Director Creative Resourcing

Freeman•Los Angeles, NV

6d•Hybrid

About The Position

Sparks is a global brand experience agency that designs and produces trade show exhibits, corporate events, brand activations, and immersive experiences for major brands. They focus on helping companies build real human connection through creative, strategic, and memorable experiences. Sparks recently joined Freeman, but they still operate with their own team, culture, and creative approach. The Director, Creative Resourcing owns the long-term resourcing strategy for the Creative department, ensuring the right mix of internal talent and external/freelance capacity to meet business objectives across a national and diverse portfolio of business. This role connects resource planning directly to financial performance while safeguarding the creative vision and quality of work delivered to clients. This role builds and leads the resourcing function itself: its people, its tools, and the processes that scale it and, when needed, supports at a tactical level (assigning resources, managing conflict, and solving day-to-day staffing problems on complex accounts). This position will our Sparks Creative team. It is eligible to work a hybrid schedule, generally requiring work in-office and/or show-site 2-3 days per week.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree preferred, High School Diploma or Equivalent with relevant work experience required.
10+ years of experience in creative resourcing, staffing, or workforce/operations planning within a creative, marketing, agency, or experiential environment; prior experience as a Resourcing Manager or equivalent strongly preferred.
Demonstrated track record of building and scaling a resourcing function, team structure, process, and tooling in a growing or multi-disciplinary organization.
Deep understanding of creative operations, staffing models, and freelance/contractor networks, ideally across multiple regions or markets.
Experience forecasting headcount and freelance capacity against revenue or utilization targets and translating that forecast into a staffing plan leadership can act on.
History of leading or contributing to large-scale RFP staffing strategy and new-account resourcing ramp-up.
Skilled in introducing and driving adoption of new resource-management tools and software across a department or enterprise.
Strong people-leadership skills: hiring, mentoring, and developing resourcing managers and coordinators, with genuine investment in their career growth.
Excellent cross-functional communication.
Builds trust easily with discipline leads, account/production leadership, finance and senior executives.
Comfortable operating in ambiguity and translating messy, high-volume data (utilization, capacity, spend) into a clear narrative and recommendation.
Hands-on comfort with AI tools for resourcing tasks (i.e. capacity modeling, reporting and forecasting) and a clear point of view on where AI adds value.

Responsibilities

Develops and owns the long-term resourcing strategy for the Creative department, aligning talent supply with business objectives, utilization targets, and financial goals.
Partners with senior leadership to forecast internal headcount needs and scale the external freelance bench to absorb the ebbs and flows of business volume.
Builds and maintains department-wide dashboards and reporting that anticipate staffing needs months in advance, translating utilization, volume, and skill-gap data into actionable plans.
Acts as a key voice in utilization and capacity discussions, bringing data-backed recommendations in addition to status updates.
Provides strategic input on large-scale RFPs, shaping how the creative team is staffed and set up for success before work is won.
Builds and leads the resourcing department: hires, structures the team, and sets career pathways and professional development plans for resourcing managers and coordinators.
Mentors all members of the resourcing team, ensuring consistent adoption of resourcing process and standards across the organization.
Coaches direct reports on handling complex, high-volume resourcing challenges, including new-account ramp-up and multi-discipline staffing.
Builds and maintains strong relationships with freelance networks, third-party staffing vendors, and emerging creative talent pipelines across multiple regions.
Maintains visibility into internal and external resource availability, skill sets, software competencies, and client history to inform both daily staffing and long-range planning.
Analyzes utilization, volume trends, and skill gaps to shape and continuously refine the department's freelance strategy.
Negotiates rates, terms and conditions with potential freelance resources
Introduces and rolls out new resourcing tools, systems, and best practices that streamline workflow and improve staffing visibility across the company and enterprise.
Drives process improvement in team construction, workflow balancing, and conflict mitigation in partnership with discipline and account leaders.
Builds executive-ready reporting for leadership, including freelance spend analysis, skill/software gap analysis, and other resourcing trackers.
Identifies where AI can streamline resourcing work (i.e. matching talent to project needs, surfacing capacity or skills gaps and drafting reports) and pilots these tools with the team.
Able to step in and personally assign resources and balance workflow across Creative teams and disciplines when needed.
Comfortable leading strategic staffing conversations for individual complex projects or accounts.
Maintains expert working knowledge of relevant resourcing and project-management software (e.g., resource management, workforce planning, and project tracking platforms).