Square Peg?

I am recruiting and I have a very strong candidate but I am not sure that they will fit in with the culture of our agency. How important is this versus the skillset they could bring? We are desperate and I know the candidate will work well with the client.

Difficult situation indeed but if you can recognise this at such early stage then you are sensing problems down the line. You need to think about 3 months hence and what will your colleagues will be saying about this person and who will be saying it. Will the opinion formers in the agency be on his/her side? What will the board say about them? It seems to me that you can sense what they will be saying.

It all really depends on whether you are trying change the culture of the agency yourself and that person will be driver of such change. However no one person can shoulder such weight. It would have to be as part of a change which management and the agency had bought into.

We saw these culture shifts some time ago when comms planning or data planning were instituted into the fabric of certain agencies. More recently with digital being integrated into more traditional agency skills. There was a good deal of pain and failure in certain cases where the combination was an unproductive cocktail. Networks are littered with such memories.

Back to your personal situation, my recommendation would be to keep looking and source with a freelancer. I took someone on who I knew was of a different cut to the agency and regretted it because I spent more time trying to mop all the debris it caused. I had carefully involved the board and all the key players but I still felt it reflected on my decision-making than theirs. So keep looking. You may have to get colleagues’ recommendations rather than cvs from recruitment consultants as currently it seems as though good people are not actively looking –they are battening down the hatches – but they could be tempted by an exciting challenge.

Gone Cycling

360 or Third Degree?

We are being asked by the client to co-fund our agency performance evaluation by a specialist consultancy. I don’t think it is a bad idea but what is the norm? Do you think we should be paying?

Funnily enough I am in a similar situation with a client of mine (maybe the same client?). To answer your first question, my experience is that larger clients apart from some of the FMCG clients will have an agency evaluation process in place but they tend to do it in-house. And it is only when there is an issue, do they bring in an outside specialist.

I think if they expect you to jointly co-fund the evaluation, you should have a say as how it is done and who is used. Now this may cause the client a problem because presumably they want to use a common approach and company across all their agencies. However, surely your money gives you a voice? And consequently the evaluation company should see you as an important stakeholder.

In essence, as long as it is not horrendously expensive, there are more pros for independent evaluation than cons. There is more objectivity (especially when linked to performance bonus) and such consultancies are constantly enhancing their methodologies to evaluate service companies and they also have access to a database of market standards through their work with other agencies and clients.

All these things considered you have to weigh up the cost of co-funding and what it can bring your agency – extra performance bonus, stronger reputation and/or a clearer direction for you to improve your service. Maybe it will also give a few pointers as to how the clients could polish up their act?!