Bob Van Rossum — July 16, 2019 — July 16, 2019
Today is the era of agile marketing–which means–recruitment marketing needs to improve to get the best marketing talent.
Hiring candidates any day of the year is disruptive. As a CMO, you have a plethora of daily tasks. At the same time, you need to hire more talent to make your company grow and ultimately be successful.
On the one hand, you have to complete the tasks of your job. On the other hand, somewhere between your schedule, your team’s schedule, business travels, and PTO you need to fit in a mission-critical quality hire.
Having scheduling issues on your side and you having people who are critical to the hiring process who are busy does not mean the candidate will wait nor does it negate the fact the pace at which hiring is happening outside of your organization is changing.
The goal of having an agile hiring process is to recruit talent fast but also recruit quality talent that will move your company forward.
Video by IBM Watson Talent
Incentivize, Incentivize, Incentivize
As a marketing recruitment firm, we know CMOs have a lot on their plate. Incentivizing your team and hiring managers with a bonus to fill a role in a short window will encourage faster results. Ask yourself how you can put a metric into your team’s bonus that is tied to the speed of which they hire and the quality of that hire. Most companies who are growing quickly tie a portion of bonus compensation to the speed of hire.
The truth is, the best leaders are good at hiring because they understand the long term effect. However, the best workers who are very good at their job, who produce results and who adds value aren’t always good at or focused on hiring talent, especially if that individual is not a direct report.
Finding some way to create a sense of urgency will help push your team to create an agile hiring process.
Create a Revolving Interview Team
To stay ahead of the curve and better delegate responsibility–create a revolving interview team.
Have your core people on the team that you need, but then have team members who can substitute for those individuals, if others are not available. When used strategically, having a broader base of people that you can tap into optimizes the hiring process and keeps the ball rolling.
The key takeaway is to have a cross-functional team. So whether someone on the team leaves the company or becomes too busy, it’s important your organization is cross-trained. By doing so, you will create a stronger more efficient marketing recruitment strategy.
Organize, Don’t Agonize
Another method to use to create an agile hiring process is by creating a systemized way of interviewing. To get a quality hire, you need a great interview process. If you are letting your team interview without direction or wing it, your results will suffer. There are lots of good hiring methodologies out there from behavioral-based interviewing to topgrading. Which structure you use is less important than having a detailed structure you can comfortably rely on.
It can be as simple as creating ten questions to ask all your candidates on a graded scale from most exceptional fit to least fit for a role. Having a team that follows the same guiding principles to assess a candidate will make the hiring process more swiftly especially during the slower months.
It all boils down to this: if you’re not able to move quickly because of scheduling issues on your end, someone else will. If you slow down your hiring process, you will loose top talent. With the pace of change in marketing moving faster than ever, the war for talent is becoming more and more competitive.
Go the Extra Mile
Have you considered outside business hour interviews?
A smart way to fit extra time in for interviewing is to do it off hours or even when you’re on vacation. Going the extra mile, for instance, changing your interview format to video conference instead of in-person or staying after work to talk to candidates will pay off in the long run.
We know most marketing executives do not want to ask their employees to spend time Saturday interviewing. We understand. Most people don’t wake up and look forward to interviewing candidates for a role. However, another option is you may not hire the best person. The cost of hiring a subpar marketing executive is detrimental to your bottom-line and poses a high risk to the future growth of your business.
The Bottom Line
There’s no perfect hiring process. However, by following these simple tips, you will increase the time it takes to hire. You will also create a more fluid onboarding process. In an active business environment where your daily tasks often exceed business hours, we know it’s hard to try to squeeze in more responsibilities such as looking for new talent. To stay on top means working harder than anyone else, adopting an agile marketing mentality and learning to balance when it’s time to push your team and when it’s time to relax.
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