How to Identify and Hire the Best Marketing Talent

We’ve all been there. We find marketing job seekers who check all of the boxes and who prove to be the best candidate for the role we’re looking to fill. They have the right skills and work experience. Great attitude and energy. They fit-in. And then we lose him/her to another organization. When this happens, do you ask yourself what went wrong? Was it:

1. Your office culture or the hiring manager?
2. An unrealistic compensation range or a failure to identify your business need?
3. Did the interview process not move quickly enough or did you neglect to follow-up to ensure they understand what the process looks like?

Any of these missteps can lead to losing the best marketing candidates.

Plus, if you work for mid-size and smaller organizations, you also have to compete for landing the best talent with large corporations like Amazon and Google who have large recruiting teams on a constant look-out for that same talent.

We get it. Over the years we have seen organizations fail to land the best marketing candidates many times. It’s a lot to manage and there’s no silver bullet. However, we’ve learned how to prevent your frustration and implement steps to land the best marketing hires.

To help you land the best marketing candidates, we put together key actions you can take to succeed.

We’ll review . . .

1. How do we define Top Talent? And what are they looking for in a new job?
   The qualities, personality traits and desires of the top talent
   • What they look for in a career
   • The importance of corporate culture
   • How they will support your organization
2. Challenges most recruiters face
   Typical challenges/reasons why organizations struggle to attract top talent.
3. Steps to overcome the challenges
   The steps it takes to land Top Marketing Talent:
   • How to identify the “best” job seeker
   • How to make your organization attractive to the “best” job seeker
   • How to go above and beyond to make the “best” job seeker believe they can’t not take the job
   • Trends that impress the “best” job seeker

How Do We Define Top Marketing Talent

Seeking to identify the best marketing job seekers entails engaging those who are focused on the following:

1. Developing impressive  resumes and portfolios, featuring strong brands and household names. This is especially true for creative jobs like graphic design, UX/UI, etc., where a strong portfolio will have greater impact than a weak resume.
2. Building a track record of sustained success and accomplishments. Hiring managers’ don’t only want to know what marketing job seekers’ responsibilities were/are, they want to know what the job seekers accomplished and how they pushed things forward for the company. The best job seekers will have extensive accomplishments and data to back up their success.
3. Identifying how their background aligns with where they’re going. What they’re trying to accomplish and how the marketing job seeker will add value.

Top talent will vary by role and by company, but you’ll know it once you see it, because there’s a good chance they’ll have three other offers.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to landing the top marketing talent, we see where recruiters are good at getting job seekers initially interested in talking about their work history, but then only focus on the areas of the job description related to their experience.

This is where you can focus on asking about experiences outside of those skills, spending time getting to know not only their resume and portfolio, but the marketing candidates themselves by asking lots of questions.

You can also learn more about how to speak the job seeker’s language, reading more, Googling their area of specialty and talking to people in the know.

And you can be human and transparent, honestly talking about fit and compensation, and serving as the best job seeker’s guide.

Hirewell is Your Partner to Help You Make The Best Hires for Your Organization

We’re here to provide you with the guidance you need to land the top marketing talent.

Want guides to other specialties? View our guides to landing the best Technology, Human Resources and Sales hires, too.

Richard Maltz