Nearly half of hiring managers working at advertising and marketing agencies — 45 percent — expressed difficultly recruiting professionals to fill vacancies across various creative positions, according to a recent employment outlook study by staffing and recruiting agency The Creative Group.

To overcome these challenges, 45 percent said they’re now more willing than they were three years ago to expand their search geographically, looking outside their city — or even their state — in order to acquire the talent their agency needs.

Creative Group

Jobs in media services, customer experience and account services are among the most challenging roles to fill, according to the Creative Group survey.

Advertising agencies staffing 100 or more employees appear especially beleaguered by this dearth of talent, with 67 percent of hiring managers stationed at these companies reporting difficulty finding the right person for the job.

A relative lull in hiring also appears to have hit the ad and marketing industries. Only nine percent said they plan to add creative talent to their existing teams throughout the rest of the year, compared to 12 percent last year. About two-thirds — 64 percent — said they plan to maintain the same staffing roster they currently have and fill only vacated positions, a year-over-year decline of three percent. Finally, 21 percent said they’ve now enacted a hiring freeze and are not filling any vacated positions or creating new ones, an uptick of one percent from the year prior.

For the companies that are hiring, executives surveyed said the industry jobs in the highest demand include positions in account services (at 24 percent), followed by mobile design/development and marketing research jobs, both at 21 percent. Public relations roles were highlighted by 20 percent, as were jobs involving social media. Tasks in the least demand among advertising and marketing executives include media services, copywriting, content marketing and creative/art direction.

The Creative Group study, which was conducted by research firm SSRS, polled more than 400 executives nationally, including approximately 200 marketing executives from companies with 100 or more employees and 200 advertising executives from agencies with 20 or more employees.

The Creative Group is a division of professional staffing service Robert Half.