CMOs, I have some bad news for you. Your marketing is probably suffering because of the unnecessary barriers between your business and the best marketing talent available.
Competition for A-level experts has never been higher, yet businesses continue to throw up obstacles between themselves and the most qualified professionals. That’s steering exceptional marketers and other experts away from your brand and into the waiting arms of competitors who have a smooth, seamless candidate experience ready for them.
Attracting Higher-Quality Talent
Got an opening in your marketing department that needs filling? The best marketing executive recruiters understand that the ideal candidates for your job are probably not actively hunting for work. There will be some instances where you get lucky and find someone looking at the same time you are. But in most cases, prime candidates will already be employed by someone else who has recognized their talent, and is incredibly busy juggling work responsibilities with the rest of their lives.
The best and most ambitious of these marketers will be smart enough to constantly be looking for their next career move, even when they’re comfortably employed already. They have the wisdom to know that the best time to consider a new job is when they’re already in one.
But if there are unnecessary obstacles between them and the job, they’ll disregard it and move on. Remember, they’re busy. They have better things to do than wrestle with an uncooperative application system or wait on foot-dragging decision makers for a response.
It’s one thing to miss out on a great candidate because they were just out of your price range, or you couldn’t convince them to relocate. Those are unfortunate, but reasonable, reasons.
But if top talent is avoiding your brand because of problems in your candidate experience…well, that’s just ridiculous.
The path between elite marketing talent and your business should be free of obstacles. If you want better access to this pool of passive experts who can improve your marketing and grow your business, it’s time to carefully evaluate your candidate experience, identify weaknesses, and take aggressive action to smooth them out. Here are some of the more common weak points we as marketing recruitment consultants see as problems time and again:
Working Environment
Companies around the country are experiencing one of the most puzzling issues since the start of COVID. How can you maintain an effective working environment while satisfying the newly evolved requirements and expectations of your employees? As the top executive search consulting firm, we are witnessing modern marketers evolve and their need for a better work environment grow.
Approaching post-COVID with a mandated in-office need is exceedingly challenging. Especially, if you are trying to expand your highly skilled marketing team. Adaptability will be a crucial factor in any executive hiring process.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do this alone. Marketing executive search firm, MarketPro has designed its process to find the right candidates that exceed both experience and cultural criteria.
Antiquated Application Systems
Applying to a job online through most corporate systems is a nightmare. They’re clunky, unintuitive, and frequently have no responsiveness for the increasingly common mobile experience.
Seriously, go apply to a job through your own web site right now. Odds are good you’ll be pulling your hair out once you attach your resume, only to be subsequently asked to manually enter that information all over again.
43% of candidates spend over half an hour on the average online job application, and 10% spend over an hour.
If you were giving your customers a user experience like that, they would abandon you in a heartbeat. The same is true for top passive candidates.
An individual who is very eager to get a new job due to unemployment or dissatisfaction with work might be willing to suffer through a clumsy application process. But someone who is busy and not so desperate will simply close the tab and ignore you.
Grade Yourself: How to Honestly Evaluate Your Application Process
Primary Contacts that Don’t Understand the Job
Top talent expects to be engaged with other people on their level who speak the same language. So if they’re communicating with people in your business who don’t understand marketing in general or the purpose of the job in particular, they will quickly lose interest.
If your marketing recruitment partner has little experience with marketing, then they’re not going to be able to do a great job at garnering the interest of A-player marketers. Same goes for any members of your HR team who might be responsible for handling initial communications. Even your interview panel of business veterans might not be up to the task.
That’s why it’s incredibly important that you pull experienced marketers into the engagement process as early as possible, and partner only with the best marketing executive recruiters if you’re serious about improving your marketing.
