In this post we share some tips and advice to help you if you're looking to develop your career in digital marketing, or if you're involved in recruiting into digital roles.
The advice is based on interviews I completed with specialists from three leading recruitment sepecialists: Dan Boneham at Michael Page: Jonathan Hirst at Network Marketing and Mark Lennox at UK Job Advertising Site OnlyMarketingjobs.com.
We completed these interviews when developing our new Guide to digital marketing job roles and the accompanying infographic showing the opportunities from digital marketing jobs that supports it. We created this summary for the infographic, but there was far more in-depth advice from the interviews we thought was useful too.
The following questions and answers are designed to support companies in the digital marketing recruitment process and to give a 'heads up' to candidates in preparing for the interviews.
Dan Boneham, Michael Page
1. I have a “Yes”, “No” and a “Maybe” pile. If you have enough in the "Yes" pile for a strong shortlist then fantastic, if not then revisit some “maybes”.
2. Work in intervals to ensure you maintain 100% concentration when sifting through candidate’s application forms.
3. How a candidate writes their application is important, a lack of attention to detail regarding grammar and structure is a good indication to their attitude to work.
4. If a candidate has worked in numerous contracts do not necessarily read too much into this; the current climate has made it hard to find long-term opportunities.
5. Have a list of essential and desirable skills to tick off when assessing a candidate’s eligibility for a position.
Mark Lennox at OnlyMarketingJobs.com
6. I'd actually take it back a step and make sure you have some simple and fair filter questions based on location, work visa and essential skills. These are equally helpful to the candidate to ensure they don't apply for the wrong positions.
7. Review the candidate's summary. As long as it's not a generic one (which are pointless) you should see and overview of the candidate's experience without having to search through the whole CV.
Jonathan Hirst at Network Marketing
8. Be clear about your 'key' requirements - usually we'll have 5 key things that we're looking for that should jump out of the CV.
9. Trust your instincts when speed reading the CV's on your long-list, they'll probably be right
10. Judge a book by its cover - if the CV has errors, is poorly formatted or, frankly, just doesn't look right then the chances are the candidates will be a disappointment too.
11. Don't waste time reading lengthy paragraphs of people's 'personal statements'. They won't help you to determine if the person can actually do the job.
12. Use social media (LinkedIn primarily) to do a little extra research before you commit to interviews.
Dan Boneham, Michael Page
13. We normally recommend introducing a practical task based on what the candidate would be expected to do in the role. In any interview a candidate may have the ability to sell themselves much more than another but introducing the practical task element gives candidates who are not as strong in an interview to show their true strengths.
Mark Lennox at OnlyMarketingJobs.com
14. There's only a certain amount of time an unsuitable or inexperienced candidate can mask their experience. The main areas to delve deeper are:
Jonathan Hirst at Network Marketing
15. This is entirely down to the interviewers ability unless you are recruiting for a role that can be tested (even then there can be anomalies here). We provide interview training that explains how to ask questions that enable you to probe further than the initial response you receive. These types of probing questions mean that you are pushing the candidate beyond their comfort zone and very often cracks in their responses will start to appear.
Dan Boneham, Michael Page
16. I believe that taking the time to discuss the role with the Line Manager in as much detail as possible ensures that the Advert you release to potential candidates is as accurate as possible. 10 minutes of a Line Manager’s time at the beginning of the process can save your company much more time and money recruiting the right candidate.
Mark Lennox at OnlyMarketingJobs.com
Firstly it’s important to understand the difference between a job specification and a job advert. A job advert is displayed on job boards such as OnlyMarketingJobs.com and is used to attract candidates. A job specification is used to provide a full description of the role once the candidate has applied. A job spec is also used to provide acting recruitment consultants a solid brief. Get round the wrong way and you'll struggle to recruit
1. use a generic job title
2. make it exciting and interesting, sell the job, company,
3. keep it brief, no more than 200 words
4. don't be too picky. You'd rather receive an application and then reject than miss out all together.
1. make it informative and factual
2. ensure you cover the most important components, about the company, about the role, about the skills and experience you will need, the package and benefits including training, career progression etc
3. don't state the obvious, everyone wants a team player with excellent communication skills.
Jonathan Hirst at Network Marketing
20. Try to avoid a 'templated' (dare I say it, HR) approach to specifications. Some of the worst specs that we see are ones where the recruiter seems to have begrudgingly filled in every box with banal statements, copied information and generalisations. Stick to a simple formula that encompasses truly what the role is and what you need people to be able to do.
Dan Boneham, Michael Page
21. Digital is something that in the last 18 months – 2 years has seen a tremendous increase in demand, most notably in Social Media. Businesses have highlighted the importance of using online platforms such as Twitter, Linkedin and in some instances Facebook to market their business effectively obviously due to the fact that these methods are free.
Social media is a skill that businesses are increasingly looking to take advantage of. As I am marketing specific this is obviously not an overview of the whole market but in marketing social media is a skill which can be the difference between being successful and unsuccessful in an application.
Mark Lennox at OnlyMarketingJobs.com
Jonathan Hirst at Network Marketing
22. The biggest gap is in those people who would probably be classed as 'middle-weight'. By that we mean account manager level both on account handling and digital creative/developers. Overall however the demand for digital staff is very high and there are volume shortages rather than skill shortages.
Dan Boneham, Michael Page
23. Interview questions are all about asking open questions to get as much information from the candidate as possible. Closed questions will more commonly than not get a Yes or No answer.
24. As an interviewer, I will always go through each point on a job description and ask the candidate to relate their previous experience to that particular section of the job specification.
25. Ask candidates to go into as much detail as possible and probe as far down into the mechanics of a role as you feel is necessary to discover the candidates true contribution to the previous jobs.
By Susanne Colwyn
Susanne is a Marketing Consultant and Trainer, with over 20 years marketing experience in the public and private sector. She's passionate about supporting companies with practical result driven marketing, to help focus companies on evaluating and driving their marketing forward. Experienced in Integrated Strategic Marketing Planning, Data Segmentation, Customer Relationship Management Systems, Customer Insight and reviewing internal systems, data and processes, to maximise conversion strategies and the customer experience. You can connect with her via her LinkedIn or follow her @Qtymarketing.
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