Will a performance marketer waste lots of the budget on inefficient social media channels? What is the probability that a content manager will post something detrimental to a company’s reputation, causing a PR nightmare? Does a company need a glorious CMO from a large corporation, or can it get help from external consultants?
While there is no foolproof method of navigating the hiring process because every startup has unique marketing needs and professional skills requirements, here are four things you should NOT do when building a marketing team.
DON’T Rush to hire without setting clear goals
When an early-stage startup gets funded, I’ve seen some entrepreneurs start to hire as many marketers as they can afford. For example, after closing a seed round, one direct-to-consumer startup posted ten full-time marketing positions and filled all of them. And what happened?
Two months later, it downsized its marketing team to four people. It turned out this was the optimal number of full-time employees because most of the marketing activities were successfully managed by external business partners.
As a founder, I recommend you assess what exactly you believe needs to be done by marketing professionals and map out the necessary skills a candidate should have.
Don’t hurry to hire a well-rounded marketing executive or multiple niche specialists. Instead, analyse which projects are ideal for outsourcing, consider the best options in hiring a marketer full-time or signing a contract with freelancers, and identify which of the candidate’s skills and work experiences align with the purposes of the business.
Once you recognise which marketing functionality you need, clearly articulate the goals that you expect marketers to achieve and state how you are going to measure them.
By doing this, you will better understand which marketer is a good fit for your company and have meaningful metrics to help you evaluate their performance afterwards.
DON’T Forget about other team members
As marketers work in diverse teams, which include IT developers, product managers, designers, and other specialists, founders need to take into consideration how marketing hires fit into a company’s culture.
Early-stage startups usually represent small teams, so finding common ground and effectively working together becomes crucial. Ideally, founders should oversee the hiring process and participate in the recruiting interviews at least during the early days of their startup, building team dynamics from the ground up.
DON’T get caught up in formal credentials
While a founder should not underestimate such formal variables as education and work experience, it is essential to look at a candidate’s personality.
A founder can prevent possible mistakes that a junior marketer might make by consulting with an external expert. As a result, a company cannot only outweigh the gains of having a more knowledgeable employee with a misfit skillset; it can also grow and nurture young talents.
DON’T Make the recruiting process unnecessarily tough
I hear from a lot of marketers that they think the hiring process has become more complex in recent years. Some startups turn hiring into a multi-step quest with a few job interview rounds, tests, and sample projects.
Although these assessment milestones might be helpful to identify suitable candidates, I believe they might turn some strong candidates away.
The majority of early-stage startups want to scale quickly, so having a time-consuming recruiting process might not be the right choice. Optimise job interviews by conducting only necessary meetings, eliminate redundant recruitment steps, and stay focused on your objectives.
The fast-paced nature of an early-stage startup adds to the challenge of attracting bright candidates. With tight deadlines for recruiting, founders not only have to find talented marketers but also compete for them against other startups and brand-name mature corporations. Done well, a hiring process will equip the startup with a powerful marketing engine capable of driving its rapid growth.
This article was originally published on ParlayMe
Svetlana Stotskaya a marketing consultant with deep expertise in strategic marketing and brand management.
