The Great Resignation has kicked the hiring landscape into high gear, especially within the marketing world. If you’ve experienced a dip in employee attraction and retention, know you aren’t alone! When you’re looking for your next hire, especially in today’s candidate market, it can be tempting to jump on the first available person or opportunity. Trust us that this mindset can quickly send your hiring efforts into freefall, and you might end up back where you started.
But don’t start panicking yet! We’ve grown our team over the last two years since The Great Resignation began a year ago and have learned a few lessons along the way. Our top piece of advice is to always value culture. If your team cannot work together to get tasks done, you’re likely to encounter roadblock after roadblock. Let’s take it one step further. We’re here to break down our top strategies for growing your marketing team.
Our Best Tips for Hiring Your Next Marketer
Adopt a New Mindset
If you’re looking for new talent, you have to keep your options open for all positions.
We personally keep our mindset as “always be hiring” to ensure we never close the door on potentially great team members.
This doesn’t mean you have to have a position available at all times and are ready to hire a candidate, but it does mean that you’re open to making new connections and forming relationships with talent that might really excel in a future position when your organization has a seat open for them.
Flex With Your Demand, Market, and Economy
If you’ve traditionally hired full-time employees, don’t completely knock hiring part-time or contracted employees. Depending on the market and economy, sometimes your demand will be high and other times it will be low, and your labor demands will change. Having flexible positions that allow employees and team members to work when there is work to be done will be beneficial for everyone around. Not only does this prevent you from having to lay off team members, but it also allows you to support younger generations, parents, or individuals juggling multiple projects that want to work without having set hours.
Additionally, having an open seat hiring process will ensure you’re hiring for what your marketing team really needs. Evaluating your org structure and knowing what skills or personnel your team is lacking will help determine the individuals you need to bring onto your team. As you continue to grow, you’ll be able to know with full confidence what seats you need at the table.
Evaluate Your Core Values
When you’re looking to find a new marketer for your team, you want to ensure they embody your core values. For example, our core values include having a “can-do” attitude, and “not winging it”. We look for team members who move forward with positivity and who provide concrete evidence and strategy before acting. If your team members don’t uphold your core values, they won’t mesh well with your team or processes. Values not only relate to how your team works together but also how your team works to get things done. If core values are not being upheld, you’re likely to run into siloes and projects not coming together. As difficult as it might be to uphold these values when looking to find talent and find it fast, you’ll likely run into more headaches.
Look for Skills Outside of Your Job Description
Don’t get us wrong, skills are vital to ensuring work gets done. But it isn’t always about how well someone can make a spreadsheet or how well someone can create a graphic.
More often than not, the skills you're looking for cannot be taught.
Skills such as how your employee reacts to stressful situations, how organized your team member is, their drive and passion for the work they do, and their personality are defining characteristics that can indicate how well they will function in your organization.
Furthermore, you’ll want someone who can wear multiple hats if it comes down to them needing to perform other tasks outside of their traditional job roles. We like to look for a “T-Shaped Employee”, meaning that we look for individuals that can expand and grow outside of one silo. If you have multiple team members that can help pitch in with multiple tasks, your one rockstar developer or graphic designer won’t feel stretched so thin.
Don't Rush Your Hiring Process
We know it can be tempting to rush your hiring process when “The Great Resignation” makes the hiring landscape more competitive. It can be infuriating to think you have a great hire lined up to lose them to another company. But that doesn’t mean you should jump on the first interviewee you meet. Trust us that this leads to more mayhem than you want. The right applicant will stick with you through your entire hiring process. If your company offers great culture and value for candidates, they will not want to pass up the chance to work with you! Those career shopping or just looking for a quick payday will make themselves known and not be committed to your full interview process.
It Only Goes Up From Here
Don’t let the hiring process wear you down and discourage you. Growing your team of marketers is a labor of love and will pay off when your team is up and running. Once you have the right people in the right seats, your marketing department will do great things for your business. But if you run into a tight spot where your business needs marketing help, you can rely on LAIRE. Our team of passionate marketers can work as an extension of your team to fully run your marketing initiatives or take on your extra workload until you’re able to expand your team. If you're still evaluating how to run your team, download our free eBook "How to Run an In-House Agile Marketing Team" for our best insider tips on increasing your velocity and moving forward!
