So you’ve decided to partner with a marketing recruiter. Congratulations, you’ve taken the first step towards better marketers—and better marketing.
But before the experts can get started they need a little more input from your organization. No amount of experience and recruiting talent can help us read your mind. In order to fully understand what you’re looking for, a search intake meeting between key stakeholders at your company—the hiring manager, HR representatives and anyone else—and your marketing recruitment firm is necessary. It’s the only way to get everyone on the same page.
Your marketing is too important to delay in hiring the right talent or risk hiring the wrong people altogether. Committing to an effective search intake meeting improves the quality of your candidates, reduces the search duration, and wastes less of your own time and the time of your coworkers.
If this is your first time partnering with a search firm (or at least, a quality recruiting firm), here’s what you need to know about the search intake meeting and how to make the most of it.
The Search Intake
The search intake is a vital conversation you have with your marketing recruitment agency to lay the foundation for a productive search. This is where you meet with the recruiting experts at your marketing recruitment firm to nail down the exact needs of your organization and the kind of marketing talent you need to fill them. Whether it’s a marketing executive search, a conversation over marketing staffing needs, or anything in between, it’s an essential step in hiring for any position that matters (read: all of your marketing).
Search intake meetings go by several names—strategy sessions, engagements meetings, and more. Whatever you call it, the purpose is the same. It’s your opportunity to explain the kind of marketer you’re interested in and express your vision for the position.
The length and format of the meeting can vary somewhat depending on the nature of your company and the job. But experienced marketing recruiters conduct this kind of meeting on a regular basis; we know how to move them along efficiently and avoid wasting your time.
The Reward of a Successful Search Intake
Experienced marketing recruiters will explain what you need to do to prepare for the meeting and guide the conversation to get a full understanding of the roles that need filling. There are many benefits to investing in a successful meeting:
- A greater quantity of higher quality and better qualified marketing candidates in a shorter time frame
- Your stakeholders establish a personal connection with the marketing recruiters helping build the future of your company
- Reduction of unnecessary future meetings and inquiries to clarify confusion
- Confidence and peace of mind that your recruiters understand your needs
A successful search intake will leave you with a firmer idea of what you need and confidence in the recruitment strategy. It provides the recruiters assigned to your search all the information they need to identify and attract the best marketers for the job.
Committing to an effective search intake meeting improves the quality of your candidates, reduces the search duration, and wastes less of your own time and the time of your coworkers.
On the other hand, a poor search intake will leave everyone involved with more questions than answers or a misguided direction. Days, weeks, or even months could be lost searching for one kind of candidate when you really wanted another all along. Luckily, this can be avoided by a modest amount of time and effort upfront.
Making Time to Make Time
You’ve doubtless heard the saying “An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure.” Your preparation in this instance is getting the right people in place in place for an hour or so, and the cure is weeks or months of time saved searching for the wrong talent, countless hours cut from back-and forth with your agency and thousands of dollars in lost revenue generated from your newly filled marketing seat.
A search intake can be derailed by a lot of things, but the number one problem the absence of critical stakeholders at your company: hiring managers, HR reps, marketing management and the like.
It’s a common and understandable problem; they’re no doubt very busy. But it’s critical that everyone with a vested interest in the role make a successful search intake their priority for just a short time. This ensures all your organization’s interests are represented and nothing gets lost in translation.
So make the time necessary to get everyone involved, prepared, and full of caffeine when it’s time for your search intake. The investment now will pay huge dividends by the time your talented new marketer starts.
