Key takeaways
Is marketing team hiring on your plate? This can be overwhelming for companies that may have either outsourced the role before or had someone (or many someones) doing double duty to cover the company's marketing needs.
But hiring your first marketing position means your business is taking off! So how do you hire someone and make understanding the role as seamless as possible so that onboarding and daily life are easy for everyone?
To get started, you’ll need to assess your present marketing position and determine what kind of help you need. Let’s get into valuable insights, practical tips, and a comprehensive approach to marketing team hiring, structure, and defining roles and responsibilities.
To dive right in, take a look at your present marketing methods and ask yourself if they are having the impact you desire. Maybe your website isn’t attracting much traffic, you only have a few email subscribers, or the number of social media followers you have is extremely lacking. You may need to find a marketer to work on these issues or others and improve results.
Maybe you’re comfortable with how you’ve been doing things, even if they aren’t getting very good results. It’s okay to feel a little hesitant about bringing on a new team member. It might even seem overwhelming.
But the longer you hesitate, the more valuable opportunities you’re missing, so it’s time to get cracking. You’ll need a few strategies in place to make this happen:
Take on these tasks one step at a time. First, write a job description. It will serve as a guide for hiring the right person.
Deciding to hire a marketer is a positive step because it means you’re ready to grow your business. You’ll want to define the new role clearly, and that requires a job description.
As you create a job description, focus on attracting qualified candidates and portraying your brand authentically while also clearly listing the duties the person will be expected to perform.
Depending on the position you’re hiring, a marketing job description could list core duties like developing a branding strategy, managing campaigns, and tracking KPIs. Starting with a blank page can be challenging when writing a job description. Check out online job boards like ZipRecruiter for templates to jumpstart writing your job description.
Next, you’ll use that job description as your guide when conducting interviews.
With your well-crafted job description complete, the next step is developing a thoughtful list of interview questions. Consider conducting two to three rounds of interviews. Ask candidates to present case studies and sample work so you can get to know them and their abilities.
After all interviews are complete, carefully comb through any notes you made, feedback from other team members, and resumes to narrow down the list to a few finalists. Communicate the next steps clearly and promptly to all candidates. Once a hiring decision is made, courteously notify all applicants.
The timeframe from when you decide to hire to when you onboard your new employee can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Don’t feel rushed, but at the same time, you take the chance of losing out on some candidates if the process is too long.
The happy day will arrive soon enough – you’ve made the hire! You’ll want to make sure the new employee feels comfortable and supported. A lot will depend on setting up a good onboarding experience.
Onboarding your new employee the right way is critical to the person being successful in their role. There are a few steps:
Along with this, you might want to assign a mentor to work with the new hire. A mentor is someone the new hire can look to for guidance and advice.
One of the best things you can do to help your new employee is to assign them a mentor if possible. In their first days at a new job, a new hire can feel more comfortable and acclimate faster with guidance from a mentor.
While founders may be able to work initially with new hires, ongoing mentoring will also be needed because quite frankly, founders won’t have time to be mentors for very long. Local chambers of commerce and networking groups are excellent sources for mentorship outside the workplace, as are online pro bono groups, such as Marketing Mentors, that can help new employees build their skills.
You’ll also need a mentor to help the new employee on the job. Just because you are hiring an internal marketer doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stop using your freelance help. You might be able to tap one of your freelancers to mentor the new hire. That could be a practical idea as they may work together on future projects.
Now that you’ve onboarded your first employee, things get exciting because you can start seeing a marketing plan come to life. One way to help foster buy-in and productivity is to schedule recurring one-on-one meetings and weekly team standups to strengthen relationships.
The methods to implement this approach include:
New hires especially need to learn how this works, so they can be part of the process and contribute to building a team culture of accountability.
All of your hiring and onboarding work will be valuable not only for your first hire but also for future employees. Be sure to document the processes you put in place so you can replicate them.
You’ve created a well-thought-out hiring and onboarding process. Take the time to ensure that you have the following in place for the next time you hire:
You can now apply these lessons to future hires, which will help you set up a marketing team structure. By then, your first marketing hire will be a great example for other team members.
You want your company to grow while staying true to its mission and vision. To make marketing team hiring a success, remember to craft a detailed job description, properly onboard your new hire, and document and standardize the process.
Hiring your first marketing position may seem challenging (or exciting!) but our systematic approach will increase your chances of success.
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