As marketers are looking to recruit the right members for their teams, Sean Ashcroft reveals expansion is posing as many challenges as opportunities
January is the month of clean slates and fresh starts, both personally and professionally. Maybe you have been pondering a career move – perhaps even before the turkey sandwiches were curled at the corners.
Psychologically, this is a good time to look for your next professional challenge. Economically, too: the UK was one of the fastest growing G7 economies in 2014, and B2B business is fast loosening the marketing purse strings drawn tight in the downturn.
We have an employees’ market, which is clearly good news for job seekers. But what of employers who are expanding and evolving their marketing functions? For them, growth poses strategic and professional challenges – and none more so than with recruitment.
B2B’s complex nature
Part of the problem is the innate complexity of B2B marketing, meaning the bar is set high on skill-sets. Chris Mason, co-founder of Intelligent People, a London-based recruitment company, says this is because B2B marketing has a strong client engagement aspect, and that clients are diverse and frequently demanding.
“This means candidates must be assured communicators and polished professionals,” he says. “But in the £40-60K band, many people lack these skills.”
At executive level, where such skills abound, Mason reveals there’s no such problem: “Around a third of our business is recruiting B2B tech marketers. At senior level, recruitment is fast-paced. Candidate supply is good because marketers have long specialised in tech as this sector is large in the UK.”
Employers, too, feel recruitment problems can stem from B2B’s complexity. Jean Michel Maltais was, until recently, global chief marketing officer at KGB, owner of directory enquiry line, 118 118. He says: “There was a B2B side of 118 118, as an advertising channel for SMEs who’d promote their businesses through the number and its website. It was difficult recruiting people with the right skills. B2B roles require a close relationship between sales and marketing, so collaboration, communication and presentational skills are key. Plus, it’s become more technical, because of online.”
Employers and recruiters agree marketing’s increasingly technical nature further complicates recruitment. The Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing (IDM), a professional development body, echoes this.
IDM CEO Mike Cornwell says marketing is now ‘unrecognisable’ from the pre-recession era, and that B2B is facing ‘a chronic shortage of skills’. He adds: “Everything is so reliant on technology that it’s become difficult for people to keep up-to-date. Even employees need new skills just to keep doing the jobs they’re already in. Those studying for IDM qualifications are increasingly self-funded, which shows the importance of upskilling.”
Indeed, ‘upskilling’ is now official government policy: the Skills Funding Agency has a £4 billion budget to help colleges and employers combine to give people relevant skills, across all sectors.
B2C marketers moving to B2B
Few sectors are in more dire need of skilled newcomers than B2B; colleges and universities are utterly B2C-centric. “This is because B2C is easier to teach,” explains IDM employability director, Kate Burnett. “Students are also consumers, so they’re familiar with B2C marketing. As far as I’m aware, there are no B2B degrees.”
That said, B2C is playing a growing role in helping businesses fill B2B vacancies.
Product marketing consultant Caryn Waller says this is because much of B2B is actually ‘B2B2C’. “The gap between B2C and B2B is closing. In my area [tech, mobile, telecoms and software] you sell to the business, but also the business’ customer. You have to understand the end user, and be able to impact them and intrigue them.”
It’s not the only facet of B2C that has something to offer B2B; its metrics-heavy approach also has appeal. Neil Stoneman, senior account director at B2B agency Velocity Partners, says B2C people have much to offer as recruits. “We interview many people with a B2C past. Yes, B2C is different: you’re not going to sell a £200,000 piece of software off the page. B2B is a content-driven conversational process that can last years. Stoneman says: “People fall out of the sales funnel when you get transactions wrong, and so we need metrics to measure everything all the way down the line.”
Be less restrictive
Velocity – which has doubled in size over the past 18 months – is busy hiring those with analytics and observational skills. Even its creatives are expected to underpin their work with metrics. “They have to be able to talk about creative work in the context of technology and dashboard-based results that clients can use,” Stoneman explains.
He goes on to reveal that the value of data is also now reflected in candidates’ CVs.
“We’re seeing more resumés built on hard and fast figures, around things like sales uplifts. These days, if you can’t work with software like Marketo or Google Analytics, you might start to feel left out.”
If employers are to cast their nets wider in the quest for B2B talent, they should also look to writers, says Jon Wilks, editorial director of Arena Media. “The rise of digital has seen the focus of content shift from brand messages to interests shared by brands and their audiences. Marketers act more like journalists, and so quality writers can find employment in marketing, an industry many journalists instinctively avoid.”
Because B2B roles are changing apace, recruiters feel more businesses ought to share Velocity’s progressive, open-minded approach to hiring – that this would help them fill positions more successfully.
Jackie Pinfold is a lead consultant at recruitment firm Stopgap, a quarter of whose clients are B2B. She feels one problem is that businesses are struggling to come to terms with post-recession recruitment. “It’s a candidates’ market now, not an employers’ market. Businesses can no longer expect to tick all the items on their employee wish lists.”
As an example Pinfold cites many firms’ reluctance to hire freelance marketers who are looking to go permanent. “Many people took freelance work in the downturn, but businesses are put off because their CVs lack longevity. We encourage them to look instead at the broad range of skills freelancers offer – in many cases, more skills than those who’ve been in permanent roles for some years. Plus, freelancers seek stability, and so will tend to stick around longer than a recruit who’s moving from a permanent job.”
But clearly, this is not the solution for all – certainly not Leigh Gracie, customer marketing director at paper and packaging firm Antalis. “Our biggest recruitment headache is a lack of in-depth knowledge. There’s a high number of skilled marketers but mostly in short-term projects. There’s a lack of market understanding, and experience in helping re-shape engagement with customers or prospects in the longer term.”
Pinfold goes on to also encourage employers not to fixate on sector-specific experience. “Take accountancy firms. They’ll usually demand a professional services background, but we encourage them to consider people with, say, a background in professional membership bodies. Skills are often more important than sector.”
Charlotte Graham-Cumming agrees. She is joint managing director of Ice Blue Sky, a marketing agency for the tech sector. “Some employers are too focused on specific experience. The key is to offer a realistic salary and to seek a mix of experience, because to do B2B well, especially content, you need to understand business, psychology, how to sell, and also you need good writing skills.”
Employees choose employers
Recruiters cite working conditions as another factor that helps attract the right people, but say too many firms have a recession mindset that makes them unappealing employers. Simon Conington, founder of engineering recruitment company BPS World, says: “People will shun companies they suspect of lacking a positive working atmosphere. With social media, there are no secrets about what it’s like to work for a company; disgruntled staff will let their feelings be known. Oppressive cultures are avoided by the best recruits, who have other options.”
Conington feels many brands are also too watery to lure decent recruits. “Clients are fond of saying theirs is a ‘special’ company, but often I tell them they sound more like a ‘me too’ organisation. B2B employers have to get noticed in a marketplace where skilled staff can be more selective about whom to work for. They must think about how to set themselves apart, because recruits need to have heard of you and what you represent.”
People, then, are being selective in their quest for new roles. Many are also shunning recruiters, preferring a self-starting approach to job seeking. “Many candidates [in the £40-60K range] are simply not responding to adverts,” says Mason. To get a response we have to be proactive, and reach out to people.”
Velocity’s Stoneman also confirms his company sees ‘poor response rates to job ads at the lower end’. He adds: “Far more people contact us speculatively, and we get good results from this. I think this is because job ads are prescriptive, and people at this level want flexibility in terms of packages and job specs.”
Trevor Salomon, commercial director of The Business Applications Software Developers Association (BASDA), also bemoans many job specs. “If you’re a recruiter, for goodness sake challenge the job specs clients give you, because some of them are truly appalling.”
Recruiters might reply that, while short-term steps such as decent job specs are important, employers must also look at long-term measures to create the marketers of tomorrow. Conington says many companies demand entry-level people with two years’ experience, but asks: “Who is taking responsibility for giving people this experience?”
Mason, too, feels businesses need to invest in graduate development, and begin nurturing homegrown talent. “Instead of paying out higher salaries to attract experience, they might instead invest in training young people to become the kind of employees they need.”
Encouragingly, IDM’s Cornwell says big business is already taking steps to make good the B2B skills shortage. “The coming thing is private enterprise involvement in providing professional internship programmes. In the recession, interns were often exploited, working long hours for no money. B2B businesses, such as IBM and Google, are now hiring interns and apprentices at scale and on a professionalised basis.”
