Talking Talent with UnitedUs

We caught up with UnitedUs, an award-winning brand agency, who are hiring new members to join their Brighton-based team. 

UnitedUs works with an expert team of strategists, creatives, developers and producers to unite commerce and creativity, successfully working with some of the world’s most complex organisations and industries, with clients like LEGO, London Irish and Aon.

We had a chat with some of their team to get the inside scoop on what they're looking for in new talent, plus what they love about working at UnitedUs. 

 

Natalie Burns, Strategy Director

What do you look for when interviewing someone for your team?

Beyond the core skills needed for a role, we’re always looking for a mix of creative flair and curiosity. Everything we do revolves around uniting people, purpose and potential.

That means that we treat each project as an opportunity to enable our clients businesses to grow - not just commercially, but in terms of their ethos, their execution, their employees happiness at work, their environmental impact and more. We might be given a brief to create a website, but we know that within that, there is space to help that organisation become a truer, better version of itself. Our job is to ask the right questions to take them there, and to provide the very best creative solutions that will make their ambitions real

Everything we do revolves around uniting people, purpose and potential.

There are a lot of skills that everyone can develop over time - so we’re never rigorously interrogating CVs for the perfect tick-list of qualifications or experience. What we’re looking for is the enthusiasm for a creative career and the ambition to grow and nurture that career with us. 
 

What opportunities are there for career progression at UnitedUs?

As a relatively small agency, there is ample opportunity to learn, grow, develop, pivot, or put a stake in the ground and say, “this is where I want to go and how I’m going to get there”. We tend to all wear multiple hats, but carve out our own niches of expertise in conversation with where the business itself is going.

So, if you join us as a Junior Designer and find you have a liking for UX - we’ll help and support you to foster that growth in your career, whether you want to connect with a mentor, attend some conferences, buy new software or books, we’ll give you the time and resources to grow. 

Carl Rylatt, Senior Designer

What is your position, and how would you describe a typical working day?

I'm a Senior Designer at UnitedUs. A typical working day is usually pretty fast-paced and varied, including overseeing creative from the design team, brainstorming and mood-boarding concepts for new brand and design projects, working on our strategic presentations and of course, the occasional bit of graphic design!

What experience do you need for the role?

Unlike a lot of other careers, Designers aren’t necessarily evaluated on their qualifications. A degree is good, for sure, as it shows a certain level of commitment to the chosen career path but overall, the work speaks for itself. When recruiting for a creative position we are looking for beautiful, ideas-led design with good rationale and a love of the craft. Agency experience would show us that there has been experience dealing with those inevitable tight deadlines and heavy workloads but overall, this can be learned. The passion, ideas and creative flair are what we look for.

When recruiting for a creative position we are looking for beautiful, ideas-led design with good rationale and a love of the craft.

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

Seeing a project come together from nothing that has pulled together all the threads from the different areas of expertise within our agency.

 

Emil Pitts, Lead Creative Developer 

What is your position, and how would you describe a typical working day?

As the Lead Creative Developer at UnitedUs a typical working day can be extremely varied. Alongside my day to day development responsibilities, I’m often liaising with clients and creative partners, pitching to new prospects or offering a digital perspective on the agency's strategic and creative offerings.

What experience do you need for the role?

Whilst solid Wordpress experience is certainly a huge advantage, what I look for most in our development team is a broad experience base, an excitement in learning new skills, and an understanding of how brand philosophy and objectives can interact with and inform both creative and technical decisions. Developing enjoyable and lasting relationships with our clients is a core value of our agency so ideal candidates will be confident and capable in helping to build and maintain these crucial relationships.

Developing enjoyable and lasting relationships with our clients is a core value of our agency

Our digital productions are known for merging solid technology with the beautiful assets produced by our design team and a candidate needs to be comfortable inputting into those conversations, bringing their digital expertise to help inform the creative decisions and reach the best possible outcome for our clients.

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

I love working with clients to understand and achieve their goals in a way that ‘wows’ them, taking business and economic challenges and solving them with solutions that merge beautiful art, interesting interactions and smooth user experience on a solid core of reliable and expandable tech. Our best work delights our clients because it gives them pride in their prior accomplishments and an excitement in moving forward - supported by a brand which truly reflects how talented they are in their own industries. I love knowing that clients leave their initial interactions with us revitalised and ready to put their businesses through to the next level.

 

Lindsay Toone, Senior Strategist

What is your position, and how would you describe a typical working day?

I am a Senior Strategist at UnitedUs, which means my typical working day is balanced between talking to clients and looking under the hood of their brand to find the best way to move them forward together.

This can take many forms, such as conducting workshops and interviews to uncover insights, or creating presentations to best communicate our shared strategic vision. Once the strategy is set in stone, our team then continues to be involved with everything that comes next to ensure it aligns with our original, and evolving plan of action.

No day is ever the same, which is why strategy is so fun - you could be working on a start-up’s brand language one day, or informing global thought-leadership the next. Because strategy is so integral to the way we do things at UnitedUs it means I get to have my fingers in lots of different pies, and work with lots of very talented creatives who not only help inform our initial strategy, but bring our shared thinking to life.

What experience do you need for the role?

No Strategist should be the same, as the more diverse thinking you can bring to the table, the better the strategic outcome will be. Two heads are better than one as they say. But there are definitely some qualities that help, for instance:

• Knowing when to stand up for your opinion, and when to listen and take it all in 
• Being curious – learn to embrace your inner 5-year old that asks “why?” all the time
• A love of diving deeper into any given topic, no matter the subject

There are of course a few tick boxes that come to mind. For instance: 

• Self-confidence for communicating with clients
• A knack for words, and an eagle-eye for copyediting 
• And experience in an agency is always useful, as work can be fast-paced 

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

For me, there are two parts of my job that keep me coming back for more. The first is that eureka moment when you unearth an insight that has the potential to shape your strategy, and the second is when you relay the end results, and the client is as in love with your plan of action as you are. I also love seeing how the team collaborates to bring brands to life, handing over the keys to a finished creative asset, whether it be big or small is always really rewarding. 

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Meet the Team with UnitedUs

As part of Wired Sussex's Meet the Team series, Luke Taylor, Creative Director & Founder and Jemma Kendall, Brand Designer at UnitedUs share the inside scoop on what they're looking for in new talent:

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If you like the sound of working at UnitedUs, you can find all their current opportunities on our Jobs site. 

 

 

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Ophelia Schultz-Clark

Community Assistant

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