What skills should you be looking out for in a Fractional Marketing Director?
What skills should you be looking out for in a Fractional Marketing Director?
Today I wanted to talk to you about the skills that you should be looking for when you are looking to hire a fractional marketing director. And there are a couple to flag up here.
Building a marketing team
I think the first skill that you are really looking for is whether they have experience in building marketing teams. So this could be, they might be able to recruit in-house for you, or they understand the market in terms of outsourcing and what you need, but they’ll understand your plan and your strategy and they’ll understand how to resource that properly for you. And they must have the experience of understanding how to do that. One of the key skills you should be looking out for is having this ‘will do’ attitude.
A will do attitude
From my experience, I come in and I look at the strategy and planning, and I work with the leadership teams, but when crunch comes to crunch, I do have to roll my sleeves up and get involved.
I can’t just say one thing and then not know how to do it. So I am both strategic and practical, and I think that’s the quality that you should be looking out for when you’re hiring a fractional marketing director. Do they understand the strategy, but can they roll their sleeves up and really, really get involved?
Can they coach you and your team?
Another key quality to look out for is how they work with people and the coaching that they can do. So I was thinking back to my experience and sometimes I am working with leadership teams and I am coaching them through that marketing thought process, but I’m also working with marketing teams and juniors and helping them upskill and get better at what they do. So having that kind of person to come in and coach and make the whole business better, that’s a real key skill that you need to look at as well.
Helping you to attract top talent
And I think going back to my earlier point, one of the skills that I think is important to look out for is when they are looking at building a marketing team, what’s their recruitment experience? How do they recruit? How do they make sure that you get the right people in your business? What kind of process do they go through? What questions do they ask? And you should be asking what do you do when you recruit? What are you looking for?
And I think that gives you the confidence to know that they understand how to build a team and how to recruit the right people in.
Do they fit in with your culture?
The last thing to think about would be about culture fit. Do they fit with you? Do they fit with the rest of the team? Do they fit with the leadership team and the partners that you work with?
That’s important because usually Fractional Marketing Directors are going to be around for a while. They’re there to fill a hole for you. And so you want to make sure that everybody, well, not everyone’s going to a hundred percent get along, but you need to make sure that they have the same values as you and your business.
So hopefully that gives you an idea of a couple of the things that you need to look out for or a couple of the skills that you need to look out for when hiring a Fractional Marketing Director. I hope you found that useful, and bye for now.
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