for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, May 6-8 in Palm Springs.
Attracting and retaining talent is the No. 1 issue facing agencies, at least judging by the concerns shared by attendees at the Digiday Agency Summit in Austin, Texas, this week.
When asked to write down the biggest challenge they face, talent-related issues appeared the most times. For a big agency like Razorfish, which has 1,500 employees worldwide, a typical year sees one in four employees leave the agency. In China, that figure is 50 percent. Pete Stein, global CEO of Razorfish, said employee churn is simply the cost of doing business.
“Recruiting has to be a core competency,” Stein said. “You have to have a very clear recruiting strategy. We have a very robust intern program. Every year you have 80 or 100 interns who come through in the U.S. alone. We hire about 60 percent of those. You need to also focus on retention. If you can keep it down to 20 percent versus 25 percent, that’s a lot of people you don’t need to re-recruit and retrain.”
What’s more, agencies like Razorfish now face more competition than ever for digital specialists, not just from other agencies but also from the likes of Google, Facebook and startups that seemingly pop up left and right.
“You’re competing with agencies, publishers, clients, ad tech, startups,” he said. “Everybody needs the talent in this room. There is a talent crunch.”
Watch a three-minute video clip below in which Stein discusses the talent challenge and how Razorfish builds a culture that attracts and retains the best talent.
View From the Top first 3 min from Digiday on Vimeo.
More in Marketing
X upgrades its ad platform in long overdue overhaul
This is the platform’s biggest update in its history, having previously been criticized for not keeping up with peers on performance.
Possible Day 2: Breaking down agentic’s impact on marketing, including multicultural
Day 2’s interviews featured Molly Battin of The Home Depot, Kirk McDonald of Sundial Media Group, and Omnicom Media’s Joanna O’Connell.
Meta opens its ad ecosystem to third-party AI tools
The platform is introducing Meta ads AI connectors, as part of its broader AI push to make campaign management easier.