The agencies that hire best don’t wait until they need somebody. They build recruitment into their growth plans, so they’re not starting from scratch every time a project lands or someone hands in their notice.

In this session, Sarah will share a different approach.

A rolling plan with three, six and twelve-month horizons, where the three-month view gets reviewed every four to six weeks against three simple questions: what are you pitching for, where are the skill gaps, and who are the flight risks?

As Sarah puts it: “If your senior motion designer is only on four weeks’ notice, you’re potentially going to end up with a gap.”

But hiring is only half the story.

“You’re only going to grow if you’re hiring and retaining as well,” says Sarah.

New hires often get all the attention because they’re the shiny new addition to the team. Meanwhile, longer-standing team members can start to feel overlooked and quietly begin looking elsewhere.

Growth doesn’t come from recruitment alone. It comes from building a team that wants to stay.

In this session, Sarah White will show you how to make hiring a strategic part of your growth plan, rather than a reaction to the latest client win.