How to recruit the best digital marketing talent for your in-house team

Previously, we published a blog post on the benefits and drawbacks of using digital marketing agencies and recruiting an in-house digital centre of excellence.

Also Strategy Director, Nate Wood has written about how companies can create a transition plan and move to a hybrid model, which involves working with an agency and building an in-house team to complement each other and work together.

Once you have this transition plan in place, it’s time for action. Recruiting digital talent is a lot more than handing roles over to a recruitment consultant; there are many ways you can take control of the process and get the people you want for your team.

Below I outline the steps to make sure you attract the best digital talent to your team.

1. Work out who and what skills you need
2. Lead with the opportunity
3. Choose your recruitment strategy
4. Create a competitive offer
5. Design a smooth interview structure
6. Choose and close your candidates

What is the opportunity you’re offering to your candidates?

Good candidates buy into the chance to learn, grow, develop and experience something new.

Your job description should do more than describe the role you’re recruiting for and focus more on aligning yourselves and your candidates on what opportunity you’re advertising. As well as responsibilities, skills, required experience and salary level, make sure you define the wider opportunity.

The digital space is very competitive, with organisations continually recruiting and opening roles due to the growing in-housing trend. To motivate and excite top digital talent, you'll need to think about work/life balance, company culture, non-financial perks, and career progression and development.

Ask yourself what’s important to your team and what people get when working for your company. Maybe you're a team of hardworking and smart people who understand how important flexible working is, for example.

Get this right, and you’ll have a happy, productive and dynamic team that wants to stay.

How will you find and retain talent?

It’s important to choose the right process to conduct your search.

You could rely on one trusted specialist recruitment consultant, bring together a small panel of recruiters or go it alone. Whatever you decide, you need to right skills on the table to assess experience, behaviours and technical capabilities.

It’s also vital to tap into active and passive candidates for the best possible talent pool - the latter is said to take up 80% of the market.

Your candidate acquisition strategy should use LinkedIn channels to contact target profiles, such as those with job titles, a step below the role you’re recruiting for as they may be ready for the next step in their career. It would help raise your company’s digital profile to make you stand out as a reputable employer.

Headhunting is a specific, targeted approach to finding candidates and involves using social platforms, competitor websites and recruitment consultants. Your ‘opportunity’ groundwork will help identify whether you and your potential candidates are aligned.

We reveal methods of increasing and decreasing your talent pool in our guide to building an in-house centre of excellence.

How can you balance salary with the attractiveness of the role?

Depending on the motivations of the individual, non-financial motivations like company culture and professional growth can attract quality talent.

Research salary ranges for different roles in your catchment area. Your prospective candidates will be digitally savvy, so they can research what they’re worth online.

There are many cost-effective ways to make your company a more appealing place to work, such as:

• Flexible working
• Leaving an hour early on Fridays
• Getting your birthday off as an extra holiday
• Leave days to support local charities
• Discounted gym membership
• Free fresh fruit

Digital businesses have some of the most forward-thinking staff incentive programmes, and this is who you’re competing with.

You may be able to offer training as another perk, especially where you require a team member to ‘wear two hats’. Consider hiring someone with a core set of skills and provide training in the other duties you need them to complete.

What will your screening process look like?

A well-planned and well-structured interview can make all the difference, so make sure your interview panel stays on track and draw out what you’ve seen on the candidate’s CV.

You will want to ensure every interview is consistent and that you confidently sell the opportunity on offer and match it with a candidate’s drivers.

To assess technical expertise at the interview, you should have a technical expert in the room, that is if you don’t have a sound knowledge of the subject or specialism. Either buddy with a technical expert throughout or bring in outside expertise for the interview process

While it’s sensible to be thorough, be careful not to over-interview your candidates, as you may lose talent to another organisation. The better planned, prepared and composed your interviews, the fewer rounds you are likely to need.

How will you make sure a candidate accepts your offer?

Great talent won’t stay on the market for long, especially in the candidate-short world of digital marketing. Recruiters use reliable strategies to close candidates. The offer process should be as quick and easy as possible, or you might find they accept an offer elsewhere.

If you have listened carefully to a candidate about their drivers and reasons for moving, it should be less likely for them to decline your offer. Understanding their goals and needs should mitigate the risk of candidates deciding the role isn’t right for them.

Of course, you don’t need to go through this stage, or any of the recruitment process, on your own. Fresh Egg’s recruitment team can be on hand to help you every step of the way. Find out more about our recruitment services and get in touch to see how we can support you.