The prerequisites of hiring quality creative talent

The following post is advice for hiring managers looking to ensure the creative talent they add to their team, whether in-house, in partnership or freelance has the chops to deliver on your creative needs.

The ability to note creative synergy

Creativity, in any art form, lives in the ability of a creator's talent to make agile observations that are spontaneous, direct, and unfettered by any traditional views on how things should be. Great creative talent has an ability to discover new potentials in a story or narrative that has already been used/told a thousand times before.

Moreover, great creative talent needs to note the flash of the unexpected that comes from a chance combination often stemmed from familiar assets and recognize that special element in a narrative, which runs counter to what its audience would have been lead to expect.

The ability to listen (and not listen) to data

Great creative talent should know how to use and leverage data; but equally and skillfully know when to ignore it and do the opposite to what is intuitive. The essence of good creative talent is in their aptitude for fresh observation by breaking through the crust of traditional viewing patterns.

The ability of learned experience

In apparent contrast to what I've just said, creativity also presupposes a great deal of experience and knowledge in the chosen field. Indeed, to turn the spark of an idea into an aesthetically sound advertising campaign takes a great deal of skill. Even selling the idea to a stakeholder, client or financier requires technical experience and a solid base of knowledge. Spontaneity and enthusiasm are not enough. It is rare that a creative with less than a few years of solid experience can publish content at better quality than those who've spent years and often decades honing the craft.

All creative masters have a blend of talent and skill. As case in point, experience will tell you that inspiration in the sense of a guiding vison prior to work is not necessary. The creation of a piece of content may well start with a familiar formula and yet the spark (or even a succession of sparks) only comes as the work proceeds, or is returned too over and over again.

The important marriage between Aesthetic Creativity and Technical Creativity

Apart from the creativity that expresses itself within the space of ideas and inspiration, there is also the inventiveness that leads to new solutions to such problems as scaling, project management, ROI, inciting action in the audience or managing financials. The question whether the two - we might call them aesthetic and technical creativity - should be separated has long been a superfluous line drawn within marketing teams and agencies where creative teams work siloed from business, sales and marketing committees. Suffice to say that technical creativity is, from a commercial point of view, every bit as valuable as the aesthetic kind. Indeed, aesthetic creative is not a guarantee for success. True commercial success on a piece of content really has to do with sensing how much newness and unconventionality any given assignment, audience or client will tolerate.

#TheTLDR

We can say then that good creative talent then needs to have the four following creative attributes:

1. Fresh thinking: Creativity is manifested largely in one's ability to harness the power of imagination and the prospective talent needs to show demonstrated ability/example to lace an idea of a story or campaign that does not exist yet in the mind's eye.
2. Compound thinking: Creativity in the ability to acknowledge data but note spontaneity of perception. Prospective talent need to demonstrate an ability to discover new aspects or re-envision new creative dimensions in long-familiar formats, tropes and narratives.
3. Problem solving: Creativity in the cleverness to conceive of new approaches to old problems, whether that's for an audience or an outcome.
4. Experience: Creativity in demonstrated dedication and skill that it takes to turn a vision into a memorable and successful piece of content/art.

The task for a hiring manager is to uncover these four attributes in the hiring process.