How Challenging Is Finding The Right Digital Marketing Talent?

I love a story and this even applies when I’m taking on new digital marketing vacancies. As much as I question jobseekers about their backgrounds, I question an employer about the vacancy to be hired. Why did it become vacant in the first place? Is it a newly created job? If it’s an existing position, why is it vacant? Promotion? The incumbent is leaving? The back story of the vacancy is really valuable to understanding which Digital Marketer will be right for the job. What skills and experience they’ll need to hit the ground running. Here’s some pre-COVID “new jobs to be hired” stories…

“We were on page 1, now we’ve dropped off to Google’s page 5 or 6 since we relaunched our site. No, we don’t have anyone in SEO, we left it to the dev team. No, we didn’t use specialist agency, but I think we need someone in SEO to sort it out.”

and...

“A junior was running our Google Ads but they forgot to put a cap and burned through our annual budget in a couple days. We need better control, so we’re engaging an agency. I know I need an experienced Digital Marketer now to drive the agency relationship.”

and...

“I haven’t got time to play on social media, I need someone to manage the agency who does our Social." 

and another good social story was...

“Our GM does our social media. He’s taught himself how to use Facebook Ads. He’s pretty good but he’s our GM. We need him to do other stuff. Can you find us someone great on B2C Social Media advertising?”

and...

“Our competitors always beat us on Google. I want us to be on the first page. I need someone to build us a strategy and make it happen.”

image courtesy of Twitter - @Kiwa_K4

These are snippets of so many real conversations I’ve had with business decision-makers. Some who are incredibly knowledgeable about marketing and know what they want me to help them hire. Others, not so much. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great at running their businesses and know what they want to achieve by making the hire. But they might not be able to define exactly what this is in a job description.

It’s my underpinning goal to help employers hire the best people for the job. Sometimes to do this, I have to step back a bit further, right at the start. Consulting with hiring managers to check the job description is right. Understanding the goal and applying the skills, tactics and experience required to deliver it. Sometimes employers have an EXTENSIVE wish list of “essential” but unnecessary requirements. Where it looks like a crazy list of industry buzzwords, and essentially is an unrealistic list of expectations for the level of experience / salary.

This would be a likely turn-off for any credible job seeker. They’ll have the impression the company doesn’t get digital marketing. That the line manager they’ll report into will be a challenge with unrealistic expectations. It could put off future applicants. Not what we want to happen. My deep industry know-how means I'll define realistic job descriptions and craft great job adverts. These will entice applications from the “right” people. I’d also give guidance on job titles and salary bandings based on my deep insight into the industry.

Post Covid-19, the recruitment industry has changed. In early 2020 we struggled to identify many exceptional people who were up for new job opportunities. There was a significant skills shortage and companies were bending over backwards to entice acceptances to their job offers. Now, post-pandemic, the world of recruitment has been flipped on its head. Every job advert is already swamped by applications. And we’ve got a ton of job applications that need to be weeded through, let alone the speculative ones, to find the gems. The next question is, “how do you spot them?”.

Playing to my recruitment expertise, I’m able to swiftly break the torrent of CV’s down into more manageable pools of quality candidates. Shortlisting them until I find the one or two drops in the ocean of incredible fits to the job descriptions. These are who my hiring managers will spend their time with. We, your recruiter, will have done everything else. All of the back office admin from acknowledging receipt, reviewing and sorting applications, screening potentials and of course rejecting those we’re not taking forward. After all recruiting is a chance to PR your company, so everyone needs to come away with a positive impression, irrespective of whether they got the job. Our admin continues supporting your actual interview. Scheduling the interviews, providing feedback, managing expectations through to an accepted job offer. Not forgetting the resignation management and handholding your chosen new employee into their new role. It’s these many, many small actions that make a big difference; saving you the time and effort of making a great hire. 

I set out for our recruitment agency to be different, to provide both the professional recruitment service but to also know the digital marketing industry. With 2 brothers in digital and having more than 25+ years headhunting experience, I was fed up with poor recruitment practices and wanted to offer something better. Over the years I’ve realised we’re very good at it, and this is why we’ve put a 100% guarantee on our hires*terms apply. This means you’re only paying for successful recruitment. If you’re going to hire, it’ll make sure you’re hiring right!

I’m fortunate as we’ve always had a great reputation. We’re different from the usual recruiters in digital marketing. We've successfully hired for big brands, independent business owners looking for a safe pair of hands and clever SaaS tech companies. As well as global media network groups and niche digital marketing agencies. These people are my friends so it’s always great to be able to bring incredible new job opportunities to my network.

My most recent hire was during lockdown for Absolute Collagen who wanted to get to better grips with their paid advertising strategy. I helped them hire an experienced Paid Media Manager to work with their agency. I am certain many more employers also need a hand hiring the “right” skills and experience. Using a specialist recruiter is a shortcut to successful hiring, where you know your new employee will hit the ground running

So how about using a recruiter who comes with a 100% guarantee on any digital marketing hire you make? So you’d only be paying for successful recruitment. You could rely on your recruiter’s expert knowledge of digital marketing to help you narrow down to just a couple of great people to speak actually speak to. Already this saves you energy, time and ultimately money. Get me, your recruiter to do all the leg work.

Meantime, keep well and if you want to discuss any digital marketing hiring you've got coming up, please either DM me here or email [email protected] - am always pleased to help make great hires happen!