Talent Trends 2025: Hiring in Marketing, Media & Creative

 24th Apr 2025

Last year, Pivotal London hosted Talent Trends, a roundtable for Talent Acquisition leaders to discuss key trends affecting hiring and staff turnover across marketing, media and creative roles, and to share valuable insights on hiring metrics, new tech, and working patterns.

To set the scene, the roundtable began with a presentation analysing the economic outlook, and several key indicators are pointing to a favourable hiring environment. For the first time in three years, inflation has reached the Bank of England’s target of 2%. This stability in inflation provides a predictable environment for businesses to plan and execute their growth strategies with confidence.

The presentation also highlighted specific data points from the CIPD’s Good Work Index, which detailed the hiring intentions of companies over the next months. According to the report, 67% of employers are planning to recruit within the next quarter. This high level of recruitment intent suggests a robust job market and a strong demand for talent across various sectors. Furthermore, 33% of employers are looking to make growth hires, indicating that a significant portion of businesses are not only maintaining their current workforce but are also planning to expand. However, 38% of employers have identified hard-to-fill roles, pointing to existing skills shortages in the market. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for talent acquisition professionals to find innovative ways to source and attract the right candidates.

LinkedIn data was presented to provide insights into current trends on employee attrition and their implications for recruitment. Attrition rates have dropped significantly since the peak of the "Great Resignation" in early 2021. During this period, employees left their jobs for better opportunities and substantial pay raises. Since late 2022, attrition rates have stabilised, marking the "Great Stay". Employees are now more inclined to stay with their current employers, leading to a period of low turnover. However, historically, periods of low attrition are often followed by spikes in turnover. LinkedIn suggests that 75% of Brits are looking to move jobs in the next 12 months, signalling a potential wave of resignations that could create a bustling recruitment market in 2025.

Growth Hires and Backfilling Roles

The roundtable discussion began with an enquiry into the nature of current hiring practices. When asked who is expecting to make growth hires over the next quarter, 30% of attendees indicated they were, while all participants expected to be backfilling roles.

One guest highlighted that currently, their growth was contingent on winning new business accounts. Without new accounts, the focus remained on backfilling roles. Another participant, representing a media company, shared their experience of shifting from print to digital, necessitating diversification into video and podcasts to compensate for declining print revenue. This strategy led to the growth of podcast teams and increased demand for product managers.

A representative from a media company detailed their efforts in consolidating their various agencies into a single office to foster collaboration. This move included the integration of a data and tech offering, which required the recruitment of 100 roles across the US and Europe. The discussion also touched on the diversification of growth areas, such as commerce, data, and technology. These emerging areas represented the focal point of hiring for many of the guests at the roundtable, particularly for growth hires.

The conversation then shifted to automation and its impact on hiring. A participant mentioned that one agency had attempted to reduce the number of expected hires by relying more on automation, but the technology often fell short, necessitating additional hires. The trend towards using international hubs in countries like Poland and India was also noted, particularly among tech companies, whilst another guest noted of Portugal being a hub for cheaper labour.

Looking at further trends, one guest noted that consumer businesses, particularly in the D2C sector, have significantly benefited from recent economic trends, although this growth is not universal. The guest observed that only about 10% of the companies they work with are experiencing substantial growth driven by strong demand, while a majority are expanding at a slower pace.

Talent Quality and Metrics

The discussion on talent quality revolved around the challenges of defining and measuring it. One guest mentioned that their organisation measures talent quality based on whether employees pass probation and remain with the company for more than a year. They also use hiring manager surveys to assess satisfaction with new hires, helping to inform on future hiring strategies.

However, there was a consensus that these metrics could be limiting. One participant pointed out that an employee who has a significant impact within 11 months might still be considered a low-quality hire if the metric is purely time-based. Another noted that the quality of management and other factors can heavily influence an employee's success, potentially skewing data around talent quality.

A recurring theme was the importance of meaningful interpretation of data. While many companies collect data on employee performance and satisfaction, it is often underutilised unless it highlights negative trends. This offers an opportunity for more proactive approaches to using data in talent management.

Insights from the recent RecFest provided additional context into the current state of talent acquisition and the challenges faced by recruitment teams. There has been a noticeable lack of investment in recruitment and talent teams recently, with an expectation to deliver more with fewer resources. Moreover, candidates have quickly adopted Generative AI, allowing them to apply for numerous roles simultaneously. While this increases the volume of applications, it also impacts the quality of candidates, putting additional pressure on talent teams to effectively screen and select the right talent.

Hybrid Work and Employee Engagement

The discussion also touched on a topic that remains essential for many employees and candidates, namely hybrid work models and their impact on employee engagement. One guest noted that early-stage companies often prefer in-office work to foster innovation and culture. However, there are also Founders that fully commit to remote working and exclusively operate remote teams, firmly believing that it is the future.

There was agreement that hybrid work models require thoughtful implementation to balance organisational needs and employee preferences. Incentives like free lunches and team-building activities were mentioned as tactics to encourage in-office attendance. The roundtable consensus was that the flexibility of working from home remains a significant factor in employee satisfaction and retention. The benefits of in-person work were also noted, as one guest shared an example of a colleague from Sweden who experienced a significant improvement in efficiency. When they needed to ask a question, they received an immediate answer by being physically present in the office. Normally, this would have taken considerably longer had the enquiry not been made in-person.

A pattern that arose in the discussion was that talent teams are often one day a week less in the office compared with other core business divisions. Whilst the most common working pattern is three days in and two days WFH, many of the roundtable guests stated that they work two days a week in the office. To learn more, Pivotal's Salary and Work Insights Guide 2025 analyses broadly across Marketing. Media and Creative the hybrid working split, from nearly 800 surveyed professionals.  

The roundtable also explored the concept of ‘quiet quitting’, where employees remain in their roles but disengage, leading to lower productivity without increasing attrition rates. This phenomenon presents a new challenge for managing team capacity and ensuring ongoing engagement.

Appealing to Gen Z and Finding Diverse Talent

The roundtable guests discussed methods and successes in appealing to Gen Z candidates. One person mentioned insight from RecFest, where someone discussed engaging younger candidates by using voice notes, who often use this as a means of communication themselves.

Indeed, Gen Z is less likely to use LinkedIn, and they spend much more time on other social media platforms. This necessitates a shift in recruitment strategies to effectively reach and engage this demographic. One guest mentioned that certain roles can perform well being advertised on TikTok rather than on traditional job platforms, for example content creator roles.

Finding diverse talent was also discussed at the roundtable. One guest discussed their six-month internship program designed to bring underrepresented talent into the business. This is moving away from relying solely on LinkedIn and standard job websites, which typically attract candidates with university backgrounds. Instead, they collaborate with a platform that partners with various charities around Manchester, helping young adults aged 18 to 25 enter the workforce without a university degree.

Additionally, another participant shared their partnership with the Brixton Finishing School, an organisation dedicated to supporting underrepresented talent. They take on two interns annually for a six-month period, rotating them through different teams in two-week intervals. This approach allows the interns to gain comprehensive experience and helps the business identify potential hires who fit well with their teams.

Finally, one guest mentioned that their agency had partnered with Visible Start, which focuses on helping women aged 45 and above re-enter the workforce. Given that their organisation predominantly consists of younger employees, diversifying by hiring older individuals is a strategic move to broaden their workforce's demographic composition. Further strategies for supporting women in the workplace are discussed in our International Women's Day 2025 campaign on the marketing gender pay gap, featuring insights from female marketing leaders.

AI and Tech

The discussion on talent teams and capacity management brought to light the challenges of managing team workloads and the potential of AI tools to streamline recruitment processes.

One AI tool discussed was Metaview, an AI notetaking software that records and transcribes candidate and client calls with a high degree of accuracy. Another benefit of Metaview is that, like a GPT, it can recall information through being asked questions, allowing users to analyse and dissect the conversation. An obvious advantage of this tech for talent acquisition professionals is being able to focus more on listening and having better conversations, rather than on manual notetaking.

Another guest mentioned that their company previously used Hinterview, a platform that allows candidates to record videos of themselves. However, this had received pushback from candidates, as some were put off applying for jobs by having to record a one-way video of themselves as part of a hiring process.

Next Steps

The roundtable provided insights into the current challenges and strategies in talent acquisition, and how TA professionals can equip themselves to succeed in H2.

The economic conditions for the second half of 2024 are promising, with positive signals indicating a stable environment. Businesses are gearing up for increased hiring, and the potential for high attrition rates presents an intriguing opportunity for talent acquisition professionals.  To help you make the most of this, our recruitment agency is ready to support you and help you secure the very best candidates for your organisation.

To discuss your hiring needs and how we can support your growth ambitions, don’t hesitate to contact us.