Marketing Recruitment Advisory
Recruit the marketing leader your business actually needs
Businesses often begin marketing recruitment with an assumption about the title they need, rather than a clear understanding of the problem they need that person to solve.
They may decide they need a Head of Marketing, Marketing Director or someone with stronger digital experience, but those decisions are often made before the existing team, capability, systems, agencies and wider business priorities have been properly considered.
The title is rarely the most important decision. Before writing the advert, it is worth understanding what the business actually needs marketing to achieve, what capability already exists, what is missing and what level of person is realistically required to address it.
Without that work, a job description can quickly become a collection of everything the business would like marketing to do. Strategy, leadership, CRM, SEO, paid media, content, websites, reporting, brand, events and day-to-day execution can all end up sitting within the same role, even when no single person could reasonably be expected to cover them all well.
That creates a problem before the recruitment process has even started. The wrong brief attracts the wrong candidates, makes it harder for recruiters to understand who they should be looking for and can result in experienced marketers questioning a role that looks unclear or unrealistic.
I provide independent Marketing Recruitment Advisory to founders, CEOs, boards, HR leaders and recruiters who want experienced marketing input before making an important appointment.
I can help define the role, shape the remit, assess the level of seniority required, create a meaningful interview process, evaluate candidates and support the eventual appointment into the business.
Why marketing recruitment goes wrong
Hiring a marketer is difficult when nobody involved in the recruitment process has enough senior marketing experience to challenge the brief.
The business may know that marketing is not performing well enough, but that does not necessarily mean it knows what type of marketer will solve the problem.
Poor results could be caused by weak leadership. They could also be caused by the team structure, agencies, CRM, customer data, reporting, proposition, sales process or unrealistic expectations about what marketing can achieve.
Recruiting against the wrong diagnosis can simply introduce another person into the same problem.
A new Head of Marketing joins, spends several months trying to understand what they have inherited and eventually discovers that the role they were recruited to perform bears little resemblance to what the business actually needs.
By then, both sides are frustrated, and the recruitment process may begin again.
What is Marketing Recruitment Advisory?
Marketing Recruitment Advisory adds experienced marketing judgement to the recruitment process.
I am not there to replace your recruiter or HR team. I work alongside them to make sure they are recruiting against a brief that reflects what the business genuinely needs.
That may begin with a relatively focused conversation about the role. In a more complex situation, I may need to understand the existing team, agencies, systems, reporting and current marketing priorities before recommending the appropriate level of appointment.
The outcome should be a role that makes sense to the business and to credible candidates.
When this may be the right approach
Marketing Recruitment Advisory can be particularly useful when you know you need to strengthen marketing but are unsure whether you need a Marketing Manager, Head of Marketing, Marketing Director or CMO.
It can also help when a previous senior marketing appointment has not worked, the existing job description has grown into an unrealistic list of responsibilities, recruiters are struggling to find suitable candidates, or the leadership team is receiving very different opinions about what the role should be.
The service is equally relevant when a senior marketer has left, and the business wants to use the opportunity to reconsider the structure rather than automatically recruiting a direct replacement.
Define the problem before defining the person
One of the first questions I ask is simple:
What does this person actually need to fix?
That matters because very different business problems require very different marketers.
A business with a capable team but weak leadership may need an experienced Marketing Director.
A business with limited marketing capability may need someone more operational who is comfortable building from the ground up.
A company struggling with CRM, reporting and demand generation may need a different profile from one dealing with brand positioning, international growth or reputation.
The role should be shaped around the business problem rather than a generic list of marketing responsibilities.
Defining the right level of seniority
Marketing titles are inconsistent.
One company’s Marketing Director can have less responsibility than another company’s Marketing Manager.
I look at the level of decision-making, budget responsibility, team leadership, board access, agency management and technical depth the role actually requires.
That helps determine an appropriate title, level of seniority and remit before the business enters the market.
It can also prevent the common problem of advertising a senior-sounding role while offering a salary and level of authority that will not attract the calibre of candidate the business expects.
Role and job description development
Once the requirement is understood, I can help turn it into a recruitment brief and job description that credible marketers will recognise.
The role should make clear what the person is responsible for, what they will inherit, where they have authority to make decisions and what the business expects them to achieve.
It should also be realistic.
Trying to combine CMO-level strategy, Head of Marketing leadership and Marketing Executive delivery into one position rarely creates a stronger hire. More often, it attracts the wrong candidates and discourages experienced people who can see that the expectations are impossible.
Candidate profile and assessment criteria
A strong recruitment process needs more than a list of marketing skills.
I can help define what evidence candidates should be able to demonstrate across areas such as leadership, commercial judgement, team development, agency management, reporting, CRM, digital performance, change and stakeholder management.
The criteria should reflect what the person will genuinely need to do once they join.
That creates a more consistent way to assess candidates and reduces the risk of decisions being based primarily on presentation style, chemistry or who gives the most confident interview.
Better marketing interview tasks
This is an area where marketing recruitment can go badly wrong.
Candidates are sometimes asked to produce a marketing strategy, budget recommendation or growth plan using little more than headline revenue figures and a short company description.
There is not enough information to make a responsible recommendation.
A strong marketer may challenge the assumptions and explain what they would need to know before committing a budget.
Another candidate may simply fill in the gaps, produce an impressive-looking plan and tell the interview panel exactly what it hoped to hear.
The wrong interview brief can therefore make the wrong person look right, and the right person look difficult.
I can create interview tasks that test judgement, thinking and relevant experience without asking candidates to invent answers or provide large amounts of unpaid consultancy work.
Interview participation and candidate assessment
Where useful, I can participate directly in interviews alongside the leadership team, HR or recruiter.
My role is to explore the candidate’s marketing judgement in more depth, challenge assumptions and help distinguish between somebody who understands the underlying principles and somebody who has simply learnt how to give a strong interview answer.
I can also provide independent feedback against the agreed assessment criteria.
The final hiring decision remains with the business.
Working alongside recruiters and HR
This service is not intended to replace recruitment professionals.
A good recruiter becomes more effective when they are working from a well-defined brief.
I can help give them a better understanding of what the business needs, what experience matters most and what should genuinely distinguish one candidate from another.
The recruiter can then focus on finding and engaging the right people rather than trying to interpret an unclear marketing requirement themselves.
Onboarding the successful candidate
Recruitment does not finish when the employment contract is signed.
Where required, I can help establish the initial priorities for the successful candidate, provide context around the current marketing function and create a more useful starting point for their first 90 days.
That can be particularly valuable where I have already completed a Marketing Function Review or provided interim Fractional CMO leadership before the appointment.
The aim is to give the new marketing leader a realistic remit, useful information and the authority required to make progress.
How the engagement works
The starting point is normally a discovery conversation with the person responsible for the appointment.
I will establish why the business is recruiting, what has happened previously, what the current marketing structure looks like and what the leadership team expects the new person to achieve.
A focused role definition engagement can normally be completed within one to two weeks.
Wider support can then continue through the recruitment process where required, including brief development, interview tasks, candidate assessment, interview participation and onboarding.
What this service does not include
I am not a recruitment agency and do not ordinarily source candidates or charge placement commissions.
Candidate sourcing can remain with your internal recruitment team, HR function or existing recruitment partner.
The value I provide is the senior marketing expertise around the recruitment decision itself.
Where the business does not yet understand why marketing is underperforming, a broader Marketing Function Review may be the more appropriate place to begin.
Investment
Role definition from £1,500, excluding VAT
This can include an initial assessment of the requirement, recommended role level, remit, candidate profile and recruitment brief.
Wider support through candidate assessment, interview design, interview participation and onboarding is priced according to the scope and expected level of involvement.
The scope and fee are agreed before the work begins.
The experience I bring to the process
I am a Chartered Marketer and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing with more than 20 years of experience across senior marketing leadership, digital, CRM, customer data, marketing operations and reputation.
I have led marketing teams and worked at board level across financial services, investment, property, technology, ecommerce, travel and hospitality, including complex and regulated environments.
That experience gives me a practical understanding of the difference between somebody who interviews well and somebody who can actually lead a marketing function, make sound decisions and work effectively with the wider business.