Getting the right people on your marketing team is a full-time job these days. The best and brightest are moving into top positions at blue chip companies quickly. The rest of the crème de la crème are choosing the independent route, creating their own digital marketing agencies and jacking up their prices while reducing their time spent on your projects.
What is a company to do? Take these best practices as definitive pointers that will help to accelerate your marketing talent acquisition program.
Create a Company Vision
In order to attract and keep top talent, you need to back away from the trees and take a look at the forest.
Young, tech savvy employees want to see their companies engaged in positive social change just as much as they want that corner office. Websites like Glassdoor allow current employees to anonymously whistleblow any company that is falling short in its culture. You can bet that the Millennials you are looking for in your marketing department are paying close attention to the comments of their peers. As you are trying to acquire talent, don’t just tell them that you make widgets. Let them know what the widgets are for (and that you are giving away 5% of the widgets to deserving unfortunates).
Recruit with Data
You are looking for people who understand how to combine the disciplines of strategic data planning and marketing outreach. Why would you try to pull anything less in your own talent acquisition campaign? Think of your talent acquisition campaign as a dry run for the campaigns you will want your new employees to run for you. Data also helps to optimize the hiring process, bringing you better candidates in a shorter amount of time.
For instance, if you know exactly where your topics came from last year, you can revisit those places the following year. Why look elsewhere? You should also make it a point to partner HR with your current marketing team to refine outreach emails, career pages and job descriptions. Good data will also let you know if your hiring process is turning top candidates off before they make it to the end.
Track time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, source-of-hire, and quality signals like 90-day retention and hiring manager feedback. Capture candidate experience with a simple survey or candidate NPS, then A/B test subject lines and job ads. Your ATS should centralize data and reporting.
Standardize Your Selection Process
Use structured interviews with consistent, competency-based questions and a scoring rubric for all interviewers. Add a short work sample, such as a brief campaign critique or analysis task. This improves consistency, reduces bias, and predicts performance more reliably.
LinkedIn is Great, But…
Every successful marketing talent acquisition program is finding its way off of LinkedIn. As great as the platform is, it may not be the best environment to hunt for tech savvy marketers. Even if you find your marketers in one place, it is not likely that your programmers will come from the same place.
If you are looking for people with a specialized job description, you may want to visit job boards that specialize in those skill sets. Take a look at academic programs that focus on these skills as well. Visit networking events where talented professionals have been known to show themselves. Pro tip: One of the best ways to attract tech savvy marketers is to hold hackathons.
Activate Employee Referrals
Launch a simple referral program with clear rules, easy submission, and timely status updates for employees. Track referral-to-interview and referral-to-hire rates to tune rewards and communications. Referrals expand reach beyond job boards and bring in qualified candidates.
Employer Branding
Employer branding is a critical step in any talent acquisition strategy, but it is especially important when you are reaching out to marketers. After all, these are the people who understand branding better than anyone. Your employer brand should include a crystal-clear reading of your core values and company culture.
Write inclusive job descriptions, avoid gender-coded terms, and drop requirements that are not tied to performance. Include an EEO statement and a reasonable accommodation note, both are standard in the U.S. In many jurisdictions, do not ask for salary history to stay compliant.
Just as importantly, you should speak to the work life balance that your new employees will enjoy once they start working for you. The name of the game today in marketing is efficiency, not long hours. Let prospects know that you will give them a chance to work smarter, not necessarily harder.
Use the tips above, and you should have some great candidates at your doorstep before long. Marketing to marketers can be difficult, but it is definitely worth it when you find the perfect people for the job!
