If you’re in start-up mode or an established company, recruiting the right people to take your marketing to the next level can be a challenge.
There’s plenty of contradictory advice out there. Some advocate recruiting people with plenty of experience, while others swear you can only recruit people who are green and ready to learn. Some recommend you recruit a generalist team who can do a little of anything. While others suggest a perfect team of specialists.
What are you doing? Here’s five tips for hiring an all-star marketing team:
Realize that there isn’t a flawless team.
One of the best tips I got was to avoid striving to staff the ideal team. It just doesn’t work. What’s ideal for one business won’t be perfect. There is no formula that makes any business model meaningful, and definitely no clear framework that guarantees marketing performance.
Instead, concentrate on creating your current goals’ best squad. If finding customers is the top priority, you may want to invest more in hiring success or inbound marketers, who typically concentrate on marketing through content like blogs, video, e-newsletters and social media. If your goal is to rebrand the company, double in marketing communications, design, and PR.
You shouldn’t feel you have to build a role just because each marketing team has one. Your marketing team’s structure should fit your company’s roadmap, nobody else.
Include ‘students.’
No, I don’t recommend scouring local high schools or universities for budding marketing talents. I mean you should recruit people committed to learning.
The best marketers are considered full-stack marketers, meaning they have working knowledge of all forms of business marketing, not just social media or just search engine optimization (SEO). To gain the range of talent and experience, you must actively search and build new skill sets. I would often choose a less experienced marketer who wants to learn about a marketer with decades of experience trapped in one channel.
It’s also nice to have a marketer balance within and outside the industry. The most innovative marketing teams have two. You can reach a new level of innovation by exchanging ideas that promote such a combination.
Look for strategic and tactical marketers.
You need to find a balance between strategic marketers planning longer-range strategies and tactile marketers working on current ones, recognizing the balance will change over time. You may want to find a tactical marketer to be more proactive while developing a marketing team. It can hedge bets with advertisers dancing in both camps.
I don’t place a lot of weight in people who’re just tactical without the need to think about the future, or who’re just strategic without the desire to leap into the trenches. Marketers should participate in both existing and longer-range campaigns.
Recruit culture fit over ability.
That’s always the most difficult target. Maybe you’re tempted to recruit the hotshot with the cocky attitude. And on the flip side, you may want to hold on to the legacy recruit that isn’t dedicated to the future of the business. Culture must suit the skills of trumps. Ever. Still.
There’s no candidate worth losing your culture. Similarly, if a cultural imbalance exists, no marketing team will achieve full capacity. Cultural clashes can lead to negativity, disrespect for procedures, turf wars, silos, and tension over the current strategy. All these aspects can separate a marketing team — and stunt the company’s growth.
Plan next big challenge.
Ask yourself while staffing your marketing team, are you finding a competitive edge with a new product? How would you help the team get the product to market? Will you purchase companies? If so, what marketing skills do you need to hit running ground?
Too often, marketing teams remain lean, waiting to reach them before searching for the next team member. It’s often too late then. You lose one month to interviews, and another month to ramp up. Then the momentum stunts. Look ahead, so. I’m not suggesting you recruit a 100-strong squad, but you should have one eye for outstanding new talent.
This advice might seem straightforward enough, but consistent follow-up can be difficult. You may be enamored by another company’s strategy, or you may need to move quickly and feel tempted to employ skill over culture fit.
These tips are reminders that creating an all-star marketing team needs great care and concentration. But recruiting the right players should be worth the effort because they’ll be the company’s face after all.
Also Read: Productivity Fatigue? Tackle Now
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