Why Are Agencies Reluctant To Hire Clients?

I would like someone to explain why ad agencies don’t hire more people with client experience and why they are reluctant to hire back agency people who have left the business for a period of time to spend being a client (or doing something else).

While there is no question that a huge percentage of the client-side people I meet do not belong at an agency, there are many who do, but, no matter how hard they try, agencies will not hire them. When I ask corporate people why they want to go to or why they think they would be good at an agency, a many tell me that because of their backgrounds they know what clients want and need from an agency and that they know how to fill that need.  While this response seems like a good one, the irony is that is the totally wrong answer.  Any good agency manager knows what their clients need and want.  They don’t need an ex-corporate person to tell them what they already know.

The right answer is that the person who is looking for an agency job loves advertising, loves the creative process and can do it better than most of the people who have serviced them. Many of the people who answer this way have great stories and case histories of how they have helped their ad agencies develop great advertising.  

Sadly, quite a few of the people who have this right answer just cannot get hired. Many cannot even get an interview at an agency.  HR people and agency managers have said to me that their agency simply doesn’t or won’t hire clients.  I have had these same people tell me that a candidate I wanted to introduce has been out of the business for too many years (Three? Five?  Ten or more?) to return to an agency. 

I have never understood the blanket condemnation of people who didn’t start out at twenty-two years old at an agency.  Sure, there are a few account and creative people who, by the force of their own personality, have gotten hired by an ad agency despite not having agency experience.  And there are a few client-types who have been hired by agencies because they have known and worked with agency management.  But for the most part people who want to join agencies from companies are almost always rejected out of hand.

This is absurd for a number of reasons.  

Why preclude someone who might genuinely be able to make an insightful creative or strategic contribution?  This is especially true recently with more and more companies taking over the strategic role from their agencies.  (Look at the number of consultants who are being hired to perform what was once an ad agency function.  People working for the consulting firms are often client-types who wanted to get back to advertising; since they could not get to an agency, their revenge is to go to a consulting firm and manage agencies.)

Why preclude someone who just may know the client’s business far better than the agency?

Why preclude someone who might have instant credibility in the corporate “C” Suite?

Advertising has become a highly numbers oriented business because of digital.  Agencies can use all the help they can get, no matter where it comes from.