Creating Wild: How a Career Accelerator Transformed Talent

We’ve all had hard realizations that the marketing and advertising industry is broken in terms of finding, hiring, and training creative talent with diverse backgrounds and experiences. But, in 2022, I tried to fix it.

Creative Wild was born as a CT-based talent accelerator, aimed at changing the way we connected with, trained, and hired different, varying communities.

The accepted recruitment, hiring, and training method, whether paid internships or entry-level jobs, is to invest — time, money, energy — in a small group of candidates who fit certain molds — education, portfolio, experience. The result is most commonly those who are privileged enough to reach this point and get through. They went to the right schools, bolstered their training in post-graduate ad schools, knew the right people, invested in spec portfolios and content, and are financially stable enough to continuously pursue this profession over many years. And then we wonder why our industry continues to lack diversity.

Additionally, this “think small, hire small” recruiting method creates expectation and demand for only the best within this small pool of talent — perfection beyond possibility.

It’s believed that if we as an agency or company are to invest, we must minimize both our investment and risk, then we still hope for greatness. We call them rockstars, superstars, unicorns, Jedi, and ninjas, and we expect them to solve all our needs and deliver on all our demands. It’s quite foolish.

So, we asked ourselves: instead of a small funnel of talent, where we only invest in a few interns and entry-level creatives but expect so much, what if we could broaden the funnel to leverage more inexperienced passion, giving more people the opportunity and access needed to launch their careers?

From Outdated Paid Internships to a New Talent Accelerator

It was about time we let purpose and passion open doors and then see what people could do with their opportunity.

In our pursuit of making this happen, we met many young creatives who didn’t fit the traditional creative agency mold, and because of that they did what they had to do — they walked different paths and got other jobs. So, we had interested, passionate creatives who had to go do something else to pay the bills because the doors were already shut along the way. To join us would be a massive leap in faith in themselves and us. And that’s rarely cost-effective for a young professional.

That’s why we decided to create a flexible, paid entry-level program that let them stay in their jobs while also giving us a platform to meet, test, and train creative talent as they discovered us. In essence, we brought in more people for less time, on their schedules, giving them the chance to get open access, collaborate, learn, grow, and start their careers, alongside industry professionals, while giving us the chance to meet more great talent we could hire right into emerging roles.

Plus, we partnered with a CT-area creative talent agency that received direct access to this emerging pool of creatives, creating more access to place them faster to jobs, increasing opportunity, retaining more talent within the state, and providing access to more diverse talent for all CT companies.

Creating More Access For a More Creative Experience

Access was the key word, as in to give more people access across backgrounds, experiences, skillsets, curiosities, and communities — to open a door and actually let people in without the standard requirements or processes.

Instead of a gatekeeper mentality so many organizations employ, we took a “doormaker” mentality, ensuring we made actual efforts to create doors in different groups and communities.

But, while we didn’t require a portfolio, a degree, or any job experience, we did require passion. We opened the door, and have given access, but we did have one barrier to entry to join us: we tested them with a simple challenge. It wasto be creative in getting our attention.

How they got our attention was entirely up to them, and unique to them. We had video submissions, custom comics, poems, raps, a laser-etched snack charcuterie board, and even a case of beer with messages on each can so that when they’re lined up it tells their story.

Many applied, but interestingly only 1 in 30 applicants took the challenge, and that showed us all we needed to know about their passion and drive to be there and do the work, and that’s the only thing we really needed to know. We’d skip all the interviews and just teach them the rest.

Where Did the Exploration Go?

It’s still out there, but the expedition is lost. Whether in grant or material support, we found a severe lack of interest in corporate leaders taking the lead or providing support. But, there’s a new exploration occurring now. You can’t stop creatives from connecting, playing, and inspiring, and so the spirit of Creative Wild is now re-emerging here in central CT with new, diverse, passionate creators coming together to create The Center of Creativity here in the Northeast.

Lots to come, but if you want to join in, just say so. All those passionate are welcome!