EP 456: What agency owners get wrong about recruiting top talent with Michael Palma

07/01/24 • 48 min

The glamor of working for an agency has worn off somewhat since the 80s and 90s. Markets are more saturated, salaries have stagnated, and recruiting top talent has become more difficult — especially since Covid.

As agency owners, that means we have to adjust our process to find and hire top talent to meet our clients’ needs. To help us understand all the changes we’re facing today, I sat down to talk with Michael Palma, an agency recruiting and business development expert.

With decades of experience in the industry, he’s seen all the shifts and changes that have occurred in the hiring process for both agency owners and employees. In this episode, he shares what agency owners often get wrong about finding top talent and why finding top talent is so hard nowadays. He also helps us understand how agencies can find right-fit clients and right-fit employees to match our clients’ needs.

Michael is essentially an expert agency matchmaker who has his finger on the pulse of the most pressing issues agency owners face, and helps us navigate them all with a “humble swagger.”

A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

What it means to “walk with a humble swagger”
What agency owners often get wrong about recruiting top talent
The downhill trend in finding right-fit agency employees
How to find be confident without arrogance
What’s making it difficult for recruiters and agency owners to find top talent
Challenges in salaries in equity for agency employees
Knowing what you want in a candidate before you write a job description
How Covid has changed new business for agencies
Strategies that win over a client
Where agencies should be investing in their own biz dev and growth

Michael is essentially an expert agency matchmaker who has his finger on the pulse of the most pressing issues agency owners face, and helps us navigate them all with a “humble swagger.”

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

What it means to “walk with a humble swagger”
What agency owners often get wrong about recruiting top talent
The downhill trend in finding right-fit agency employees
How to find be confident without arrogance
What’s making it difficult for recruiters and agency owners to find top talent
Challenges in salaries in equity for agency employees
Knowing what you want in a candidate before you write a job description
How Covid has changed new business for agencies
Strategies that win over a client
Where agencies should be investing in their own biz dev and growth

Previous Episode

EP 455: The trends that affect agency owners and employees in 2024 with Drew and Danyel McLellan

In the last solocast, we reviewed the agency trends that most affected agency AGI in 2023. This week, we’re pulling back the curtain on the major trends rocking agency owners and their teams in 2024 — and giving you tips to stay ahead of them.

We’ll give you a reality check on misguided expectations around agency valuations and sales. And we’ll explore why daily timesheets and utilization metrics are so crucial for retaining your rock star team members.

Another big trend we unpack is moving back towards more in-office collaboration and nurturing agency employee fatigue through meaningful face time, employee retreats, and using in-office time more intentionally.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve and proactively build your agency’s future, don’t miss this deeper look at the key trends shaping the industry this year and beyond. And to catch up on all the other trends we unpacked, be sure to check out Part 1 from last month’s solocast.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

Why a COO role is becoming increasingly popular, even with smaller agencies
Making the right decisions around selling your agency — or buying another one
Why taking a smaller salary as an agency owner isn’t always better
Hybrid work trends for agency owners and employees
How contractors and freelancers can fill in worker gaps
The continuing importance of keeping accurate daily timesheets
What helps reduce agency employee fatigue and what’s causing it
What agency owners are going to spend time and money on in 2024

Next Episode

EP 457: Building the ideal agency-CMO relationship with Liza Adams

CMOs have a lot on their plates, and similar to agency owners, their role can be lonely in the C-Suite. Because of this, CMOs rely heavily on agency partnerships to keep them in the know.

To help us understand the crucial role of agency-CMO relationships, Liza Adams is giving us an inside look at what it’s really like to be a CMO—what they value in strategic partnerships, what they need from agencies the most, and why agencies are an integral part of doing their job well.

This episode is packed with candid, practical advice from Liza for agencies to nail it in their client-agency relationships. When you boil it all down, if your CMO is happy, your agency will be happy. And that alone will carry you far in your business journey.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

What agencies don’t understand about the CMO role
Getting out of the competition mindset against other agencies
What a CMO wants from an agency-CMO relationship
The difference between an agency that gets recommended by a CMO and ones who don’t
How AI is changing the world from a CMO’s perspective
Should agencies be trying to experiment with AI for clients?
How AI will change the CMO role in the future
How agencies can help CMOs do their jobs better