What’s the difference between a Junior, Mid-level, and Senior Creative?

Spoiler: it’s not years of experience

Photo by Toimetaja tõlkebüroo on Unsplash

Maybe you’re looking to build a creative team. Maybe you want to properly place a new hire. Or maybe you just want to have more productive conversations about promotions.

Understanding what differentiates various career stages within a creative team is important, because it allows you to create a structure that gives each person the support they need to succeed, as well as the runway space they need to grow.

It also helps with staffing and LOEs.

It’s a delicate balance that gets more complicated as your team grows and your projects become more diversified.

Over the years, I’ve found five main categories (and one bonus one) that help guide the process of assessing someone’s career stage. It isn’t perfect, but these concrete landmarks have given some much-needed structure to the amorphous question of “So, what’s the difference between a copywriter and a senior copywriter?”

1. Oversight

A large part of the success of any project is ensuring each person has the right support system surrounding them. Give a mid-level designer too much oversight, and their growth will be stunted. Give a junior copywriter too little, and they won’t succeed.

That’s why it’s so important to properly understand each team member’s individual capabilities.

Ask yourself, what level of oversight does this person need to create client (or production) ready work?

Everyone starts out needing oversight for the basics. Then, as they learn the ropes, they’re able to function more and more autonomously. Things that used to take three rounds start taking one, and check ins get spread out as individual contributors can be trusted to create client-ready work with less oversight.

This doesn’t mean senior creatives always hit the nail on the head after one round (it is still a process, after all.) Rather, that they are able to keep their portion of a project moving forward, and execute next steps without someone in their craft directly guiding their process.

Think about the past 6 months of working with this person. What level of work would you be comfortable with them handling with only minimal oversight?

Junior: Needs oversight for basic tasks

Mid-level: Needs oversight for advanced tasks

Senior: Needs little oversight

2. Craft

Every creative department has a bar for excellence. And while each person in your department should be capable of hitting that bar (that’s why they’re there, after all) not everyone’s relationship with the bar is the same.

By examining the level of craft in their completed work, we can get a strong indicator of their career stage.

Ask yourself, how often does this person meet the bar for excellence? How often do they raise it?

One way to determine this is to look at all of the work in your department over the last 6 months. If placed along a bell curve for their craft, where does this person’s work fall? It it elevating the average, meeting it, or just striving to hit the bar in the middle?

A strong Senior Creative will not only elevate the bar for craft in the department, but properly paired, can help younger creatives work a full step above their level.

Junior: Hits the bar occasionally

Mid-level: Hits the bar consistently

Senior: Raises the bar consistently

3. Innovation

Our industry depends on fresh, new ideas.

And while there is a lot to gain from mastering the tried-and-true, we have a responsibility to keep pushing our clients — and the industry — forward.

Work can be innovative for:

• The brand
• The category
• The medium
• The industry
• The agency
• The process

Ask yourself, has this person created work that has advanced any of the above?

This could be a unique brand voice, a new use of technology, an evolved look and feel, or switching the design department over to Figma.

I’ve found that there is often a natural progression to innovation. First, creatives learn to imitate industry trends and standards. Then, they begin to take creative risks — trying things they haven’t seen done before. Finally, those creative risks begin to pay off, and they produce work that moves the industry forward.

Take a look at the work this person has shown in the past year, even work that hasn’t been produced. Are they taking creative risks? Are they attempting new styles, ideas, and techniques? Or are they sticking with what has worked in the past?

Junior: Integrates industry trends

Mid-level: Takes creative risks

Senior: Produces innovative ideas

4. Integrated Thinking

Good creative is no longer just about combing art and copy. More than ever, we are combining a wide range of disciplines — from tech and strategy to media and PR— to solve complicated business problems.

And if one of those teams doesn’t succeed, none of us succeeds.

That’s why it’s so important for creatives to grow in their understanding of roles outside their own. A seasoned creative will pressure check their work through the lens of other roles to create ideas that work not just for them — but for the whole team.

Ask yourself, how does this person incorporate the goals and constraints of other roles into their thinking?

If they are a copywriter, are they thinking about visuals? If they are a designer, are they thinking about the development effort?

Do they consider budget constraints? Tech feasibility? UX best practices? Strategic goals? Media placement? Product strategy? PR tactics? Client KPIs?

This kind of integrated thinking is incredibly challenging, but it creates an environment where ideas get produced, objectives get met, and clients come back for more business.

On a personal note: nothing makes me happier than seeing a copywriter sit with a Technologist and a Strategist to find a solution that crosses all three disciplines.

Junior: Focuses on their own discipline

Mid-level: Integrates other creative disciplines

Senior: Integrates non-creative disciplines

5. Production Experience

There’s a reason pilots measure experience in flight hours. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve done something, it matters how much you’ve done it.

Simply put, how much work have they produced?

When discussing this with a creative, I like to ask their career goals: are they looking to grow as a specialist (in a category or medium) or a generalist? Then we can evaluate their work according to that goal.

If they are looking to be a generalist, I focus more on the breadth of their work — looking for a range of styles, mediums, and techniques.

If a specialist, I look for depth.

For example, if they are looking to focus on a single medium — say, designing websites — I would evaluate their work very differently than if they were looking to create “all things digital.”

Junior: Little produced work

Mid-level: Some produced work

Senior: A wide range of produced work — with either great depth or breadth

Bonus: Client interaction

I call this a bonus category because it is often driven by the decision of the creative director, and not the ability of the creative. Also, there is admittedly a lot of variance from team to team. However, it is still an important category to consider.

What level of interaction can the creative confidently own with the client? Can they make a strong deck? Can they present it? Can they sell work in a pitch? Or defend creative decisions when a client gets cold feet? All of these add tremendous value and should be accounted for in their title and salary.

Using this guide

Keep in mind that no two teams are the same. And very few people grow in all areas at once.

But if you’re a mid-level copywriter that accomplishes most tasks with little oversight, brings fully-formed ideas that mean success for the entire team, are raising the bar for craft in your department, and are producing innovative ideas that work — it’s time to ask for that promotion. You’re officially acting as a senior.