Struggling to recruit top Performance Marketing talent into your team? I have a few talent acquisition hacks that could help...

Working at 3Search for the past three years as their Performance Marketing specialist, I’ve helped a number of brands expand their performance marketing functions. We’ve seen a huge growth in the demand for this skillset with more brands investing in eCommerce technology and more consumers buying online. To stay ahead of the competition, it’s important to hire the best talent out there, but given the high demand in the market is pretty competitive for performance marketers, sometimes making it a struggle to find them. I’ve put together #eight talent acquisition hacks that should help anyone looking to hire performance marketers and improve their recruitment process.

#1 Choose job titles that are common and simple - Don't use complex or confusing titles. Use common titles such as 'Digital Marketing Manager' & 'Performance Marketing Manager'. When choosing a job title think of it from a candidate’s perspective, what would they recognise and what would they commonly search for? (you'll get more applications, I promise!)

#2 Run a quick & smooth recruitment process - The best talent on the market will get snapped but quickly and that is a FACT! You should run a recruitment process over a two-week period, this way you will keep candidates engaged and avoid them going off the market. If you traditionally run a longer recruitment process e.g. 4+ stages I recommend setting tight time scales in advance and ensuring all interviewers are available to enable a process to be run over a shorter time period. Blocking interview slots in advance allows a smoother process and avoids frantically trying to squeeze candidates in last minute. It also shows to the candidates that you are ‘on it’ and organised, giving them a good perception on how the brand operates and as we all know, none of us like to be made to wait do we?!

#3 Make your job description stand out - In a candidate short market full of competition and LinkedIn’s careers page full of performance marketing roles, your job description needs to stand out to attract the best talent;

#3.1 Sell on your culture - More people than ever before are interested in culture and use this as a deciding factor in their job search. When writing your job description, discuss the office atmosphere, company socials, training programmes and other benefits you can offer. Try and include some pictures and links to employer branding campaigns! It will make you stand out from the competition and the ‘generic’ job posts out there.

#3.2 Give them some commercial information! This point is more relevant for you SME's/Start-ups. Candidates want to join businesses who are in a good financial position and have strong growth prospects. In your introduction paragraph, it's worth mentioning the growth of the business and some achievements you've had to date. It's also worth mentioning any VC's who are supporting your brand and other successful businesses those VC's have supported.

#3.3 Make the day-to-day interesting and use top-selling points – Most job descriptions for Performance Marketing Managers will look pretty similar, so to what can you do attract more candidates? In my experience, people in performance are interested in a few things… budgets, what’s your digital spend and how is it split? What markets does the role operate in and do you plan on expanding into any new ones? Will you be looking for someone to manage agency relationships or grow an in-house team? What stakeholders they will be working with in the role and what special projects will this individual will lead on? Yes, this can all be discussed in an interview in detail but first, you need to get people interested and I’m confident the above will…

#4 Save yourself time and have the most relevant people apply for your role! – If you are tagging your skills section right on job advert such as ‘Google Analytics’ AND ‘SEMrush’ you should be targeting people on LinkedIn with those skills so ensure your skills section is on point, as a new feature on LinkedIn you can also ask screening questions to filter out relevant candidates and experience, it will help you attract the most relevant people and ensure the most relevant profiles land in your inbox.

#5 Follow a strict post-offer process with your candidates – Have you ever had someone accept an offer and then lose them to another brand, frustrating, isn’t it? To avoid this happening once a start date is agreed you should slot in a number of touchpoints in with the candidate to keep them engaged. For example, a catch-up call, new job lunch with their new team, emailing them with news and updates on the business, there’s nothing worse than radio silence from your new employer when you are working a 3-month notice…

#6 Offer a competitive salary/package – Performance marketing candidates are high in demand and there is a limited pool of candidates out there, meaning to secure the top candidates you need to offer a strong salary + bonus/equity. Typically, Performance Marketing roles pay slightly higher than your more generalist marketing roles given the nature of their skillset, therefore, I would recommend offering a slightly higher salary benchmark compared to your other roles in a marketing function. I’ll be posting a salary survey soon so keep an eye for that but also do plenty of research into the performance marketing sector!

#7 Planning for the future & recruitment marketing – In recruitment, we are all guilty of focusing on the immediate vacancy that needs to be filled, but you need to think about the long-term game. There has been a huge growth in performance-focused roles and it’s important to be continuously connected to the performance marketing candidate base in order to attract the best talent. A multi-channel approach is the way to go – building a contact list/project of the best performance marketing talent and marketing to them over a number of touchpoints, everything from running events to encouraging senior marketers to build an employer brand. Continuously marketing and selling your brand to good talent will 100% increase your direct applications when a different role arises and will hopefully increase the direct interest in your brand, plus you are building dialogue with a passive pool of candidates and you will have access to them when they do start looking again. Just because they aren’t looking now doesn’t mean you can’t get them in the future. Building the best team is a long-term game…

#8 Feedback is key – If you don’t ask feedback how can you improve? You should see positive and negative feedback as useful. If you hire a candidate or even if you lose a candidate to another brand, getting feedback on your process compared to other’s will help you up your game. Brands are always changing and to be the best you need to keep up and adapt your process, you can do this by simply asking candidates for feedback over a survey or telephone call OR you can incentivise them to do it by offering a chance to win a voucher etc. doing this over a period of time will allow you to see the positives and negatives of your recruitment process and allow you to do something about it. If you want to hire the best, you need to be the best and that’s not easy work…

By using these eight hacks, you should be able to improve your hiring process, stay ahead of the competition and attract a higher degree of candidates to your business.