The good news is that many clients actually want staff who have vast agency experience, according to Aquent senior marketing recruiter, Marcus Field. “Clients look at acquiring agency staff because of the increasing demand for skills such as multiple project management, campaign management and stakeholder management – skills that are fostered in agency businesses.

The variety of clients that agency roles expose employees to can also be appealing to clients wishing to benefit from the best practice marketing ideas from other businesses or industries, “ Field says.

WHY THE SWITCH?

In terms of the motivation behind employees making the change, he says a lot of it has to do with control and accountability. “People are drawn to client-side roles because the scope for end-to-end marketing accountability is generally greater than in agency-side roles. Traditionally the account manager in an agency-side role steps into that process later and steps out earlier. Remuneration is also often a factor in the appeal of client side roles which dependent on seniority, generally pay at a higher level than agency roles,” says Field.

Talent2 recruitment consultant, Carol Pedersen, adds that many employees make the switch because they want a change in lifestyle. “I think there comes a time in your advertising career, like a fork in the road, and you have to make the decision to keep following the same path or head in another direction. Working in an agency is very intense, with very long hours, and I think there is a general perception that working on the client-side will not be as stressful.

This is only a perception, however, as my experience is that the working environment client-side, especially in regards to working in telcos, is quite similar,” Pedersen says.

Field says when a client is looking to employ someone from an agency background they need to determine “What value will the person bring to the business?”

“As such, candidates need to demonstrate their potential by presenting results in hard numbers, be they market share, revenue or acquisition etc. Creativity is tantamount to marketing performance, but clients will want to see that the candidate’s recommendations drive results,” Field says.

He adds it is also important that the candidate demonstrates their understanding of the business context of their activity, that is, what they set out to achieve for the client. He says the best way to do this is to keep a brief portfolio of work, detailing their involvement in the end-to-end marketing process, from identification of business issues right through to results delivered.

“Clearly, the easiest transition for the prospective employee will be with a business with which they share an affinity of product, customer, communications or distribution marketing experience,” Field says.

Optus consumer marketing consultant, Matt Siddons, worked as an account manager at ad agencies such as Rapp Collins, Grey, Simon Richards Group and BHWG, in both England and Australia, before making the switch to the client side at Optus where he has been for the past year. Luckily, a friend was working at Optus and alerted Siddons to a job. “The position turned out to be right up my alley, because it was DM with a customer management focus. Even though I didn’t have any telco experience, I had a foot in the door, and now here I am,” Siddons says.

His advice for people is to play to their strengths, and to concentrate specifically on the areas they believe they excel in. “People who have worked in agencies also have heaps of contacts and an inner-working knowledge of them, so this is another advantage. When you work client-side you are more involved in the product and business process, but this is all learnable stuff.”