Recruiting your first marketing position and key considerations you need to make
Recruiting your first marketing position and key considerations you need to make
Today I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about recruiting for your marketing team. I’ve had a number of questions from clients over the last year about what a good marketing team looks like, especially if you are just recruiting your first role.
The usual conversation with clients
What tends to happen is I’m having a conversation with a client, and they go, oh, we can get a graduate in and they could do our social media and they can do all this kind of admin stuff. And I’m like, ah, wait a second. Before we think about bringing in a junior, when you are looking to potentially bring in your first marketing role to your firm, I would always try to suggest getting someone with a bit more experience.
The usual situation
Because what would end up happening is if you’ve got more junior resources in, you still end up holding their hand.
And if you are not a marketing expert and they’re looking for guidance and advice, they’re going to you and you’re like, I don’t know, you’re the marketing person. So marketing becomes a little bit more, I don’t know, more ‘adminy’, more just social media doing a bit of SEO. There’s no real strategy, there’s no real planning. That still sits with you.
Hiring someone more senior
Whereas if you were to think about getting a marketing manager in or recruiting them in, I’ve helped recruit a couple of part-time marketing managers, and they work really well because they come with experience. And then what tends to happen is I can take a step back and work with the marketing manager to get the marketing up and running rather than in a graduate position, as I’m very much handholding now. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with a graduate, they’ve come out of uni, they’re really, really keen.
But if you’re looking at putting somebody into a marketing role and it’s your first marketing role, then I might suggest someone with a little bit more experience, pay that kind of salary and it will let them build out your marketing team for you.
They might end up outsourcing pieces of work to suppliers. They might end up bringing in a marketing assistant a little bit later. But I think it’s important that when you are doing this for the first time, you are thinking about getting somebody in who can support you.
How I work with my clients
I tend to help recruit people in, and then I’ll work with the marketing manager to do that in order to help to get their marketing strategy and planning going. And then I take a step back and it’s quite nice to see.
So this is just a quick reminder that if you are thinking about recruiting your first marketing role into your firm, try to think about it as a long-term investment.
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Need help?
If you would like help with your marketing then bringing on a marketing consultant with a fresh pair of eyes can make all the difference. I work with B2B businesses and professional service firms in London, Kent, UK and Europe as well as specialising as a consultancy firm Marketing Consultant. Please get in touch or book a free 30-minute consultation.
