For some global companies, such as Coca-Cola and Booking.com, hiring an in-house creative team for regular needs, while partnering with an outside agency for more unique creative requests, often makes the most sense. This is due to the sheer volume of branded content they need to produce, a process that can often be more efficient with a dedicated brand team. If you're trying to decide whether your organization needs to bring creative in-house, or if you want to learn more about life at an agency with an in-house team, this chapter is for you.

THE CHALLENGES OF BUILDING A GREAT TEAM

During Killer's first two years as a company, we tested more than two hundred freelance designers just to find a reliable team of five. While roughly a dozen met our expectations, availability was hard to come by for most. This consistent churn of talent grew impossible to manage and it quickly became clear that the only solution was to build an entirely in-house team.

We had already brought much of our talent in-house, ensuring we had writers and researchers, project managers, and content marketers on staff. This provided dedicated attention for our clients and ensured further success in the work we did. But an in-house team comes with additional costs in the form of salaries, benefits, infrastructure, and more. To manage those costs, we knew we had to grow our resources slowly, and chose to take our time building an internal team of designers, animators, and developers.

In the process of testing hundreds of freelancers, we found that many designers struggled with visually communicating information and instead relied heavily on text to bring meaning to their design choices. Others could not visualize data appropriately, refused to make requested edits, or took far more time than most to create compelling illustrations. We realized that we were approaching the creation of our design team too broadly in assuming that great portfolios should be the only measure of a great visual communicator.

Such an assumption, we learned, is akin to expecting that anyone who can cook a great meal can also win a Michelin star. This doesn't mean that their craft is any less valuable—it simply means that different experiences require different types of culinary artists. In the same way that chefs specialize in different cuisines and cooking styles, each designer will bring a unique array of skills to the table.

FINDING A TRUE VISUAL COMMUNICATOR

The art of visual communication requires a unique blend of natural capabilities and focused training. Great visual communicators must understand the psychology of speaking visually while also honing their approach to best apply all associated rules. We knew that we could find designers with the necessary talent to deliver great visual communication, but to mold that talent properly and best serve our clients, we needed to provide one-on-one training.

When searching for a great visual communicator, a portfolio can give clues to their natural abilities. Knowing this, we started looking for designers with portfolios that showed a minimum of the following characteristics:

• A mastery of typography and page layouts.
• At least one project featuring accurate data visualizations.
• A portfolio piece outlining their process that at least included a phase for sketching or wireframing prior to starting design.
• Illustrations across a wide variety of styles, including character illustrations, full scenes, and iconography.

While this helped to narrow the playing field, we knew that extensive training would still be required to build the right team. We needed to hire designers who would be amenable to this training, have the maturity to manage feedback respectfully, and have the confidence to communicate their design choices to clients. As you consider building an in-house team, a candidate's creative abilities should carry weight, but their values and interpersonal skills must be equally important.

Unlike in the case of a freelancer, the team you bring in-house will work beside you every day. Personality conflicts are few and far between when everyone is remote, but they can easily fester in close quarters.

Because of this, we follow a very strict process when hiring for our in-house team, and never skip the following steps:

• Test attention to detail: Think back to the rules of visual communication. Almost all of them require attention to key details such as color choices, fonts, small visual cues, and audience expectations. Every role played in the creation of a visual strategy requires an eye for detail to ensure all design choices adhere to the needs of both the organization delivering the content and the audience viewing that content. In addition, most content will require the input of stakeholders. Managing and responding to that detailed feedback can mean the difference between a successful outcome and an utter failure. Find a way to test any candidate's attention to detail up front. This is not an easy skill to teach, so hiring someone that already has this talent honed will be ideal.
• Test problem-solving skills: Creative content often serves as the solution to a problem. Maybe an organization needs to share an important message with its employees, or maybe a new product offering isn't getting the attention it deserves; whatever the problem may be, it drove the need for visual media. But that's just the first problem that a creative team faces. Over the course of a project, they're sure to encounter myriad problems as they work to put the puzzle pieces of their visual content together. Put candidates through problem-solving exercises to understand how solutions-driven they are before hiring them.
• Test ego and sensitivity: Creative work is hard. Extremely hard. Designers dedicate dozens of hours to single pieces of content in ways that are emotionally and physically exhausting. When this happens, it can sometimes be hard to hear constructive criticism. To avoid hurting feelings, stakeholders can sometimes sugarcoat feedback, which may help a designer's self-esteem, but will ultimately stand in the way of a successful outcome for the project. Make sure your creative team can lean into criticism, using it as an opportunity to collaborate with stakeholders on solutions, rather than taking the path of least resistance.
• Test values: Companies that hire and fire by their values see far more success than those that don't. When employees share the same values, they solve interpersonal conflicts by leveraging those same values. However, when values are not a key consideration of the organization, conflicts are more prevalent. It would be a shame to bring on great talent only to lose them after six months. But this is the typical tenure of designers at organizations, in large part because personal conflicts hinder their job satisfaction.

THE COST OF IN-HOUSE

Building an in-house team requires a big investment of time and money, the returns of which can only be realized if the demand for your team's time is consistently high. If you don't have enough work to fill a full-time role, and cannot hire someone part-time, then you're better off hiring a freelancer or working with an agency partner. If, however, you have a predictable influx of content needs, then this investment could save you money in the long term.

When building an in-house team, you must consider the following expenses beyond the cost of a salary or hourly rate:

• Payroll taxes: While freelancers are 1099 contractors who have to pay their own taxes, an in-house team must be given a W2, which means the employer will be paying a portion of their taxes. Add at least 10 percent to the overall salary to budget for these taxes.
• Benefits: Check the laws in your state to determine what benefits must be provided to your team. Most states require that employers pay, at minimum, a portion of health care (usually 75 percent), provide paid time off, and allow for paid family and medical leave.
• Infrastructure: While your “in-house” team might be a group of employees all working remotely, it's far more likely that they'll be working from your office. This means you'll need to invest in desks, chairs, whiteboards, tablets, computers, utilities, among other expenses. Be prepared to take on those costs and expect them to grow as your team grows.
• Software: To create great visual content, you'll need the Adobe Creative Cloud at minimum. This comes at a monthly cost that can be negotiated based on team size. Other great software and services to consider are outlined in Appendix B of this book.
• Unemployment insurance: Some states require a percentage be paid per employee paycheck to cover unemployment benefits. Others require that you find a private provider for this insurance. In either situation, you will need to pay into unemployment for each person you hire.
• Employment practices liability (EPL) insurance: While businesses require many different insurance policies, EPL insurance rates are directly correlated with the number of people an organization employs. So as you grow your team, you must consider how that could impact your rate. If you're doing work on behalf of clients outside your organization, you'll need solid insurance to protect your company in the case of a lawsuit as well as to protect your clients. If you're only doing internal work, your insurance needs are probably already taken care of by your employer.
• State and city taxes: Tax law varies throughout the country, but some cities and states include a head tax, which is typically a flat rate charged per employee per year.

These examples assume you are hiring in the United States. If you're hiring elsewhere, it's likely these won't all apply to you, but additional costs based on your location may apply. And regardless of where you live, you'll need to pay your team a predictable wage, whether hourly or salaried. Set your pay rate based on the cost of living in your location.

When building an in-house team of creatives, you should try to establish competitive salaries so you can attract the best talent. Check sites like Salary.com and GlassDoor.com to get an idea of typical pay rates in your city or region.

In addition to finding a team that fits your needs, you'll need to ensure your processes and communication style fit their needs. Creative teams that work in-house for a single brand or family of brands can often feel taken advantage of, or can grow indifferent if they're not consistently challenged. As a result, they often find themselves jumping from company to company to continue their own professional development. You will need to regularly hone your process to avoid these issues, which are among the top reported challenges that in-house creative teams face today (Figure 15.2).