Are you trying to hire unicorns for your agency?

Agency owners tend to be good at a little bit of everything — that’s typically how they ended up as owners in the first place. They’re used to rolling up their sleeves and digging into client work, business development, management, and just about anything else that’s needed.

As they staff up their teams, they often look for people who can check several boxes at once. Part of it is because that’s what they do, and part of it is because that’s what they need.

Most small agencies don’t have the budget — or need — to hire lots of individual specialists.

But it is important to recognize the must-haves vs the nice-to-haves with new hires since someone who checks every box you’d like is pretty rare indeed.

In this episode, Chip and Gini talk about the unicorn hunting problem and what you can do about it as an agency owner.

Key takeaways

* Chip Griffin: “Be really careful about trying to find unicorns to fill the positions in your agency. You’re unlikely to find them, particularly at what you’re willing or able to pay for them.”

* Gini Dietrich: “In the past I may have wanted to find a jack of all trades employee, and that is probably not possible – and yet we still look for those people.”

* Chip Griffin: “It’s really important to understand when you are hiring, what is your primary need? And then, what are the nice-to-haves if you could?”

* Gini Dietrich: “When you can combine 1099 and full time employees, you can get what you need without breaking the bank.”

Related

* How to hire agency employees

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And this is our 200th episode. 200. 200. Unbelievable. So I’m not going to tell you what the topic is. We’ll figure it out right after this.

I was so fixated on the episode number I couldn’t remember what the topic was, I couldn’t give a more interesting segue. I had to remember what we agreed 30 seconds prior that we were actually going to talk about. So.

Gini Dietrich: Unicorn Hunters.

Chip Griffin: Unicorn Hunters.

Gini Dietrich: On our 200th episode.

Chip Griffin: Now we’ve got people completely either intrigued or confused or perhaps both.

Maybe both. Yeah. I mean, but when you’re going to have your 200th episode, you might as well talk about unicorns.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right. And hunting them. And hunting them. Sounds kind of fun. Let’s do it.

Chip Griffin: I mean, it’s either going to be an interesting topic, or it’s going to be proof that we’ve just lost our minds.

Gini Dietrich: I think we lost our minds a long time ago, and people are along for the ride.

Chip Griffin: Okay, that’s entirely possible, too. Yeah, I think that’s the case. Anywho, so, unicorns. Why are we talking about unicorns, Gini?

Gini Dietrich: Well, there are some of us,