Recruiting is a nuisance. It’s never convenient, the process takes valuable time when you’re short-handed and once you’ve got someone on board there’s an inevitable settling-in period. Yet bringing in new staff is an opportunity to introduce new ideas or a fresh approach. Marketers want career progression, a new challenge plus recognition and reward. Companies want to grow the business, increase profits and expand. Successful recruiting means marrying what applicants want with company requirements; when it works, both benefit.
The good news is that marketing is a very popular career so there is rarely any problem with finding staff. Marketers are passionate about what they do and will relocate, often large distances, for a job they really want. Jenny Cainer, director of Marketing Professionals, says: creativity and job satisfaction tends to be what motivates marketers, together with recognition and success. Marketers occasionally even take a salary cut to work on a particular brand which attracts them.
Because of this commitment, firms wherever they are will attract applications from quality staff providing the job itself is attractive. Jonathan Wiles, director at Michael Page Marketing, says: We’re entering a phase of economic growth and people are investing in their businesses. Candidate flow becomes a critical issue there are marketers around, but more will shortly be in demand so it becomes an applicants’, rather than an employers’, market.
B2C is still perceived as the glamourous side of marketing, with more competition for posts in that sector. Matt Hackett, senior business manager, Hays Sales & Marketing explains: many candidates particularly at the junior end of the market have more of an affinity with B2C brands, products and services and there tends to be fewer classically-trained marketers in B2B. Once people are working within marketing they generally become less specific. There are a lot of good B2B marketers around but they are still often perceived as being less skilled than their B2C colleagues.
Most young marketers are graduates from marketing or business-related degrees. Graduates have theoretical understanding but the minimum of practical experience, if any. They often need a lot of support when they start, although should learn quickly. On the other hand, Cainer from Marketing Professionals, says: it is not impossible for an SME to realise that it needs a marketing person and to groom the member of its administrative staff who has been doing the job unofficially to take on the official role. If this happens then training is essential. Muddling-through not only wastes a lot of money but is unlikely to target potential customers in the right way to be successful.
At a junior level recruiters should be looking for organisational skills and for someone who responds well to mentoring. Second-jobbers have the experience to understand business better and can take on certain responsibilities immediately but may not look to push themselves. They may also lack theoretical knowledge unless they have a relevant qualification. Cainer from Marketing Professionals again: practical training can be supplied in-house, possibly by bringing in an outside trainer and theory through training courses.
When it comes to recruiting, advertisements in trade magazines can be very expensive (it varies according to title) while adverts in the local press are rarely efficacious. Opinions differ about the usefulness of personal recommendation. It can involve split loyalties and relies heavily on the influence of a personality rather than a judgement of professional skill.
On the other hand it incurs no costs and people generally only recommend those whom they believe to be skilled. Hackett from Hays Sales & Marketing says: personal recommendation can provide access only to a small element of the market. If you utilise the best recruitment resources marketing is such a candidate-rich industry you will have no restriction on good-quality applications.
A specialist recruitment agency with its own marketing experts can often save firms a lot of time. High street recruiters while skilled at recruiting non-specialist staff often lack understanding of the requirements of a specialist marketing post and so are unable to screen applicants appropriately. Online recruitment, because of its speed and reach, is growing in popularity. Joe Slavin, managing director of Monster, says: sites have developed large databases with very specific profile search options so the recruitment process is quick and cost-effective.
Online recruitment can literally take seconds as applicants tend to reply to a job posting within a day. After this point the company’s interview process dictates the duration of the recruitment process, he adds.
Typically recruitment takes three to four weeks, although it can be as little as one week and as much as six months. Where an agency is employed, it will conduct preliminary interviews to ensure that its clients don’t waste their time seeing applicants who lack the right skills or who might not fit into the firm’s culture. Hackett from Hays Sales & Marketing explains: marketing is a very personality-led profession and from CVs it can be hard to distinguish which are the better applicants.
After the agency has pre-screened applicants they may be called to a first interview with the client, possibly followed by psychometric testing and a second interview. Third interviews occur occasionally but are rare. Senior positions fill more slowly as both the decision-making process and the notice period tend to be longer.
When recruiting it’s often worth considering the length of time the applicant has been in post as job-hopping does not necessarily indicate breadth of experience. Cainer from Marketing Professionals comments: brand plans are drawn up annually and often take three years to fulfil. Marketers need to have been three or four years in one job to have seen through a complete cycle from proposal to post-mortem. Without that sort of stability they could be lacking particular experience.
For a senior level post, recruiters need to be sure that potential managers will work well with an existing team. Mark Swain, managing consultant for Hays Executive, says: employers should beware of taking on ‘stuffy’ or ‘fluffy’ marketers. ‘Stuffy’ marketers don’t integrate with sales colleagues, directors, administrative staff or even their own team, preferring to stay in an ivory tower. ‘Fluffy’ marketers concentrate on marketing plans and theory, and feel pressurised by being measured and targeted. Potential employers should look at examples, projects and results for evidence of team players who demonstrate real commercial acumen.
Staff transferring between different marketing sectors and disciplines can be successful providing they have a core understanding of the new skills required.
Transfer from B2C to B2B is often successful because B2C marketers usually have some involvement in and therefore experience of marketing to trade partners. Transfer is also easier at a senior level as many policy questions tend to be similar. Transfer between B2B product marketing and B2B services marketing can be more difficult, but exactly what you are marketing what product and what service doesn’t matter from the point of view of recruitment. Wiles from Michael Page Marketing says: it’s fairly easy to transfer from the industrial to the service sector or within the service sector as many marketing skills are generic, but it’s not so easy to transfer the other way round as industrial marketing may need specific technical knowledge.
Cainer from Marketing Professionals adds: it’s unwise automatically to restrict recruitment to those applying from your sector as those from elsewhere often bring fresh ideas.
Marketers are attracted by autonomy and dislike a dictatorial management style with lots of restrictions. They like to come up with their own strategy and implement it, enjoy talking with customers, crave recognition and search for promotion opportunities. Hackett from Hays Sales & Marketing comments: if employees do not feel they have a clear and rewarding career path they can lose their focus both in their current areas of work and in their future ambitions. Salary providing it’s within the norm for the sector is usually the least important factor in recruitment although the proposed salary is worth mentioning in any advertisement as it will give a guide to the grade of the job.
Obstacles to recruitment often occur when the post is not marketed correctly. For SMEs this can be something of a chicken-and-egg scenario; the firm recognises the need for a marketer but needs a marketer to market the post recruiting its marketer. Cainer from Marketing Professionals again: companies need to ‘sell’ both themselves and the position advertised. Often there is not the space to do so in a traditional advertisement. This is where the Internet has a value space is less restricted, so the posts can be made more attractive. The timetable can also be an obstacle to recruitment. Second interviews, which are usually conducted by a wider pool of interviewers, all of whom have to be available, are notoriously difficult to arrange. Complications can be self-defeating as good people will be recruited elsewhere, leaving the whole process to be gone through again.
As with most business processes, preconceptions can be dangerous as they can cause recruiters to dismiss, potentially, the best candidate for the vacancy. No personal background or experience is definitive for a specific role or company, it’s always down to the actual person and it’s worth taking trouble to find that person. As the famous firefighter Red Adair used to say: if you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, you wait until you hire an amateur.”
