Why Ad Agencies Are Always Hiring

Open the careers page of almost any agency and the same roles sit there, posted and reposted, month after month. "Always hiring." And always hiring means always short — the seat keeps emptying. Why?

The easy assumption is that no one's applying. But agency account and strategy seats don't sit empty for lack of applicants. One opening pulls ten, twenty, fifty résumés. The problem is somewhere else.

Plenty of applicants, still an empty seat

Agency hiring rarely suffers from too few applicants. What's scarce is the *right* one.

Dozens apply to a single posting. A role asking for under three years of experience draws candidates with ten-plus, who know the level doesn't fit and send it anyway — unhappy where they are, or out of work and needing to land somewhere. By applicant count, "talent shortage" sounds absurd. A few years back, one well-known digital shop reported something like 40,000 applications a year and still said the real problem was how few of them it actually wanted to hire. (Anatomy of an agency talent crisis, Digiday)

Plenty of applicants and the right applicant are two completely different things. That's the gap the open posting never closes.

The posting describes someone who barely exists

Read the requirements and the "nice to haves" on an agency posting and you'll often find a description of a person who barely exists.

Junior postings especially. A role for someone with three years or less will ask for — or quietly expect — the ability to build a pitch strategy, a track record of winning new business, experience leading a presentation. Those are not things a junior typically has. A three-year strategist who can write the strategic direction of a pitch, who has helped win pitches, who can lead the room — that person is rare. Those abilities come with time, and with the person's own effort and study on top of it.

The requirements they write knowing better

There's a reason agencies know and don't say out loud. The people who meet those requirements aren't juniors; they're usually senior strategists eight-plus years in.

Writing a pitch to a certain level, having helped win them, having led presentations — that takes years to accumulate. But hiring that person means paying for that person, and a lot of agencies can't carry the salary — which is exactly why those people never apply.

So the requirements get stacked onto the junior posting. It's closer to a hope: *maybe there's a junior who happens to have all this,* or *maybe someone will take a pay cut to get in the door.* What the agency wants is eight years of ability at a three-year salary. It's trying to close that gap with a single job listing.

The proven ones have already left

The proven people — strong at building a pitch, seasoned at winning new business — don't apply to that seat.

Talent in this business flows one direction. A strategist who's built up experience moves to a bigger agency, goes in-house on a brand, or jumps to a startup — steadier, better paid, a clearer horizon. Juniors burn out on the hours and the pay and leave the industry entirely. Even when an agency trains someone up, by the time they're carrying their weight, they're off to somewhere better. (In-house agencies are pulling experienced talent out of the agency pipeline, Marketing Dive)

Small and independent shops feel it worst. Against the majors they're at a disadvantage on most fronts, so talent trickles in and drains out fast. Hire, lose, hire again. That's how "always hiring" gets made.

What the company actually wants

So it's worth asking the question differently. Does the agency want a *person*, or a person's *ability*?

The moment you write senior-level ability into a junior posting, you've already shown your hand. What you want isn't the candidate's years or their upside — it's the ability itself. You're filling a function more than a seat: taking a brief, setting the strategic direction, building the logic for why that direction is right. That front-end work — the part that eats days and swings wildly in quality from one person to the next — done reliably.

The catch is that the ability is bound to a salary. Want eight years of ability, pay eight years of salary — and as long as you solve it by hiring, you can't escape that pairing. So the postings repeat: senior ability wanted, pay "commensurate with experience," and the seat stays open.

What if the front end — setting that strategic direction — could be done without leaning on a hire? That's the question I started from when I began building the AI AE Synapsis. Before you post the next opening, it's worth pinning down what the agency actually needs.

Read more

• The same structure from the junior's side: Is hiring the only way to add capacity?
• Why building that strategy is so hard, and why no one teaches it: What separates a great pitch strategist?
• How Synapsis builds the strategic direction: Can AI write a creative strategy for a pitch?

Frequently asked questions

Why are ad agencies always hiring if so many people apply?

Because applicants and the *right* applicant are different things. One opening can draw dozens of résumés while the agency still can't find someone who can do the work it actually needs — usually building a pitch strategy, which takes years to learn. The seat stays open not for lack of applicants but for lack of the specific ability.

Why do junior agency postings ask for senior-level skills?

Because the ability the agency needs — writing a pitch, winning new business, leading presentations — usually belongs to senior people the agency can't afford. So it stacks those requirements onto a junior posting, hoping to get senior ability at a junior salary. The gap rarely gets filled.

Why can't agencies keep experienced talent?

Experienced strategists tend to move up to bigger agencies, in-house to brands, or out to startups — steadier and better paid. Small and independent shops lose people fastest, which keeps their postings permanently open.