By Alex Segal | MD of InterTalent | Originally written for Dealmakers
First published in the Dealmakers newsletter, we’re delighted to share it with The Talent Times readership.
5 thoughts about… staff recruitment in talent agencies
One of the biggest recruiters in the talent management industry is SUMO.
Founded by Nick Brand, they’ve been around for many years, but I’d say that in the last 5 they’ve really cemented themselves as the go-to company for recruitment in my industry. They work with a huge range of companies, including InterTalent, as well as many of our competitors.
Hiring staff is one of the trickiest parts of my role as Managing Director. It’s complex. I’ve taken hundreds of interviews, and finding the right fit for your company is never straightforward. It’s about personality, culture and energy, as much as experience and skillset.
In a perfect world, you hire someone who you feel really confident about in the interview, and when they start the job, they prove to be exactly that. Bingo. But sometimes interviews can be deceptive. Who you met isn’t always who you get. Bringing someone on board only to realise, once they’re in the building, that it’s simply not the match you’d hoped for is really disheartening, which then leads to a whole situation you didn’t want to be in.
I’m 5 years into being MD, and hiring is just as difficult as it was when I took over in 2020, perhaps more so. We’ve got ten different areas of business, and the process of recruiting is different across our whole company. For example, hiring agents into our Scripted department is a completely different ballgame to hiring for our Gaming division.
Last month, SUMO released a Talent Management Recruitment Insights Report. For anyone running a talent agency, understanding hiring trends, workforce shifts, and retention strategies is essential. This report offers a rare, data-led overview of the UK talent management industry and lets all talent agencies benchmark their performance against the wider market.
For me, it was fascinating to step outside the bubble of my own business and see what’s happening across the industry, and not just in one world but across multiple areas of the industry.
It’s a reminder that while every agency has its own challenges when it comes to staff coming and going, there are clearly big-picture trends shaping all of us.
So here are 5 things I learned from SUMO’s Talent Management Recruitment Insights Report.
1. The talent agency growth book is slowing, but it’s not over
The UK talent management game is still strong. It’s up 11.34% this year. That’s down from the 12.94% peak earlier, it’s slowing, but it’s good to see it’s still up. More hires have landed in the last 6 months than in the previous 6, proving the market’s buzz remains. The flip side? It’s getting tougher out there. Turnover of staff is creeping up. Retention of staff isn’t easy nowadays, especially for the smaller agencies where the prospect of a move to a more established agency can be enticing.
If you run a talent agency, there’s a clear lesson: widen the pool of potential staff, keep your current staff motivated and empowered, and really focus on growing your own star agents from the ground up. Don’t rush it, timing is important for many reasons, but it will future-proof you in the long run.
2. Boutique talent agencies are struggling more than ever
For smaller talent agencies, turnover is now at 23.09% and the average tenure of a staff member has dropped to just 1.89 years. That’s really alarming. You basically have to create a whole new team every two years, which is unsustainable. The danger isn’t just losing people, it’s the constant stop-start on client relationships, culture, training, skillset and more. I hope to see things change soon. I hugely respect anyone who starts their own agency and builds it from the ground up. These kinds of stats make an already incredibly hard job even harder.
3. Creator/Social Media only talent agencies have fast growth and faster exits
Social first talent agencies are growing at a rate of 12.20% which is impressive and sign of focusing on an extremely lucrative side of the entertainment industry, but turnover of staff is a staggering 26.13%. And the average team member only sticks around for just 1.95 years. That’s crazy. Hiring one great team member who stays less than 2 years is a major disaster, but to have this become the norm is not good at all. It says something is really wrong. Is it the culture? Is it the lure of a more established/multi-faceted agency? I always feel frustrated if a team member leaves within 2 years. You invest your time, money and energy into someone you really like, and if they leave before they’ve reached anywhere near their potential then you’re ultimately you’re just training your competitor’s next star agent. The fast growth and fast exits within this world is eye opening.
4. Scripted agencies are the opposite…
Scripted agencies aren’t growing fast at all (4.33%), and they never do, but they’ve nailed the two stats everyone else dreams about: only 10.00% turnover and a jaw-dropping 6.27 years average tenure. In truth, I could tell you that from my own agency. My colleagues in my Scripted division have been with us the longest and most of the division have been with us a minimum of 6 years. We have a few over a decade. In Scripted, there is less movement, less differences between most of the agencies and to really build an outstanding client list you need to show consistency which only comes with staying in one place for a long time. The scripted world is old school, and that stability means that there’s never really been mass changes in the scripted industry for decades.
5. Growth without staff retention is just churn
SUMO’s insights make one thing clear: you can grow 10–15% a year and still be going nowhere if your staff don’t stick around. Every departure drags down morale, kills your time, and costs a lot of money in recruiting new people. Medium-sized agencies are the companies leading the way: 14.00% growth and tenures up from 2.59 to 2.82 years. The agencies winning right now aren’t just hiring well, they’re keeping hold of their team for longer. It takes a lot to make this happen. You have to create an environment that makes people want to stay and build a future.
