What to Look for When Hiring for an Agency Role

It's that time of year again - time to hire the talent you will need to succeed in 2022. But how do you find the right person for your social media marketing agency? Here’s an excerpt from an article on Social Agency Scout that addresses just that and gives tons of great tips for what should be on a social media marketing resume when hiring for an agency role.

Your business is growing, so you need to hire a new employee for your social media marketing agency. Perhaps your clients are giving you new opportunities to provide additional services.?Or maybe you and your current staff are struggling to meet the increasing demands of your growing roster.

You’ve recognized the need for another agency member—now how to find the right person for your social media marketing agency?

There are three main areas that you should pay close attention to in the resume of potential agency hires:

• Experience
• Skills
• Personality

All three are critical for analyzing a successful social media marketing job candidate.

After all,?clients want results . So, you need the right talent in your organization to be able to continue to deliver at a high level and meet the expectations of your clients.

Experience in Social Media That Can Be Proven

When you are looking at the experience of applicants, ask yourself,?“Is their experience measurable, consistent, and relevant?”

Measurable

Applicants can easily say that they have worked for two years doing Facebook management. It is more of a challenge to show actual results from their efforts. The reality in today’s world is that?clients need to see a return on investment ?when they hire your social media agency.

So you need to ensure that each of your employees has that same focus on measurability.

When you are looking at applicant resumes, prioritize those that give?specific examples of how their work contributed to the bottom line.

For example:

• Created and ran a $10,000 ad campaign on Facebook that resulted in $65,000 in sales
• Built the company Twitter account from 500 followers to 4,500 followers over 6 months
• Directly responsible for closing 4 new client accounts worth $245,000 in revenue during my time in this position

Not every applicant for a social media agency or digital marketing agency will think to be this direct about accomplishments in their resume. If you see indications that they are a good fit in other ways, this is a good opportunity to dive deeper during the interview and ask for specific examples and numbers.

Consistent

As the saying goes, lighting does not usually strike twice in the same spot. Sometimes, social media success is a result of being in the right place at the right time when a change happens.

That doesn’t mean the candidate will be able to replicate that in a new situation.

Are candidates able to generate consistent results over time? Are they able to understand why a social media marketing campaign or social strategy was successful and be able to apply that to a new situation?

When reviewing their resume, look for a track record of success over time. Large gaps in employment, jumping from one area to another, or long periods without measurable results are red flags that you should investigate further.

Relevant

Be realistic with new hires about how much training you can do.

In most cases, you want an employee who is ready to hit the ground running. One of the best determining factors of how well they will be able to do this is how relevant their experience is to the job you are hiring for.

Important questions to ask include:

• Was their previous role entirely social media related, or was that only a small part of their job description?
• Have the industries they have worked with in the past been similar to your target clients? If not, how applicable will their knowledge be?
• Has their experience been in an agency setting balancing the needs of many clients, or was it in a dedicated role working with only one set of accounts?
• What aspects of social media have they focused on compared to the needs of the job? For example, have they mostly done content creation? Analytics? Advertising? Does that match your hiring needs?

What works in social media can vary widely from one industry to another.

If your agency serves a broad range of clients, someone with an equally broad level of experience can be helpful. But if you serve exclusively service-based businesses, someone coming in who has only worked with product-based businesses may have a bigger learning curve.

Likewise, an applicant who is used to the dynamics of working for a single company will generally find it more challenging to thrive in an agency environment with many clients and demands on their time.

You want someone that understands that if things don’t get done on time, you don’t get paid on time!

Skills Are Always Growing and Expanding in Social Media

One of the only things you can be sure about in the world of social media is that it will continue to constantly change.

So how do you assess skills on a social media marketing resume when what you hire for today might not be what they are doing tomorrow?

Basic questions

Start with what you know:

• Does their skillset match the job requirements?
• Will you need to train them on anything new?
• How easy/hard will this training be?
• What hard skills do you need? (Specific software, etc.)

For more advanced hiring questions plus some job description tips, check out the full article here.

Hiring to build your social media agency is the area that can make or break your company. If you find the right candidate, the person will add to your bottom line and your business as a whole. The wrong fit can cause irreparable harm to your business and reputation. It is worth taking the time to do it right!

Rivka Hodgkinson

Rivka has been managing and teaching social media for over 10 years, working with clients in a wide variety of industries. Her specialty is in creating content that connects and starting real relationships in the online world. She has been a speaker on the topic of social media all over the United States and worked with clients around the globe. She has been featured on numerous podcasts and published in The Better Business Book. When she is not writing, creating, and speaking, you can usually find her doing one of her two favorite hobbies - reading and baking.