Inside agencies’ struggle to train and retain junior-level employees

Junior agency employees are calling for better training, complaining that they’re often thrown into the deep end without much direction, leading some to abandon the industry. The problem, while not new, is becoming more pressing for agencies strapped for resources amid persisting economic challenges and wrestling with remote work, resulting in some younger employees feeling isolated. Ad Age spoke with 14 junior ad professionals—typically, people with none to two years of job experience—and talent experts who said executives are under more pressure than ever to perform for clients, all while many shops are understaffed. This has left little time for the hand-holding that junior Gen Z professionals—the eldest members of Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, are 26 in 2023—in particular seek from their employers. Most of today’s younger staffers graduated into a completely remote world and are struggling more so than past generations with skills such as client relations. See our 2023 Marketers of the Year here “We're hearing it on both sides,” a chief talent officer of a holding company agency said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak on record. “We’re hearing it from leaders in terms of them finding that the team around them that is more junior does not have all of the knowledge and nuances of how to manage a client conversation, or how to mediate between differing points of view. At the same time, we’re hearing from our junior staff members, who are saying things like ‘I’m not getting the right amount of direction. I need more explanation. I need more mentorship. I need a sponsor.’ They’re looking for more and more and more.” The chief talent officer said that their agency has mandated three days in the office minimum and, for the most part, entry-level and senior professionals are abiding (many of the leaders are in the office every day for younger employees to interact with). But “we’re struggling at the mid-levels,” this person said, noting how the agency hasn’t quite figured out how to enforce three days in the office without sacrificing flexibility, which is “also incredibly important in terms of talent attraction.” More news: US ad industry employment hits a new record high The missing mid-level “Our preference would be to get more of those mid-level managers in, as well,” the chief talent officer said. “That’s where we’re seeing [people arguing against coming into the office saying], ‘I’ve paid my dues. I know what I'm doing. I don't need to come in as much.’ What’s lacking is that day-to-day leadership and mentorship of the junior team members. The way adults learn is that 70/20/10 rule: 70% of it is through experiences on the job, through osmosis; 20% is interactions that you’re having with your colleagues; and 10% is the formal training, which is still impactful in a virtual setting, but maybe not quite as impactful.” 4A’s CEO and President Marla Kaplowitz said many of these issues have long existed. Agencies have always expected young talent to hit the ground running as soon as they land a job, but she said she has heard more complaints about the disconnect between entry-level and senior talent post-COVID lockdowns. She said it does feel like remote work has impacted training and the industry will likely see more agencies calling their employees back to the office four to five days a week. Leaders do recognize that people are just as productive at home, but they are struggling to figure out how to properly train entry-level employees and plan for succession when people are not in the office, she said. “Think about this business, it’s so relationship-driven,” Kaplowitz said. Training is “much harder to get in a visual format, being online.” That said, agencies demanding a full return to office will be met with resistance that could affect their recruiting abilities. Noting that the “genie is out of the bottle,” she said agencies have to figure out a better way to train in the more remote environment. Generational divide Some of what is happening now can’t be blamed on COVID or the remote environment—it is partially generational, the chief talent officer argued. Gen Z is notoriously more vocal about their demands than past generations, which will naturally lead to more friction. Gen Z marketers recently told Ad Age during a roundtable on the future of work that, as a generation, this group craves more mentorship and critical feedback from their employers than past generations. “We've empowered people to use their voices, which I think is a good thing,” the chief talent officer said. “It’s important that every level of employee can advocate for themselves and ask for what they need and set the boundaries for themselves that earlier generations never did. [Previous generations said] ‘Yes, I’ll have some more [work], please. I’ll have some more, please.’ I don’t know that we set healthy boundaries for ourselves.” Feeling forgotten “I have had no mentorship at my agency,” said a junior copywriter at a holding company agency who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution. “It’s a hands-off experience as a whole. I don’t mean to trash my agency, but there is not a lot of interaction with creative directors. There is no personal connection with the teams I work with. I don’t really report to anybody. I don’t have creative check-ins in terms of creative reviews or yearly reviews. When I have a question, I’m not sure who to go to; if I have anything urgent, I go to an executive creative director or maybe human resources.” This is the copywriter’s first full-time industry job after graduating from portfolio school in 2022. The person said due to this poor experience, she is considering a career switch. “It’s affected my love for advertising and made me question whether advertising is for me,” the junior copywriter said. Ad Age Gen Z Contributor Column We welcome Gen Zers to submit fresh takes exploring Gen Z within the ad industry Learn more here A second junior professional speaking to Ad Age on condition of anonymity said she landed her first job at a holding company agency in strategy and was “passed around from manager to manager” without much direction or feedback on the work she was doing. “I felt like I was floating,” this person said, who worked mostly in the office. “At that agency, I got forgotten a lot. There were meetings I would be forgotten to be invited to.” That experience led this person to switch departments; she is now a junior copywriter for a different holding company network, where she said she still feels “disconnected. There is no weekly manager meeting. I reach out when I need help, otherwise I skate by. You have to remind them that you’re there.” VCU Brandcenter Executive Director Vann Graves said he’s recently heard similar complaints from several graduates of the portfolio school program, “especially [from] those who started their jobs remotely during COVID.” “Every agency functions differently, and it takes some time to figure out the culture of each place; who are the leaders? Who are the influencers? I can’t imagine doing all of that remotely and doing it as my first job,” Graves said. Spread too thin “The juniors who have the best experiences generally have a supervisor, or one experienced person on their team, who takes the time and effort to mentor them, set specific expectations, schedule regular check-ins, etc,” Graves said. “I think most supervisors have the best intentions regarding mentoring the juniors on their team. However, they're spread so thin—mentoring takes a back seat to putting out client fires and ensuring they get the work done—which puts the onus on juniors to request regular check-ins or to ask if they can observe a shoot or edit or client meeting. Many juniors don't have the confidence to ask for those things, or the experience to even know they should ask.” Based on multiple interviews, this is a common problem for junior talent in the industry. And it is being blamed as one of the causes for high turnover and pushing young talent out of the industry. Worse, it comes after shops already lost talent to other industries during the Great Resignation of 2021. There is a turnover rate as high as 50% at some shops among entry-level professionals, Kaplowitz said. As such, some agencies have deprioritized investing in junior talent because they feel it’s a waste if those people are going to leave in under two years anyway. “You start thinking about where you want to invest,” Kaplowitz said. “You have to think about how much you want to invest in someone who maybe will go to another agency or a platform.” But there’s a catch-22: The more you invest in talent, the more likely they are to stay, she said. Lauren Tucker, founder and CEO of inclusion management consultancy Do What Matters, said holding companies are “notorious for elevating people who can do deals, but fail at managing people.” She said she’s had many conversations with C-suite leaders who make more than $1 million a year but claim they have no money to invest in talent management. “It’s a scandal. I’m not saying leaders shouldn’t make healthy salaries, but they are largely overhead,” she said. “Agencies would do well to start training their leaders on managing people.” The time crunch The nature of the ad business requires employees to be always on, either working on an existing client business or trying to pitch for a new account. Pitching is especially time-consuming and expensive for agencies, and talent-strapped shops say they don’t have the resources to properly staff up due to financial realities. This leaves a lot of executives without enough time to mentor and train entry-level professionals, said Jonathan Schoenberg, executive creative director and partner at Colorado agency TDA Boulder. “When people talk about resources, it’s so much more than financial, it's a time issue,” Schoenberg said. He said proper training “requires a lot of teaching and patience … today’s agencies are not set up for mentorship the way they were a decade ago.” Agencies have always chased profits and prioritized meeting client expectations above all else and, as such, mentorship takes a back seat. But Kaplowitz said today’s clients are demanding even more, given they are under pressure to prove ROI, and are requiring quicker timeframes for deadlines while not necessarily giving clear direction. She said agencies are complaining of more strained relationships and this is trickling down to junior staff, more so than it has in recent years. “The real challenge is when clients push back on more senior level staff, which can negatively impact the work with a less experienced team,” she said. The chief talent officer said she has observed senior leaders not realizing where there are gaps in the skillsets of younger talent that graduated in the pandemic. For example, junior employees at her agency didn’t know they needed to take something to record notes during a client meeting or to set an agenda ahead of the meeting; things that may seem second nature to people who grew up in the business and who observed that in an office when they were more junior. Let them suck Some juniors who make too many mistakes can get fired unfairly, said Momentum Worldwide Copywriter Trey Alston, who is happy in his job, but earlier in his career saw peers fired as entry-level professionals for “not ‘getting it,’” which he said is really “shorthand for saying they were not given the chance to develop.” “Give juniors the chance to suck,” Alston said. Alston said that one of the most robust training programs he underwent was at Meta, where he spent some time as a copywriter in 2022. “Before you touch anything, you have three months of training to understand the processes and culture of Meta,” Alston said. “I understand not every company can do that. Meta can afford for you not to do anything for months at a time.” Meta declined to comment. Alston said it would be game-changing if agencies could implement similar training and it might help reduce the high turnover rate the industry sees among young professionals. The chief talent officer said her team has been building out more robust internal training for employees who have just entered the workforce, including several months of rotations working across different departments of the agency. Since expanding on these programs over the past several years, the executive said the agency has improved its retaining of junior employees to an average of three years. “Three years is good in our mind,” the chief talent officer said. “If we invest in people so that they feel like they’re learning, they’re challenged on interesting assignments on a regular basis, they have the ability to grow and to work with people who they’re inspired by, they won’t be as quick to leave. Number two, the entry-level talent is less expensive, but we can bill at a somewhat higher rate. So, there’s actually an economic strategy there as well.” Recent news: Agencies still rely on portfolio schools for hiring Some solutions Wunderman Thompson has leaned on new technologies to help provide better mentorship and direction for its employees. The WPP agency introduced the “Thrive” app three years ago to help employees of all ages track their goals and map out a career path. It also has been testing a new AI-powered platform, “Career Pathways,” that assesses individuals’ skills and gives them options for where their next step could be; it also highlights relevant job openings within Wunderman Thompson. Thrive was specifically designed to give employees more direction in their careers and a response from having employees calling for more of that, said Dave Adelstein, Wunderman Thompson North American director of talent and learning development. More news: Inside ad agencies’ AI think tanks Career Pathways only launched this past summer, but already 50% of employees have used it to identify new opportunities and 65% of those users returned, said Adelstein. Ann Arbor, Michigan creative production agency Hook has found success with its internal training series, “Education Sprints,” created during the pandemic and led by Executive Design Director Mikell Fine-Iles. The sprints zero in on specific, basic skills required of creatives, including understanding a client brief and coming up with a campaign idea. Hook said it has solid employee retention numbers—53% of staff have been with the agency for four to five years—and it attributed that in part to its attention to internal training. Fine-Iles knows firsthand how important proper training and mentorship is to succeeding in the ad industry. He said he had jobs early on in his career where he felt like he was “just thrown into the deep. The industry moves so fast that there’s usually not much bandwidth for training.” Fine-Iles said to tackle that bandwidth issue, Hook made mentorship and training a group effort. “We’ve noticed that there are a lot of junior designers that need more mentorship. They need hand-holding. If their managers are super busy, [we say] ‘Who’s gonna provide that?’ What we really liked about Education Sprints is it took some of the pressure off individual managers and made it a department-wide initiative.” Copy veteran and branding consultant Vikki Ross argued that there should be no excuse for agencies to not properly train their junior employees. “I’ve heard from so many students that they get into an agency and then they’re just ignored,” Ross said. “Juniors don’t often continue to go on learning once they get the job and that can be a problem because then it reflects badly in reviews or they’ve not been given the chance to succeed. Then they’re expected to succeed anyway.” Added Ross: “Advertising is an amazing industry and it’s really exciting and it’s really fun and I don’t see why, if you’re knocking that out of juniors from the start, then what kind of work are you going to expect from them?” See our Year in Review stories here

Inside agencies’ struggle to train and retain junior-level employees

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