If you want a highly productive and efficient marketing team, you will have to hire well. End up hiring the wrong person and you will keep paying for your mistake for a long time to come. An incorrect hiring decision could cost a company an average of $4,129 per job in the United States. So, if you want to avoid hiring mistakes, you need to be methodical and efficient.
In fact, it would be best if you chalk out a hiring strategy for greater effectiveness. The process of hiring is not limited to face-to-face interviews only. It is a process, so there are many steps involved in it. Think of it like acquiring information on leads to nurture them in a better way. You have to cover a lot of ground if you want to hire the right person.
Why Do You Need To Hire The Right Person For Your Marketing Team?
66% of employers claim that they have experienced negative effects after making a bad hire. It can end up creating emotional turmoil amidst your marketing team and as 37% of employers claim, bad hires affect employee morale. Not only that; bad hires often cause disruption in client relationships according to 18% of employers.
Even the most successful employers had to learn from their mistakes. Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh estimates that his bad hiring decisions have cost the company over $100 million. Now that’s a figure that will take some time to digest.
Technology can advance as much as it wants to, but it can never replace the power of teamwork and collaboration. These two elements have always been vital to the success of any company. If you can avoid hiring mistakes and hire the right person, it can help you foster a work environment well-suited for success.
However, the wrong pick can end up ruining a collaborative atmosphere. This negative air can be fatal for businesses as it can cause loss of morale, profits, and other opportunities. In order to avoid hiring toxic people, you need to identify them and stay clear of them. Having a hiring strategy does help in this situation.
How To Avoid Hiring Mistakes in Marketing?
Now that it has become crystal clear how harmful hiring mistakes can be, I think we can move on to more important things. Like, how to avoid these mistakes altogether so that it does not hurt your company’s profits or its work environment.
#1: Prepare A Comprehensive Job Description
Many hiring managers think that they will be able to spot the right fit when they meet in a face-to-face interview. Do not be that person. It’s an inaccurate and inefficient strategy. Instead, write a comprehensive job description for the position that is vacant. Lay down the purposes of the position and what kind of candidate do you exactly want. Outline what a prospective candidate can achieve from applying to such a position.
This actually saves you a lot of time. It serves as a screening process as well. I will tell you how. Let’s say you are one of those people who think that they can spot the right candidate in an interview. You will have to go through innumerable interviews including some terrible ones to find the right fit. However, when you take this path, you are making your job of finding the right fit even easier.
Your job description will lead them right to you. And, you don’t even have to conduct so many interviews in the first place. It’s like lead segmentation. You reach out directly to the audience that matters by cutting through the noise.
An accurate job description (JD) will help you interview candidates better as well. While outlining such a description, it will help you understand what you are looking for. It will help you envision the right candidate in your office working day and what you would expect of them.
Automatically, you will realize what skills they might require in order to fill in the vacant position. So, you will be on the lookout for people who have that skill set.
#2: Give Candidates Written Exercises To Complete
In order to avoid hiring mistakes in marketing, it is advisable to give candidates a few writing exercises to test their skills. A good marketer should possess excellent writing skills.
Today’s marketing world requires marketers who are skilled at content creation. So, your ideal candidate should be able to weave content out of nothing at ease. In fact, written exercises do not take up that much time. It can easily help you test their skills as well as determine whether a candidate is interested in the job.
When you are composing the written exercises, keep a few things in mind. Make sure the exercise reflects real life jobs that the candidate will have to do. This will reveal their expertise in that area automatically. Ask them to write a blog post, either on a specific topic or on a topic that they feel comfortable in, related to marketing. You can take it up a notch further and ask them to write a mock case study by providing customer interview.
You can create even more challenging written exercises like landing page optimization that will test their familiarity in that area. Another written exercise can be a battle-card where a candidate has to summarize by comparing one of your products to that of a competitor’s.
#3: Conduct An Interview Designed to Filter
If you want to avoid hiring mistakes, you have to conduct a thorough and thoughtful interview. You will have to do some groundwork and prepare yourself so that you can end up with the right candidate.
The first thing that you get to know about the prospective job seekers is information on their resume. So, take advantage of that and ask them a few questions based on it.
See for yourself if they can market themselves for the role that they need to fill. Then, move on to why they want to work with your company and why this specific role. This reveals whether or not they have done their homework. If they did, that means they are interested in the job.
Furthermore, you can ask them behavioral questions about how they feel they can cope with pressure and open ended questions that judge their critical thinking ability and acumen. In order to have a thorough interview, allow the candidate to ask questions as well.
I think you will be able to pick up a lot of things from what they ask. If their questions seem well thought out, then there’s a high chance they prepared for this. It will also give you an idea about how they can handle themselves when the roles are reversed in an interview.
Do Not Fall Into A Vicious Hiring Cycle
While the above process will definitely allow you to avoid hiring mistakes, there is one thing that you should keep in mind. When there’s a position to fill, 75% of the demand is generated to replace someone who left the job. Now, this obviously means that you are in a hurry to replace the person who just left to fill in the void.
43% of employers agree that this need to fill up the position quickly is one the reasons why bad hires take place. And, it is a vicious cycle. A place gets vacant, you make a bad hire. Then, after a while, the bad hire leaves and you are hard-pressed for time to find a suitable replacement.
Take your time to find the right fit for your company. Hiring the wrong person might hurt your company more than waiting to hire the right person. Be patient, and soon enough you will find your marketer in shining armor.