How to Hire the Best People for Your Marketing Team
Roger West was recently named a Best Places to Work honoree by the Tampa Bay Business Journal. We’re thrilled about this for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that it hopefully helps us find awesome talented employees to add to our growing team. (Related: Growing Gains Instead of Growing Pains)
It’s a common issue many agencies and marketing departments face today – we get lots of applicants for positions, but it’s hard to find the right people.
A recent Marketing Land digital marketing agency survey found that 70% of agency respondents are hiring, but nearly 50% of that group are having a hard time filling positions.
It’s a tricky situation. You need more employees to keep up with increasing client demand and to ensure you don’t burn out your existing staff. But your goal should not be to just hire someone…anyone…ASAP.
Don’t Settle - You don’t want to rush and fill open positions with people who are either unqualified or a bad fit. People who are inexperienced or don’t perform at your agency’s level are just going to slow things down – and you risk ticking off your clients or current employees.
Don’t Look for Unicorns – Some job postings are looking for magical candidates who simply don’t exist. The chances of you finding a brilliant designer who is also great at copywriting, analytics and strategy are slim to none. Find someone who is an expert at one or two things, not a jack of all trades, master of none.
Choose the Person Over the Position – We recently had a candidate apply for one position and we ended up hiring her for another. She was clearly overqualified for the job she applied for, but we knew she would be a great asset and a great fit for the company. Be flexible – if you’ve found great talent, be willing to create a new position or tweak an existing job description to better fit their needs.
Consider Company Culture – It’s important to ask yourself, “Will this candidate be happy coming to work here every day?” It’s also important to consider whether your current team will enjoy working with them. It may seem silly to pass on someone who meets the job requirements but lacks a sense of humor or positive attitude, but it’s not. We’ve all seen how one employee can make a negative impact on an entire team.
Ensure Industry Experience – Unless you are hiring an intern or junior level position, hiring someone who has industry experience can make onboarding much easier. Agency life, in particular, can be hard to adapt to if you’ve never experienced it before. Candidates should understand the importance of prioritizing work, juggling multiple clients and projects, dealing with constructive criticism and producing consistently great work under tight deadlines.
Finally, if you work in a marketing department of a large organization, you may decide it makes more sense to outsource some of your work (to us for example!) rather than hiring a new person and adding another salary to payroll. We’d be happy to be your expert team, and we’re really fun to work with. Let’s Talk.
Diane Callihan
With more than 20 years of experience writing for some of the country’s top brands, Diane helped to shape Roger West’s content strategy, lead generation, and PR efforts as Director of Marketing. She currently serves as President of Callihan Content Creation.