4 ms·

Choosing Your First Marketing Hire

98 points by gk1 8y ago

gk1 8y ago
Author here. Happy to discuss any questions or get your feedback.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  Good post and good advice as usual. One small nitpick if I may... Your interview questions aren't stellar. Better interview questions are behavioral driven IMO, e.g.: > In our business we sometimes need do [activity]; can you tell me about a time when you [did activity]? And then probe deeper, as they answer, on the hows, whys, and their decision process.
  - gk1 8y ago
    Valid point. Hope others take note, if they'll be interviewing marketers in the near future.
    - ddebernardy 8y ago
      It's not just marketers. :-) The same applies to sales or engineers. Or most if not all other knowledge-based jobs, for that matter.
- ahstilde 8y ago
  I really enjoy your blog. I've been reading it for a few years. What blogs do _you_ read?
  - gk1 8y ago
    Thanks for saying that! Very glad to hear it. I don't read many blogs, and especially not marketing blogs. I'm subscribed to http://tomtunguz.com/ http://tomtunguz.com/, https://www.kevin-indig.com/ https://www.kevin-indig.com/, backlinko.com, and https://len.podia.com/inner-circle https://len.podia.com/inner-circle. Even so, I only look at the post titles in my inbox and click through when it's relevant. The world of growth/marketing advice is super noisy, so I mostly learn from experience and from trusted friends/mentors/advisors rather than blogs. Then I try to distill that in my own blog.
- fugazithehaxoar 8y ago
  This was a really well-written post. It is a far too common occurrence for startups to hire a well-credentialed VP to run marketing only to find out 6 months later that he/she can't execute at all.
- pouta 8y ago
  A good friend of mine finished his Master in Psychology and only later found what he really loved: Marketing. Being a self-learner I tried my best to find good content for him to learn on his own (Hubspot has amazing lessons for anyone starting from 0). Today he went on to his first marketing job interview. What would be your advice to him?
  - gk1 8y ago
    If your friend is interviewing at a startup, my advice would be to embrace and display an experimental and analytical approach to marketing. Don't act like you know what works, but instead have a few ideas and a plan for testing them, and then a way to find new ideas to test. If he's interviewing for a more traditional marketing role at a traditional company, I don't any advice to offer.
    - pouta 8y ago
      Thanks for the insight, I will gladly pass it onto him! Another thing I have been discussing with him is how he can take advantage his current Organisational/Work/Social Psychology (thats was his specialisation) knowledge while working pursuing a Marketing career. I think there should be good insights in Marketing once you better understand human behaviour.
- martinald 8y ago
  Where's a good place to find marketing people? I feel I'm strong at finding good developers from various weird and wonderful channels, but I have no idea where to hire marketing types?
  - gk1 8y ago
    Asking around your network, maybe https://growth.org/ https://growth.org/ (I don't participate there but it's a large marketing community), marketers at companies you admire who've been there for 2-3 years and you suspect might be open to a change, and good marketing blogs. Some ideas to get you started, at least.
  - Goosee 8y ago
    Depends what type of marketing you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for social media marketing, browse whichever social networks you want to target.
louisswiss 8y ago
Interesting post with some really useful insights. My comment isn't about the linked article per se, but I noticed recently (having made several first marketing hires myself) that it's really important to: 1) Have a very good 'head of marketing level' friend help you make your hiring decision 2)Be loose with titles - if you call the new hire your CMO/HoM and then realise later that they aren't up to that job, it's hard to hire above them without causing problems (leading a team is a very different skillset to setting up the first marketing channels, and not everyone who is good at the latter transitions well to the former). Lastly, a tip for marketers looking to transition into working at a startup with a smallish marketing team (2-5 marketing hires) --> If they are advertising for a 'growth hacker' (with quite a generic skill set), then run for the hills and don't apply. Nine times out of ten, they realised too late that their CMO doesn't have the experience/skill to get the job done but, because they don't want to hire above them, they look for a 'growth hacker' to be CMO in responsibility but not pay or title (or decision making capacity).
- gk1 8y ago
  > 1) Have a very good 'head of marketing level' friend help you make your hiring decision. Absolutely. A friend, or a consultant, or see if any of your investors (if you have them) have a marketer-in-residence. Regarding titles, "Head of Marketing" is a safe one, in my opinion, because it isn't attached to a specific seniority (and pay scale) the way "CMO" or "VP" are. Can also go with "Marketing Lead." As for "growth hacker," it's time we all forgot about that term, and I'm glad to say I haven't seen it in a while.
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  I don't understand how anyone can call themselves a 'growth hacker', you might as well advertise you're a golden unicorn at the same time
  - ddebernardy 8y ago
    I believe @louisswiss was discussing the company advertising to hire a growth hacker, rather than the marketer/developer advertising themselves as one. Having been on the receiving end of such a company once (and having unfortunately accepted the job), I strongly concur with the sentiment laid out: never, ever, ever accept a marketing job offer where the yardstick is delivering the moon and more every Friday like clockwork. Marketing is, first and foremost, a systematic activity. You get a small gain here and a small gain there, week after week, with systematic testing in between. Your bread and butter is compound interest, if you will, if one can compare growth rate to investing. Unicorn-sized ideas that move the needle a lot do occur, naturally; but not often, nor regularly.
ogou 8y ago
Be very specific about your goals or else the position will burn people out fast. There are many aspects to marketing. You may think you want a "person to get us leads", but you end up needing creative services, ad trafficking, content marketing, social media management, copywriting, partner marketing management, brand management, web development, and (grrrr) email template design. Those are all very different activities with their own tiers of expertise. If you are still going to try for one person, ask them "is your strength in tactical marketing or strategic marketing?" If they answer "both" it's neither, or equally mediocre. You may think you need strategic, because you watched a few seasons of Mad Men. But, you probably need a tactical marketing pro with 3-5 years experience executing on their own.
purplezooey 8y ago
Your first marketing hire should probably be a director-level person who can be made accountable for generating a sales pipelines, with experience at a company 2-5x your size. Good advice. Many companies just hire the first jackass that talks a good game. But much of marketing is being a jackass that talks a good game.
kposehn 8y ago
> Marketers from large companies are insulated from growth metrics by the management layers above them. I've found this isn't that consistent. If you're looking for a strong demand-gen marketers you can also look at the larger companies where that is core to their growth, like Expedia or Booking.com
taylorhou 8y ago
Thread jacking cus I'm hoping lots of marketing folks will read the comments. =) I'm looking to bring on our first marketing hire (director-level) We're a tech-enabled service specifically in the property management industry. You can think of us as the PwC specific to our industry. (www.apmhelp.com) We're at $100k/month in revenue ($35k mrr, the rest is one-time projects) and all of our growth in our 13 months since inception has been word of mouth and niche forums. We feel we've hit "product market fit" as we're able to do one call closes with our average deal size being $24k in AR for recurring clients. Our primary target audience is older and definitely on Facebook so prior experience running campaigns on FB is a must. DM if interested! We're completely remote and have big aspirations =)
adarsh_thampy 8y ago
I have been a hands-on marketer who has handled multi-million dollar campaigns every month. Apart from the post being slightly self-promotional (a pitch to hire the author as a consultant), I strongly feel this is not the way to hire your first marketing person. This is pretty much like saying your first tech hire should be a VP of Engineering who can roll up their sleeves and do front-end and back-end and data-infra and create neural networks. Sure, maybe they can do it. But how good a job do you think he will do overall? The first marketing hire, especially when you don't really know how to hire a marketing person, is going to be a gamble - no matter what the experience of the person is or what level of success the person has achieved in the previous company. I have hired very successful hands-on marketers who have failed terribly because the dynamics of the company changes. So does the target audience, the message, etc. Often times, most marketers will take credit for the success their team achieved. For e.g. if you ask what was the metrics you handled, they'd most likely share the team metrics that was a collective responsibility and give you numbers based on that. You need deep experience to see through these claims. Also, the first hire you make almost always needs to be tactical unless you have a large budget. But even tactical markets cannot do anything unless you have enough marketing budgets. Also, the medium of promotion is important. FB marketing is very different from LinkedIn marketing. Both of them differ from AdWords as well. These are almost entirely different from content networks like Outbrain and Taboola. Oh did I talk to you about DSPs? Unless you know which medium you will be using to promote, you cannot hire a specialist. And there's no one who is going to be equally skilled in all channels. I have seen marketers waste tens of thousands of dollars because they wanted to try a new channel which they had no idea to optimize. In short, don't think following this guide is going to help you make the right hire. Unless you are a marketer yourself, most likely you will make the wrong hire. If I were to hire a marketer for a startup and I cannot spend time hand-holding the person, I'll just hire someone who has some experience running organic as well as paid campaigns and is willing to experiment and learn. Marketing is mostly a function of trial and error. So hire someone who is willing to do this.

98 points by gk1 8y ago

gk1 8y ago

Author here. Happy to discuss any questions or get your feedback.

ddebernardy 8y ago
Good post and good advice as usual. One small nitpick if I may... Your interview questions aren't stellar. Better interview questions are behavioral driven IMO, e.g.: > In our business we sometimes need do [activity]; can you tell me about a time when you [did activity]? And then probe deeper, as they answer, on the hows, whys, and their decision process.
- gk1 8y ago
  Valid point. Hope others take note, if they'll be interviewing marketers in the near future.
  - ddebernardy 8y ago
    It's not just marketers. :-) The same applies to sales or engineers. Or most if not all other knowledge-based jobs, for that matter.
ahstilde 8y ago
I really enjoy your blog. I've been reading it for a few years. What blogs do _you_ read?
- gk1 8y ago
  Thanks for saying that! Very glad to hear it. I don't read many blogs, and especially not marketing blogs. I'm subscribed to http://tomtunguz.com/ http://tomtunguz.com/, https://www.kevin-indig.com/ https://www.kevin-indig.com/, backlinko.com, and https://len.podia.com/inner-circle https://len.podia.com/inner-circle. Even so, I only look at the post titles in my inbox and click through when it's relevant. The world of growth/marketing advice is super noisy, so I mostly learn from experience and from trusted friends/mentors/advisors rather than blogs. Then I try to distill that in my own blog.
fugazithehaxoar 8y ago
This was a really well-written post. It is a far too common occurrence for startups to hire a well-credentialed VP to run marketing only to find out 6 months later that he/she can't execute at all.
pouta 8y ago
A good friend of mine finished his Master in Psychology and only later found what he really loved: Marketing. Being a self-learner I tried my best to find good content for him to learn on his own (Hubspot has amazing lessons for anyone starting from 0). Today he went on to his first marketing job interview. What would be your advice to him?
- gk1 8y ago
  If your friend is interviewing at a startup, my advice would be to embrace and display an experimental and analytical approach to marketing. Don't act like you know what works, but instead have a few ideas and a plan for testing them, and then a way to find new ideas to test. If he's interviewing for a more traditional marketing role at a traditional company, I don't any advice to offer.
  - pouta 8y ago
    Thanks for the insight, I will gladly pass it onto him! Another thing I have been discussing with him is how he can take advantage his current Organisational/Work/Social Psychology (thats was his specialisation) knowledge while working pursuing a Marketing career. I think there should be good insights in Marketing once you better understand human behaviour.
martinald 8y ago
Where's a good place to find marketing people? I feel I'm strong at finding good developers from various weird and wonderful channels, but I have no idea where to hire marketing types?
- gk1 8y ago
  Asking around your network, maybe https://growth.org/ https://growth.org/ (I don't participate there but it's a large marketing community), marketers at companies you admire who've been there for 2-3 years and you suspect might be open to a change, and good marketing blogs. Some ideas to get you started, at least.
- Goosee 8y ago
  Depends what type of marketing you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for social media marketing, browse whichever social networks you want to target.

louisswiss 8y ago

Interesting post with some really useful insights. My comment isn't about the linked article per se, but I noticed recently (having made several first marketing hires myself) that it's really important to: 1) Have a very good 'head of marketing level' friend help you make your hiring decision 2)Be loose with titles - if you call the new hire your CMO/HoM and then realise later that they aren't up to that job, it's hard to hire above them without causing problems (leading a team is a very different skillset to setting up the first marketing channels, and not everyone who is good at the latter transitions well to the former). Lastly, a tip for marketers looking to transition into working at a startup with a smallish marketing team (2-5 marketing hires) --> If they are advertising for a 'growth hacker' (with quite a generic skill set), then run for the hills and don't apply. Nine times out of ten, they realised too late that their CMO doesn't have the experience/skill to get the job done but, because they don't want to hire above them, they look for a 'growth hacker' to be CMO in responsibility but not pay or title (or decision making capacity).

gk1 8y ago
> 1) Have a very good 'head of marketing level' friend help you make your hiring decision. Absolutely. A friend, or a consultant, or see if any of your investors (if you have them) have a marketer-in-residence. Regarding titles, "Head of Marketing" is a safe one, in my opinion, because it isn't attached to a specific seniority (and pay scale) the way "CMO" or "VP" are. Can also go with "Marketing Lead." As for "growth hacker," it's time we all forgot about that term, and I'm glad to say I haven't seen it in a while.
Kagerjay 8y ago
I don't understand how anyone can call themselves a 'growth hacker', you might as well advertise you're a golden unicorn at the same time
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  I believe @louisswiss was discussing the company advertising to hire a growth hacker, rather than the marketer/developer advertising themselves as one. Having been on the receiving end of such a company once (and having unfortunately accepted the job), I strongly concur with the sentiment laid out: never, ever, ever accept a marketing job offer where the yardstick is delivering the moon and more every Friday like clockwork. Marketing is, first and foremost, a systematic activity. You get a small gain here and a small gain there, week after week, with systematic testing in between. Your bread and butter is compound interest, if you will, if one can compare growth rate to investing. Unicorn-sized ideas that move the needle a lot do occur, naturally; but not often, nor regularly.

ogou 8y ago

Be very specific about your goals or else the position will burn people out fast. There are many aspects to marketing. You may think you want a "person to get us leads", but you end up needing creative services, ad trafficking, content marketing, social media management, copywriting, partner marketing management, brand management, web development, and (grrrr) email template design. Those are all very different activities with their own tiers of expertise. If you are still going to try for one person, ask them "is your strength in tactical marketing or strategic marketing?" If they answer "both" it's neither, or equally mediocre. You may think you need strategic, because you watched a few seasons of Mad Men. But, you probably need a tactical marketing pro with 3-5 years experience executing on their own.

purplezooey 8y ago

Your first marketing hire should probably be a director-level person who can be made accountable for generating a sales pipelines, with experience at a company 2-5x your size. Good advice. Many companies just hire the first jackass that talks a good game. But much of marketing is being a jackass that talks a good game.

kposehn 8y ago

> Marketers from large companies are insulated from growth metrics by the management layers above them. I've found this isn't that consistent. If you're looking for a strong demand-gen marketers you can also look at the larger companies where that is core to their growth, like Expedia or Booking.com

taylorhou 8y ago

Thread jacking cus I'm hoping lots of marketing folks will read the comments. =) I'm looking to bring on our first marketing hire (director-level) We're a tech-enabled service specifically in the property management industry. You can think of us as the PwC specific to our industry. (www.apmhelp.com) We're at $100k/month in revenue ($35k mrr, the rest is one-time projects) and all of our growth in our 13 months since inception has been word of mouth and niche forums. We feel we've hit "product market fit" as we're able to do one call closes with our average deal size being $24k in AR for recurring clients. Our primary target audience is older and definitely on Facebook so prior experience running campaigns on FB is a must. DM if interested! We're completely remote and have big aspirations =)

adarsh_thampy 8y ago

I have been a hands-on marketer who has handled multi-million dollar campaigns every month. Apart from the post being slightly self-promotional (a pitch to hire the author as a consultant), I strongly feel this is not the way to hire your first marketing person. This is pretty much like saying your first tech hire should be a VP of Engineering who can roll up their sleeves and do front-end and back-end and data-infra and create neural networks. Sure, maybe they can do it. But how good a job do you think he will do overall? The first marketing hire, especially when you don't really know how to hire a marketing person, is going to be a gamble - no matter what the experience of the person is or what level of success the person has achieved in the previous company. I have hired very successful hands-on marketers who have failed terribly because the dynamics of the company changes. So does the target audience, the message, etc. Often times, most marketers will take credit for the success their team achieved. For e.g. if you ask what was the metrics you handled, they'd most likely share the team metrics that was a collective responsibility and give you numbers based on that. You need deep experience to see through these claims. Also, the first hire you make almost always needs to be tactical unless you have a large budget. But even tactical markets cannot do anything unless you have enough marketing budgets. Also, the medium of promotion is important. FB marketing is very different from LinkedIn marketing. Both of them differ from AdWords as well. These are almost entirely different from content networks like Outbrain and Taboola. Oh did I talk to you about DSPs? Unless you know which medium you will be using to promote, you cannot hire a specialist. And there's no one who is going to be equally skilled in all channels. I have seen marketers waste tens of thousands of dollars because they wanted to try a new channel which they had no idea to optimize. In short, don't think following this guide is going to help you make the right hire. Unless you are a marketer yourself, most likely you will make the wrong hire. If I were to hire a marketer for a startup and I cannot spend time hand-holding the person, I'll just hire someone who has some experience running organic as well as paid campaigns and is willing to experiment and learn. Marketing is mostly a function of trial and error. So hire someone who is willing to do this.