Agencies fail to fill tech roles as talent crisis deepens

UK agencies are facing the same headaches as clients when it comes to hiring talent, with more than half struggling to recruit and of those nearly two-fifths say their vacancies make up 20% of their headcount.

So says a new study from Flume Digital Marketing carried out Bristol agency Purplefish which quizzed leaders from companies specialising in advertising, marketing, digital and media.

It follows a report by the World Federation of Advertisers which found that nearly half (48%) of all advertisers, agencies, ad tech companies and media owners worldwide think the industry is facing its “worst-ever crisis”.

The WFA revealed that data and analytics roles were the single most important capability to prioritise for the next two years, with 71% of advertiser and 64% of agencies agreeing, significantly ahead of ecommerce/retail media at 53% and 42% respectively.

However, according to the Flume study, web and app development roles are the positions agencies struggle to recruit for the most, with 40.5% of respondents naming these skills as the most difficult to attract, closely followed by SEO (38.1%), and PR (33.3%). A fifth of agencies who responded struggled to fill ecommerce roles.

When it comes to outsourcing roles to tackle the crisis, 55.2% cited cost as one of the key barriers. However, quality was still a significant factor, for just under a third of respondents (32.7%).

Meanwhile, recruitment challenges (12%), inhouse capacity vs workload/demand (10.3%), the effect on their reputation (10.3%) and skills they did not have inhouse (8.6%) were other factors mentioned.

Flume managing director Jacques Du Bruyn said: “Recruitment can be particularly difficult for agencies. Many are small-to-medium sized enterprises – so if they’re struggling to fill even a small percentage of their workforce, it can really affect their ability to deliver for existing clients or take on new work. If you’re having difficulty sourcing up to 20% of your workforce, that can have a significant impact on the sustainability of your business.

“Whether to build resource inhouse or outsource specialised skills is an ongoing debate for agencies, and one that doesn’t have a simple answer. An inhouse team is often seen as more controllable – but you have to be able to find (and retain) the right talent, a difficult task in today’s market.”