5 Reasons Your Team Needs an Artist
If you’re wasting valuable hours trawling job boards – again – looking for the best and brightest candidates, here’s a tip: You might be looking in the wrong direction.
Let’s do a quick exercise. I invite you to pause, look up from your screen, and take a moment to gaze at the world around you. This world is a complex one, not without its challenges. Challenges that require businesses to think critically, adapt, and rewrite the rules in order to grow. Now take a peek at how every other company is approaching their hiring.
Look familiar?
The companies that will lead in the future recognize that a different approach is needed. Moreover, they realize that a different type of team member is needed.
So where’s a hiring manager to look? If you ask us, the most logical direction is towards the class of humans who have been adapting and innovating from the beginning of time.
Or as we like to call them, artists.
Here are five ways hiring an artist can transform your team:
- You want to humanize your company.
In this world of efficiency-driven hyper-automation, consumers are demanding more from the companies they support. Similarly, discriminating job seekers are holding employers to higher standards. In today’s economy, people desire to share an authentic human connection with the companies they buy from and the teams they work with.
Artists are equipped with inherent fluency in emotional intelligence that isn’t taught in a classroom. It can’t be taught. This skill must be developed and refined in working through challenges in relationship to others. (And trust us, any artistic endeavor is layered with challenges at every turn.)
Artists show up on day one ready to problem solve and collaborate with their colleagues and communities, because it’s inherent to who we are and what we do. Artists are easy to work with because we understand the power of pursuing a common goal and the imaginative creativity that is required for growth and change. Artists infuse every interaction – whether with an internal team or your clients – with a heightened level of care and empathy.
2. You want someone with experience.
I’m not talking about professional work experience, per se. I’m talking about transferable experience. You can think of:
- a theatre’s Production Manager who is handed a shoestring budget, tasked with navigating a vast landscape of personalities, with the clear expectation that the show must open on Friday…no exceptions. A master class in project management.
- an indie author writer who systematizes their entire workflow, from drafting, to editing, to cover design, to publication. Smooth operations make our dreams come true.
- a dancer who tells stories and conveys information in ways that move us. An irreplaceable potential member of your communications team.
Creative people who lack “traditional” or direct professional work experience can offer some additional invisible benefits to your team. They’ve internalized fewer undesirable habits along the way and tend to remain open to learning and malleable to the needs of your company.
Artists know that creating anything worthwhile requires us to remain open to constructive feedback. This equips us with unmatched resiliency. We’re comfortable with feedback and use it as an opportunity to continuously improve.
3. You want stability.
Our artists are artists before anything else. As such, they won’t follow the “typical” career path of a job seeker. Artists who are fully committed to their creative careers do not desire to climb a corporate ladder. Conversely, they are very motivated to deliver high-quality work in the service of satiating themselves and furthering their art.
Your team benefits by focusing your hiring searches on loyal candidate bases.
4. You seek a creative approach to the mundane.
Another dull pitch deck or…an engaging, memorable story that leaves an impression on potential investors?
A creative brain is often the bridge between the boring and the brilliant. It’s why our clients leverage us as thought partners. As team members, we are eager to help jumpstart a new project, flesh out new ideas, and forge new directions. Artists are natural storytellers, so we’ll also help you see the throughline and anticipate potential obstacles ahead of time.
5. Someone referred you to us!
We believe in the value of leveraging your professional networks. These relationships have often been cultivated over time, and are hopefully accompanied by a high degree of trust and familiarity.
In fact, some of our most successful placements occur when a satisfied client refers another client to us. It makes sense. That individual is familiar with Satiated Artists through prior experience, and they also know you and the needs of your company at this time.
If you’ve been referred to Satiated Artists by someone in your network, we encourage you to trust in that relationship, reach out, and connect with us.
Our Artists at Work
Interested in learning more about how a Satiated Artist can positively impact your company? Here are some brief snapshots of a few successful placements we’ve recently made:
- The composer and the tech consulting company. Just as all great pieces of music require a melody, growing companies require a well-defined workflow. This artist focused their efforts on operationalizing the day-to-day business processes for their client within ClickUp. The increased efficiency created more time and space for the client to introduce new services, take on larger clients, and ultimately grow the company in new directions.
- The stage manager and the non-profit. Any successful theatre production requires the (often invisible) genius of someone who can “herd cats.” This artist initially onboarded as an EA to multiple executives within a non-profit organization. Before long, the artist identified systemic gaps that were creating redundancies, confusion, and ultimately inefficiency throughout the company. With buy-in from leadership, they built and implemented a project management solution with Asana from the ground up, leading to newfound cohesion within the team.
- The actor and the mission-driven communications agency. Memorable theatre, film and television performances all have one thing in common: the actor’s passion. As an EA, this artist had an inherent understanding of their client’s passion because it so closely resembled their own. Ensuring that the executive stayed organized and had sufficient logistical support meant the client’s vision could continue to come to fruition. Offering the client additional support as a thought partner meant the vision could continue to emerge and evolve in exciting new ways.
So how exactly do we define success? Well, we’d rather let the clients speak for themselves. In each of the above scenarios, the artist was offered a permanent placement on their client’s team via our Success process. While contract buyouts may not be the end goal for all of our clients, we believe this gesture is a testament to the transformative power of artists in business.
Ready to have a conversation about your team’s needs? Let’s grab a call!