The relative performance of different methods for selecting creative marketing personnel

Despite an increasing need for creativity in all corners of business, the spotlight of most recruitment and selection procedures has not shifted accordingly. Measures of creative ability that are to be used in practice should preferably be brief and operationally valid in the small and relatively homogenous pools of subjects that companies typically have to deal with. This article examines the performance of different assessment methods of creative ability in two small-scale hiring contexts, i.e., with prospective marketing employees (marketing students) and with current employees of a creative marketing agency. With prospective marketing employees, a combination of test ratings and student CV ratings of creative ability shows high operational validity. Supervisory ratings and self-ratings of creative ability are reasonable alternatives to test ratings for senior and long-time employees, but should be used with caution when junior employees and recent recruits are concerned.