1. How does Zabota hire Project Managers for marketing agencies?

We focus on candidates with agency experience who understand client communication, fulfillment workflows, team coordination, and operational processes. This ensures they can contribute immediately without a long learning curve.

2. Why was agency experience important for this Project Manager role?

The role required someone who understood how creative teams, media buyers, account managers, and clients interact. Agency experience provides context that general project management backgrounds often lack.

3. How do you evaluate Project Managers beyond organizational skills?

We assess communication abilities, leadership experience, process ownership, operational thinking, and the ability to manage both internal teams and external client relationships effectively.

4. Why did this role require creative judgment as well as operational skills?

The Project Manager was responsible for briefing editors and reviewing creative work. That required an understanding of advertising creatives, audience expectations, and quality standards in addition to traditional project management capabilities.

5. What impact can a strong Project Manager have on an agency?

A strong Project Manager improves accountability, streamlines operations, reduces founder involvement in daily delivery, strengthens team coordination, and helps agencies scale without sacrificing service quality.

Project Manager Hire That Saved $33K/Year

Video Review

Snapshot:

Business: Digital Marketing Agency

Roles Hired: Project Manager

Objective: Hire a project manager capable of owning operations, client communication, SOPs, training, fulfillment management, and creative quality assurance.

Outcome: 1 direct hire placed. $33,000 saved annually while creating a reliable operational leader who could take ownership of day-to-day agency delivery.

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The Problem:

Airr Digital, an ads agency, needed a Project Manager to run operations: the main point of contact for clients, owning SOPs, training, and the daily management of the fulfillment departments. It was important that this person came from an ads agency background, so they’d understand how the work actually flows.

The role also had a creative dimension. The PM needed to handle editor briefs and run QA on editors’ work, which meant being genuinely familiar with ad creative, what looks good, and what resonates with target markets. So this wasn’t a pure process manager; it was someone who could sit at the intersection of operations and creative judgment.

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The Strategy:

We mapped the top U.S.-based ads agencies that run back-office teams in LATAM, since that’s where you find operators who already work to U.S. agency standards. From there we targeted people with a client success background paired with project management or operations experience, the combination that covers both the client-facing and the internal-fulfillment sides of the role.

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The Result:

We placed a mid-level-to-senior Project Manager with exactly that background, saving Airr Digital $33,000 a year. More importantly, they got an operations person they can actually count on, someone who owns SOPs, training, fulfillment management, and editor QA without needing to be double-checked. That trust is what lets the founders step back from the day-to-day and focus on growth.

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Why It Works:

Airr Digital needed someone who could manage clients, oversee fulfillment, maintain SOPs, train team members, and evaluate creative output.

By targeting operators from U.S.-focused agencies with experience in both client success and project management, Zabota identified a candidate who understood agency workflows from every angle.