A talent management agency represents actors, creators, athletes or musicians and earns a commission on their bookings. Trust, contract clarity and a small team of agents who hold the artist relationships are what keep the business running.
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Share your requirementsA talent management agency represents people such as actors, models, musicians, content creators and sports figures, finds them work, negotiates terms and earns a commission on each booking. Talent managers or agents hold the relationship with the artist and with brands, producers and organisers. Coordinators handle schedules, travel, contracts and invoices, and a small finance team tracks what is due to whom. The artist's trust is personal, so when an agent leaves, an artist may follow. Work is irregular, commissions arrive late, and the team lives on phones and messages outside office hours. The agency also holds sensitive details such as fees, health and private schedules. The wider HR for professional services page covers what advisory and relationship-led firms share.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in talent management agencies. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Trust is personal, so a talent manager who leaves can take clients, and the agency has no tie beyond a contract.
Agents field calls and messages from artists and brands late at night, and juniors are expected to answer too.
Brands pay slowly, and staff paid partly on commission feel the delay in their own homes.
Two artists in the same space compete for a brand's budget, and staff handling both feel the pressure.
Terms between artist, agency and brand are discussed in messages and signed later, if at all.
Coordinators handle tickets, call times and last-minute changes without clear ownership.
Fees, health and personal details move through personal phones and shared chats.
Associates do the work of agents without the title, and they leave to start their own rosters.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Retention and Attrition Management; Career and Succession Management; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a talent management agencies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Every artist has two named contacts, a shared notes log and agreed handover steps.
Every artist has two named contacts, a shared notes log and agreed handover steps. The exit and offboarding process includes artist handover.
A standard agreement for the agency, the artist and the brand, kept in the HR documentation process and reviewed by a qualified professional.
A standard agreement for the agency, the artist and the brand, kept in the HR documentation process and reviewed by a qualified professional.
Who is on call, when a reply is expected and what time off follows a late night or travel.
Who is on call, when a reply is expected and what time off follows a late night or travel.
A clear sheet on how commissions are shared and when they are paid, supported by compensation benchmarking.
A clear sheet on how commissions are shared and when they are paid, supported by compensation benchmarking.
What may be shared, where details are kept and what happens to artist information at exit.
What may be shared, where details are kept and what happens to artist information at exit.
Steps from coordinator to associate to agent, with the skills and rosters attached, as part of the learning and development process.
Steps from coordinator to associate to agent, with the skills and rosters attached, as part of the learning and development process.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A handover routine for artists and brands when an agent moves on.
Standard agreements and records so terms are not left to chat messages.
Commission and bonus structures that reward both building a roster and delivering deals.
A visible ladder for coordinators and associates so they do not leave to go solo.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
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What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
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A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
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Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Keep two named contacts per artist, a shared notes log and a handover routine. Check restrictive terms in contracts with a qualified professional.
Parties, scope, term, commission, expenses, exclusivity, termination and confidentiality. Have a qualified professional review it.
Write the rule, show examples and state when pay is made, ideally not tied to the brand's payment date alone.
Tell artists and brands about overlaps early, separate handling where possible and keep clear notes.
Set an after-hours rota, give time off after late nights and give them a clear route to agent.
We would ask who knows each artist, how commissions are shared and where fee details are kept. A good opening project is an artist-handover routine plus a commission sheet. Scope is written for you to accept or change.
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