Finding a good marketing person is not easy. For the search for a new employee to be crowned with success, you need to work out well at each stage.
Decide which marketer you need
You need to understand that a marketer is not a human orchestra who can be given completely different tasks (for example, to lay out flyers or a banner on a website), but a specialist whose duties include working with analytics, target audience, product specifics, and bringing it to the market. and increased sales. Hiring a marketer is worth thinking about when the organization needs to tackle just such a problem.
Now in the labor market there are several directions in the profession of a marketer.
Project marketer Is a specialist who develops a brand, develops strategies, monitors project implementation, conducts market analysis, identifies promising niches, participates in making decisions on expanding or reducing the range, develops products from scratch and is engaged in bringing them to the market. That is, this person is a business assistant for the leader.
The project manages a team of copywriters, email marketers, designers, forms technical specifications for them, monitors the implementation of the strategy.
Internet marketer works with contextual advertising, budgets and strategy, displays products in the top lines of search engines.
Email Marketer deals with mailings, builds message chains for clients.
SEO marketer optimizes the content of sites to increase the incoming flow.
The ideal option is when the company has all these specialists, and the project manages them.
Now the job market welcomes versatile fighters who perform diverse tasks. But in practice, they simply will not be able to work out all areas of high quality and will be torn between cases. Therefore, when hiring, you need to clearly define which employee you need and for what purposes.
Where to look for candidates’ resumes and post vacancies
There are universal sites for job search, such as hh.ru, rabota.ru, superjob.ru and others, where many job seekers post their resumes. But I would advise you to post vacancies in thematic communities in social networks and in Telegram channels (for example, @dnative_job – “Vacancies for SMM and Digital”, @vacanciesrus – “Digital vacancies in Telegram”). As a rule, more interested, active and experienced specialists are looking for work there.
By the way, you can consider candidates from other cities: the specifics of the work of marketers allows you to be remote.
What to write about in vacancies
Be sure to indicate what tasks the marketer will face, what results you want to see (bringing the product to the market, increasing the number of new customers, etc.), what tools are important to you (for example, the ability to analyze and apply Yandex.Metrica data; skills in the formation and testing of hypotheses; competitive analysis and market analysis; knowledge of the CRM system, the creation of remarketing scenarios based on CRM segmentation).
It will not be superfluous to prescribe the desired personal qualities of the future marketer (creativity, efficiency, activity, etc.).
If your company has the ability to pay for employee training, be sure to write about it. Marketers need to gain new knowledge on a regular basis, and this will be important to them.
What to look for in a resume
A marketer with experience should have a portfolio: completed projects, reviews and recommendations from previous customers. A good specialist will attach his portfolio to the resume, or at least note that he has one.
Also take a look at the applicant’s certifications and training. This will give you an understanding of what tools the person owns.
Be sure to look in which areas the specialist worked before, whether these areas are close to yours. For example, if a person was a marketer in the B2C category and organized promotions, they are unlikely to be able to do well in the B2B sector right away.
How to check a candidate before a meeting
It is advisable to send a test task before meeting with the candidate. For example, ask to develop a test strategy for promoting some of your products. So you can find out what tools the marketer owns and at what level.
Pay attention to whether the applicant indicated after what time the strategy will become profitable, how detailed the use of all tools has been prescribed. And if you want to check how a person is with a creative, set the task to develop a small promotion.
For example, we give our applicants about the following tasks:
Summer is a period when the target audience of the training center of our company has free time. Describe a summer promotion that will encourage clients to complete training during this period. Formulate the end result you will get.
This is the simplest example of a creative thinking assignment. It will help you understand how the marketer is measuring his work.
A new product for automating the work of the accounting department of the Scan-Archive enterprise is launched on the market. Coverage – the entire Russian Federation. It is necessary to formulate a strategy for bringing the product to market. The product site is designed and operational.
Purpose: to convey to the target audience (accountants, chief accountants, financial directors) information about the existence of such a product and provide at least 500 transitions per month to the product website.
Objective: to propose at least three options for achieving this goal. Describe the advantages of the selected options, indicate the most promising and justify your choice.
Formulate the end result you will get.
The assignment will help determine how and what marketing tools the applicant possesses, and how he measures the effectiveness of his work.
What questions to ask at the interview
Questions from the test task can also be asked during the interview. A competent and experienced marketer will evaluate their work by specific indicators, and not by the number of actions performed.
Another important question is “what do you know about our company”. Any job seeker should read about the company he is going to before the interview. Especially for a marketer, since he will be engaged in the promotion of her products or services. It is advisable that the candidate speaks about your product, target audience, website. Ask how he would improve the site and what he would bring to the work. The answers will help you understand how interested the person is in the job and whether he is ready to work in your field.
How to choose the best candidate marketer
Good marketers are good salespeople. Pay attention to how your candidates hold up in the interview. Born marketers will sell themselves profitably.
Also, a good marketer should easily provide you with contacts of his previous customers or employers with whom you can talk. Ask how much income the applicant’s project brought to the company, how many new clients he brought, what was the percentage of the dump. Many job seekers can be eliminated on these questions.
Hiring a new marketer is only half the battle. To understand what kind of person is a professional and how much you fit together is possible only in practice. For this, there is a probationary period.