I have no problem with junior professionals.
Everyone starts somewhere. Talented young people deserve opportunities, mentoring and real projects through which they can develop.
What I do have a problem with is agencies hiring inexperienced people, presenting them as “experts” on their websites and social media, and then quietly transferring the cost of their learning curve to the client.
These are two very different things.
After more than 20 years of working in digital marketing, web development and design, I still use the word expert carefully. Experience teaches you how much there is left to learn. It also teaches you that expertise is not a title someone can give you during onboarding.
Expertise becomes visible in the work.
Experience is not measured only in years
Years of experience matter, but they are not enough on their own.
A person may have worked in design for four or five years and still struggle with fundamentals. Another may progress much faster because they receive proper mentoring, review their mistakes and work across sufficiently demanding projects.
I was reminded of this while reviewing a relatively straightforward design task. The designer spent three or four days on something I could complete in approximately 30–40 minutes. Time alone was not the real problem. The final work still contained mistakes that should have been noticed before delivery.
This does not mean that faster always equals better. Good work sometimes requires research, testing and several iterations.
The difference is professional judgement: understanding what matters, anticipating problems, recognising errors and knowing when the work is genuinely ready.
That judgement cannot be manufactured through a job title.
The client should know who is actually doing the work
Agency websites often present polished team profiles filled with words such as:
Expert
Strategist
Senior specialist
Creative professional
Growth consultant
But clients rarely get a clear answer to a more important question:
Who will actually work on my project?
Will the person introduced during the sales meeting execute the work? Will it be passed to a junior employee afterwards? Who will review it? What happens if that employee leaves halfway through the project?
Hiring new people is not inherently a warning sign. An agency may be growing. But when team members are constantly replaced, clients can lose context, continuity and accumulated project knowledge.
A new person does not simply inherit a folder of files. They need to understand the business, previous decisions, unsuccessful experiments and the reasoning behind the current direction.
Without that continuity, the client often pays twice: once for the original work and again while someone new learns the project.
Junior talent needs supervision, not inflated titles
A responsible agency can absolutely involve junior professionals in client projects.
But it should be transparent about their role and provide meaningful senior supervision.
There is nothing wrong with saying:
A junior designer will support the production work, while the creative direction and final quality review will be handled by a senior professional.
That is a legitimate team structure.
The problem begins when the junior employee is presented as an expert, works without sufficient supervision and delivers directly to a client who believes they are paying for senior-level judgement.
That is not professional development. It is misrepresentation.
What clients should ask before choosing an agency
Before signing a contract, clients should ask:
Who will personally execute the work?
How much relevant experience does that person have?
Who reviews the work before delivery?
Will the same people remain involved throughout the project?
What happens if a team member leaves?
Can the agency show work completed by the people assigned to the project?
These questions are not disrespectful. They are basic due diligence.
A strong agency should be able to answer them clearly, without hiding behind a collective portfolio or vague descriptions of “our expert team”.
Expertise means responsibility
For the projects I manage, I prefer working with professionals who have built their judgement over 10, 15 or more years of real practice. Not because younger people cannot produce good work, but because clients come to us with business risks—not training exercises.
They need people who can recognise what will fail before money is spent implementing it.
A genuine expert does more than complete assigned tasks. They question weak assumptions, notice missing details, explain trade-offs and take responsibility for the final result.
So let junior professionals learn. Let them participate in real projects and grow under proper guidance.
But let us also be honest with clients.
Do not make the client finance someone’s training while telling them they hired an expert.