Advertising and creative recruiters
Search led by a talent executive who ran North America talent acquisition at Ogilvy and Wunderman Thompson — for the creative, account, and media seats agencies can’t afford to get wrong.
Schedule a ConversationAdvertising recruiters who have run agency talent teams
Most advertising recruiters have never sat inside an agency. Ours has run the talent function at two of them, at global scale. Our recruiting practice is led by Sara Guizzo, former Head of North America Talent Acquisition at Ogilvy and SVP of Talent Acquisition at Wunderman Thompson, where she led a team of fifteen across more than thirty offices. Before that she was Director of Talent Acquisition at POSSIBLE, and she founded SJG Talent, a boutique executive search practice for marketing, growth, and creative leaders. Twenty-five years, almost all of it on the inside of the WPP network.
That matters more than it sounds like it should. An agency search fails in specific, predictable ways: a creative director hired on the strength of a book that was really their team’s work; an account lead who interviews beautifully and cannot hold a difficult client; a strategist brought in at the wrong level because nobody scoped the seat properly. Those are judgment calls, and judgment comes from having made the hire, watched it land or fail, and lived with the result.
Sara has run C-suite and senior creative search, scaled teams through hyper-growth, and handled talent integration through agency M&A — the three moments when hiring is hardest and most consequential. When she tells you a candidate is a level below where you need them, that assessment is worth something.
The roles we recruit
We run full-cycle search across the creative, marketing, and client-facing seats that determine whether an agency’s work is good and whether its clients stay.
- Creative leadership — chief creative officers, executive creative directors, creative directors, associate creative directors
- Craft — art directors, designers, copywriters, motion and production talent
- Strategy — brand, communications, and digital strategists; planners; insights leads
- Account and client service — account directors, group account directors, client partners
- Media — media directors, planners, buyers, paid social and performance leads
- Growth and new business — new business directors, marketing and growth leads
- Agency operations — project management, resource management, production leadership
Search runs at every level from senior individual contributor through C-suite. We are most useful at director and above, where the pool is smaller, the assessment is harder, and a bad hire costs a year.
How an agency search actually runs here
We start by scoping the seat honestly. Half the searches that stall do so because the role was written as a wish list rather than a level — a creative director job description that is really asking for an ECD, at an ACD budget. We will tell you that before you spend three months discovering it.
From there: a sourcing strategy built on network rather than job-board volume, structured interviews with real scorecards, portfolio and book review that separates the candidate’s work from their team’s, reference checks that go beyond the names offered, and offer strategy that accounts for what agency talent actually negotiates on — title, reporting line, and the work, not just base.
We tell you when a candidate is wrong. A recruiter paid on placement has an obvious incentive not to; we would rather keep the relationship than close the search. And because The Good CFO sits inside your finance function as well, we can be straight with you about what a hire does to your comp bands, your utilization, and your margin before you extend the offer.
Finance, operations, and HR roles too
Creative and marketing search is the lead, but it isn’t the whole practice. We also recruit the finance and operations seats agencies struggle to fill — controller, finance lead, FP&A, staff accountant, HR and people operations — and there we have an unusual advantage: we have held those jobs. We can tell the difference between someone who can run an agency close and someone who has only worked in corporate accounting.
If you are not ready to hire full-time, a search doesn’t have to leave you exposed. Most of those roles are ones we can staff fractionally in the meantime — a fractional controller or HR lead covering the seat while the search runs, converting to a permanent hire when the timing and the budget are right.
What’s included
- Full-cycle search for creative, marketing, account, and media roles
- Role scoping, leveling, and compensation benchmarking
- Network-led sourcing, not job-board volume
- Structured interviews, scorecards, and portfolio review
- Reference checks beyond the names offered
- Offer strategy and negotiation support
- Onboarding handoff — or fractional coverage in the interim
- Finance, operations, and HR search alongside creative
Who we provide this to
We work exclusively with the industries we come from:
Common questions
What creative and marketing roles do you recruit for?
Creative leadership (CCO, ECD, creative director, ACD), craft roles (art direction, design, copywriting, motion, production), strategy and planning, account and client service, media planning and buying, growth and new business, and agency operations. We work at every level but are most useful at director and above, where the candidate pool is smaller and the assessment is harder.
Why use an advertising recruiter instead of a generalist or a job board?
Because agency hires fail in specific ways a generalist can’t see. A creative director’s book may be their team’s work. An account lead who interviews well may not hold a difficult client. Our practice is led by a talent executive who ran North America talent acquisition at Ogilvy and Wunderman Thompson — the assessment comes from having made these hires and lived with the outcome.
How do you assess a creative director’s portfolio?
We separate what the candidate did from what their team did — role on each piece, what they briefed versus what they made, and what happened to the work after they left. Then we test judgment rather than taste: how they’d approach a brief like yours, how they run feedback, and how they develop the people under them. Book review alone has never been a reliable predictor.
How long does an agency search take?
A well-scoped director-level search typically runs six to ten weeks from kickoff to signed offer; C-suite and executive creative searches run longer. The single biggest cause of delay is a role that was scoped as a wish list rather than a level — we push on that in week one rather than discovering it in month three.
Do you recruit outside Southern California?
Yes. Our network is national and, through fifteen years inside the WPP network, international. Most agency roles at director level and above now draw from a national pool regardless of where the office is, and we scope location and hybrid expectations up front so it doesn’t become a late-stage surprise.
Do you also recruit finance and operations roles?
Yes — controller, finance lead, FP&A, staff accountant, HR and people operations. It isn’t the lead of the practice, but it may be our sharpest edge: we have held those jobs inside agencies, so we screen for whether someone can actually run an agency close rather than matching keywords on a résumé.
What if we’re not ready to hire full-time yet?
Then a search doesn’t have to leave you exposed. Many of the roles we recruit are ones we can staff fractionally in the interim — a controller, HR lead, or analyst covering the seat while the search runs — so the work gets done now and you convert to a permanent hire when the timing and budget are right.
Let's talk about your Recruiting.
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