Hire In-demand Digital Talent with Tips From Our Marketing Recruiters
The COVID-19 pandemic has hastened the digital adoption for almost all companies. It is a time of great opportunity to build lasting connections with customers and for putting big, new ideas in motion.
Companies are prioritizing digital content and channels. Customers are expecting hyper-personalized, agile experiences online, on mobile and in real life (as things increasingly get back to normal). This requires new expertise and specialized skill sets that frankly many companies lack. Brands are filling the gap by retaining a digital agency or hiring digital talent.
For many, this means hiring highly specialized marketing professionals to digitally evolve the business for the better. Because digital talent continues to be in high demand and is often difficult to attract and retain, we’re sharing advice from our expert marketing recruiters on how to build digital teams and attract the top marketing hires.
We’re sharing advice from our expert marketing recruiters on how to build digital teams and attract and retain top marketing talent.
Table of contents
- Digital Marketing Is Accelerating Rapidly. Is Your Team Keeping Up?
- Today’s Most In-Demand Talent: Digital Marketers
- So You Want to Hire a Digital Marketing Manager?
- How to Interview a Digital Marketing Manager Like a Pro
- How to Attract Digital Talent Today – A Marketing Recruiter’s Perspective
- How to Win Over Top Search & Social Talent According to a Marketing Recruiter
- Refresh How You Think About Your Digital Team
- Stay Lean & Mean with Flexible Marketing Freelancers
- Managing Marketing Freelance Hires for Maximum Returns
- The Secret to Scaling Teams Particularly During Uncertainty
- So What’s It Like to Work with a Marketing Recruiter Anyway?
Digital Marketing Is Accelerating Rapidly. Is Your Team Keeping Up?
Few things seem to evolve as quickly as digital marketing trends, tools, channels, and skill set requirements. Having a deep digital marketing talent bench helps companies stay ahead of brand message and content changes needed to meet their customers where they are – especially during times of volatility and uncertainty.
Winning brands choose to hire marketers who know how to reach information-hungry, socially-distancing consumers where they are: continuously online, working from, and enjoying their small safe bubble.
Delivering messages, experiences, and even products or services digitally is a change that happened overnight for some brands. Customer journeys have taken new twists and turns as well.
Ask any one of our marketing recruiters and they will tell you that they see companies bringing on either full-time expertise or niche freelancers – all highly-skilled specialists who can hit the ground running and add digital value right away. Hiring digital marketers is a great way to fill that talent void and increase your company’s skill set.
Discover how brands are enhancing their digital expertise by recruiting a team of marketing professionals.
Today’s Most In-Demand Talent: Digital Marketers
If there is one talent area for which demand just keeps on growing, it’s digital marketing. In fact, it might even seem like there are more digital and marketing jobs than candidates to fill them.
With more of their customers working remotely, spending more time at home, and online, companies are vying for top digital talent across the spectrum of expertise to engage them: strategy, demand generation, content marketing, social, e-mail, search, marketing analytics, and more.
Companies are also increasingly interested in candidates who are skilled in more than just one area, and also have a strong set of soft skills. This is why it’s important to understand your company’s marketing needs and hire marketers accordingly.
Learn more about recruiting digital marketing talent here.
So You Want to Hire a Digital Marketing Manager?
If you are eager to initiate a search for an expert Digital Marketing Manager, a critical starting point is getting a firm grasp on the latest definition of the role, the responsibilities, and skill requirements.
Digital Marketing Managers strategize, design, and maintain a company’s social media presence across all relevant channels.
They plan digital marketing campaigns such as email, display advertising, web, and SEO/SEM, while also incorporating emerging tools, techniques, and platforms.
And, of course, they are obsessed with metrics – measuring and reporting on all the initiatives they lead.
Click here to access a complete job description as well as additional insights on hiring marketers.
How to Interview a Digital Marketing Manager Like a Pro
Digital marketers are reinventing how products, services, and brands are presented online, providing new opportunities for customer interaction.
When evaluating digital marketing talent, here’s how an expert marketing recruiter would feel out whether a digital marketing candidate is a good fit for such a critical strategic role.
24 Seven’s expert marketing recruiters ask questions to understand:
- A candidate’s strong knowledge of the current digital marketing landscape, as well as future trends, and demonstrate their ability to interpret and apply new trends to current programs
- A candidate’s analytical capabilities, superior problem-solving skills, and creative thinking in action
- A candidate’s past performance details on successful and not so successful initiatives, and the decisions the candidate made as result to optimize the program
Get inspired on how to approach an interview with a digital marketing professional and learn to hire marketers who fit your needs.
How to Attract Digital Talent Today – A Marketing Recruiter’s Perspective
24 Seven’s Vice President of Marketing Recruiting shares their perspective on how companies can attract and win over scarce digital marketing talent.
In a competitive digital market, one of the areas with the greatest demand is digital strategy. Clients are focused more than ever on paid social media channels and email marketing – demand generation channels, as well as SEO/SEM.
There are fewer candidates than jobs open so the competition for these digital professionals is merciless. Companies need to be prepared with their best offer because they may not get a second shot at these in-demand experts.
Our Marketing Recruiter’s advice is to offer flexibility in all its forms to win over in-demand digital job seekers, and to remember that these candidates are being courted by multiple employers. This makes the candidate experience during the hiring process particularly important as it might indicate to the job seeker what it’s like to work for the company.
Every touchpoint is important with digital marketing candidates, including the initial point of contact when you’re reaching out to them, scheduling interviews, clarifying the opportunity, and sharing what they can expect from the workplace. Authenticity and transparency are required and highly valued.
Get detailed advice about marketing recruiting and winning over coveted digital professionals here.
How to Win Over Top Search & Social Talent According to a Marketing Recruiter
24 Seven’s Director of Recruiting, confirms that paid search and paid social talent are among the highest in demand right now.
This talent can be found both in agencies and on corporate digital marketing teams, but the challenge is that these professionals have their pick of opportunities.
Our expert Marketing Recruiter recommends offering longer duration projects that will convert into full-time positions, as these opportunities will have an extra leg up on other companies who are reaching out for an interim need or an immediate temp-to-perm situation.
Other features that sweeten the lure
- If the employer is an agency, their roster of clients can have big appeal
- Clear career paths and sped-up career trajectories garner more interest
- Stability of work, competitive compensation, and benefits that fit lifestyle are all sought after workplace elements
Click here to read the full interview with our Marketing Recruiter.
Refresh How You Think About Your Digital Team
In our ongoing job market research and through reports from every marketing recruiter on the recruiting front lines we know that digital marketing talent is among the most challenging to attract, hire, and retain. Here is some advice on overcoming the challenge of hiring marketers:
- Consider freelance - companies have successfully kept initiatives moving forward by working with a marketing recruiter to hire specialized freelancers
- Get real about what this talent costs – despite market volatility and uncertainty, digital professionals can demand more salary, more perks, better benefits – and get it. A marketing recruiter can help benchmark compensation, set a realistic hiring budget, and critically evaluate the benefits package to finetune your offer
- Cast a wide net – talent is everywhere, consider widening the scope of the search both by geography and business sector - remember, digital skills are highly transferable
Get the comprehensive marketing recruiter POV on shaking up digital talent management here.
Stay Lean & Mean with Flexible Marketing Freelancers
With the constant evolution of technology and the workplace, companies are choosing to hire marketing freelancers as a talent management strategy.
Freelancers are accustomed to the gig lifestyle and many are experienced at working from anywhere, being on-boarded remotely, and delivering against expectations as proven self-starters. Plus, freelancers bring the soft skills needed such as adaptability, communication, and distributed collaboration to hit the ground running and be successful.
Freelancers are likely to be motivated to deliver excellence on time because it’s in their best interest to exceed expectations. A good reputation means future bookings. Contracted talent offers you the flexibility to add experience and expertise as needed, without the extra cost and time associated with hiring and managing full-time employees.
Hiring freelancers through a marketing recruiter is a smart solution that allows you to stay flexible when it comes to headcount and the natural ebbs and flows of workload.
Read more about the benefits of a flexible freelance approach to talent management.
Managing Marketing Freelance Hires for Maximum Returns
Freelancers are an extra set of hands to get projects done when to-do lists keep growing or full-time headcounts shrink. But to make sure these contributors are engaged members of the team, mindful management of these resources is key.
Here are some freelance management tips from an experienced marketing recruiter:
- Freelancers are most productive when they have a clear understanding of project scope, deadlines, and overall expectations
- When managing freelancers, establish set work times, work/life boundaries, and open communication, and provide job-essential tools
- Treat your freelance hire as an essential team member who deserves the attention and consideration that any employee would expect
- Foster a mutually respectful working relationship – it pays off in goodwill and future project engagement efficiency
Read more insider advice from a marketing recruiter about freelancer management here.
The Secret to Scaling Teams Particularly During Uncertainty
During prosperous times and periods of uncertainty, an agile workforce strategy that blends full-time and freelance hires is how the smartest companies fine-tune their talent needs.
When a full-time hire isn’t possible, an expert marketing recruiter will help you hire specialized freelancers, because ready or not those initiative deliverables mount. That’s how forward-thinking managers scale resources when headcount is frozen.
There’s an added benefit of having a freelancer on board. It allows the manager to test the open role in action, adjusting the expectations and requirements based on real-life results.
And then when full-time hiring is reactivated, a solid marketing recruiter can secure the candidate that’s a perfect functionality, team, and culture match. But don’t be surprised if it’s the very freelancer they had found for you in the first place. Many of 24 Seven’s marketing freelancers convert to full-time employees for our clients.
A marketing recruiter that can offer you a total talent solution is a partner who can find both just-in-time freelance talent that may turn out to be your just-right full-time teammate. Learn more about how the total talent strategy might be right for you.
So What’s It Like to Work with a Marketing Recruiter Anyway?
Many companies pulled back hiring or stopped adding to teams altogether in the early days of the pandemic public health emergency. But now as headcount freezes lift, hiring managers weighed down by the burden of remote leadership and new pandemic-inspired job responsibilities might consider working with a marketing recruiter when they need to hire freelancers or full-time talent.
Here is just a bit of how recruiters can fill talent gaps fast and expertly:
- Simply put, a marketing recruiter is a more efficient approach to talent sourcing, whether they are looking to hire freelancers or full-time help
- Marketing recruiters like 24 Seven offer laser-focused talent identification for specialized roles from a carefully curated professional network
- Recruiters are experts at filtering, vetting, and expediting candidates, having been early adopters of enabling technology to improve the process
- Risk-averse candidates require more employer brand advocacy by an impartial marketing recruiter in order to persuade a job move during a recovering economy
Read more on how a marketing recruiter can provide welcome relief to overburdened managers when it’s time to add to the team.
Your Dream Marketing Hire is Just a Step Away
Unlike you, with the multiple hats you wear and the dozens of balls in the air, a marketing recruiter has one job. Scout, persuade, and secure the very best talent on behalf of the client. Perfectly matched for each role, by functional and soft skills, team culture, and the company’s, too.
For most hiring managers going it alone, they soon learn a memorable lesson. Post a job. Get an avalanche of resumes. Ninety-nine percent of which won’t match. Who’s got time to go through that. One guess. Not you.
Instead, why not rely on a specialized marketing recruitment and staffing firm like 24 Seven. Each marketing recruiter on our team is connected to thousands of qualified, pre-vetted, niche marketers – especially the hardest to recruit, the Digital ones.
At 24 Seven, our approach to marketing recruitment delivers results fast. We pair you with an industry-specific marketing recruiter so you get exactly what you need in a new hire, whether it's freelance or full-time. Our hiring specialists have experience in a range of creative industries – and are experts in the field they now serve.
Get connected to one of our expert marketing recruiters and hire your next marketer today!