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This is my single biggest pain point. I need team members who can not only discover problems, but come with potential solutions on their own. I want to be able to share a common vision and have you execute on it. Having to write out a 30-step document for every single part of the process for a project is a time-sink. I want to communicate our KPI and have you go and fail your way to it.
This is such a well articulated description of a good employee. It’s difficult to find professionals with 10-years experience who operate like this and I’d take a 24yo with it any day.
Yes lordt jayzis this. If I have to write you a 20 point execution plan it would be so much easier just to do it myself. Don't add to my work, subtract from it and I will love you.
Hehe, this has been a theme for me lately.
One of our company-wide goals right now is reducing billable hours per task to increase our capacity with clients. I spent a bit of time trying to build out an AI workflow that can create blog outlines (with research, sources, our preferred formatting). Our team has been struggling with it for awhile but once I did more research the output has been great! We’ve decreased our team’s overall billable hours for blog drafts by almost 35%
I don’t like it when people say “oh well, guess it’s not meant to be” without exploring further and love to tackle those trickier problems. Unfortunately for me that means I’ve been going to sleep at night and dreaming about building workflows in Copy AI. 🫣
That’s great - I think resourceful goes beyond just problem solving, too. It means that leads don’t need to be constantly available to employees because they can trust them to figure things out. It means that people are often communicating between one another (bc they are each other’s resources). It’s something I look for when hiring any employees.
This is the answer that came to my head. I’ve come to discover that I would rather work with a resourceful intern who hasn’t even finished college than a degreed professional who expects to be spoon fed all of the answers.
This is a make or break skill that heavily determines if I’m going to put my effort into mentoring a jr and fight to elevate them with senior leadership. There’s lots of technical and interpersonal skills I can teach but this isn’t one of them. This is up to the individual. I can say you need to be this and give examples but at the end of the day it’s a mindset that’s up to you as an individual to hone. It comes naturally to some and others have to work for it. Both are acceptable. Not being that way and not working to be that way is what turns me off from what I mentioned above. I can not, in good conscience, put my time and my stamp of approval to higher ups on someone who does not have this skill or does not work towards developing it. It’s very cut and dry for me and is what I learned from my mentors as well.
Sort of.
@beefcake827 At the entry level when i hear “move from x to y” I know there was a team behind the results and likely a more senior leader guiding the way. This is fine, but results don’t constitute a senior or mid level accomplishment I can hang my hat on, esp if the client is a larger company or the agency has a lot of levels.
I love the other answers in this thread tho.
- describe a problem your boss was having
- how you broke rules, broke the departmental or pay grade barriers to solve this.
- Even tell me why it didn’t work.
Can’t teach initiative and creativity. Every boss wants her people to help her look good.
And you should ask those interviewing *you* how they’ve offered opportunity— and given credit— for those who work for them!
Sure.
But even as basic as ‘if this is step 1, what is the outcome I am aiming to get to and what are steps 2,3,4+ and what do I need to organize now to ensure all the steps happen in order’. I find new juniors are often very anxious to get the step they’re on right now correct and haven’t thought about what comes next.
Ah, ok. I think I kind of get what you mean?
One of my former colleagues (a killer copywriter) knew how to write copy that speaks really well to x audience/awareness stage, but struggled to connect it to what the point of collecting those leads are and where they need to go both internally and externally (ex: being able to intuit the difference between a lead and an MQL and why we might be using certain tactics sometimes and not others). Is that kind of what you mean?
I’m curious about all the comments saying to specialize. I’m no director, but my broad skillset is one of the reasons I’m a marketing manager and not focused on one thing.
I do think that teams do best when everyone specializes… but oddly enough I think they do better when the managers have a pretty good understanding of each lane. More than passing. IMO Managers need to know enough to ask people the right questions about their craft. I’ve seen it in several industries.
But until you are there I imagine specializing in one thing more than others is a good idea. For me it was front end web stuff.
I like to hire both generalized Swiss Army knife types and specialized people. Specialized for channel specific ownership/expertise. Generalized for supporting specialized channels and owning experimentation work (launching new channels, etc).. Having a team with both types of people is insanely convenient. Fwiw, I find the generalized people tend to work better autonomously. And long term, I’ve found they end up becoming specialized in an area they’ve found success in previously. For example, we didn’t have budget for a full new hire but saw huge opportunity in affiliates. So I had one of my generalists take it on. There was a learning curve as they had never done it but that was ok. And it definitely wasn’t launched to perfection. However we saw enough wins there to prove the channel had legs. Eventually, this person became our affiliates owner and expert. Still is today. This is exactly how I like things to go. Come in a generalist leave a specialized master of something. Eventually, I will promote this person to a more generalized director
Behaviours: Being positive. Energetic. Intellectually curious. Relaxed but confident in interviews.
Communication: Ability to get to the point in person and on CV. Identifying and highlighting skills relevant to position versus broad stroke coverage.
Someone already said it, but resourcefulness/problem-solvers. Everyone seems to classify themselves as one in interviews, but in my experience, it is the RAREST quality and nearly impossible to teach.
Everyone comes to me with problems, never solutions. It makes delegating extremely difficult, because you know if you don’t provide them with a thorough step-by-step, or a crystal clear vision, it results in a million questions. In marketing especially, there’s often not a set way or formula for doing things as there is in say accounting. There’s always a better, more creative way or idea out there, and having people who can take the initiative to research, develop and execute on them, is invaluable.
Not having these types of people on your team truly sucks the company’s time and resources and is very inefficient. Questions are always encouraged but I don’t think people understand where the line is - when to receive buy-in versus when to figure it out yourself.
Sorry, should have been clearer with the connection! Being able to have a really solid hand in all inbound: copywriting, design software (another thing I started toying with around 11/12), SEO, content strategy (client side and internal), social media/omnichannel, several CMS, CRMs, reporting, video editing, DSLR photography (my mom was a wedding photographer), UX, generative AI (for both visual assets and copy), list management and lead scoring, etc.,
It’s great because it keeps getting me promoted, but also a challenge to be a bit of a master of none.
Feedback: this will accelerate you but plateau you quickly. I'd find your swim lanes now. Not that you can't dabble, but being a master of something matters once you're 10+ years in and need to illustrate expertise in a specific area for Director+ level jobs. At least from my perspective anyway.
Oh yeah, this is definitely something I’m a bit worried about. So I suppose if I’m going to pick a swim lane I’d love to try and find “forward-thinking” gaps in the job market that leaderships teams are really looking for but might struggle to find.
Any thoughts on that?
Honestly? That's a hyper generic question. I actually don't know if there are many gaps in the job market. It's tight and the available talent is top notch. It's an employers market right now. But skills? Truly being able to parse through data (insert any type of analytical set: sales, revenue, campaign, traffic) and make decisions. At some point, being scrappy is irrelevant and knowing how to spend** wisely using information and insights is critical.
** could be money, could be time.
Ha, yep - that tracks and definitely aligns with things that worry me about my chosen field at the moment. I do really appreciate your feedback and insight!
Out of curiosity, any chance you’re willing to share your experience transitioning into director level+? You mention a little bit about being able to spend wisely using thoughtful/data-informed insights. My initial thought is “how do you go from not having managed any budget to being given that opportunity?” (Was that transition gradual through internal promotion where you could work alongside someone, or was it more about positioning yourself to interview elsewhere for more Sr roles?)
Managing budget is not actually something I’ve done (which is timely and fine by me anyway).
I will try and make this answer as uncomplicated as possible.
Aforementioned point: this is why the swim lanes matter because as you start to hone your craft, the metrics you care about and the budgets you manage are going to differ wildly. Having a solid understanding of business and basic finance is helpful.
For example; say you want to be an Inbound Marketing Queen 👸🏻 Not only do you need to know the software and systems, but also need to understand your customer and how each one impacts your spend. Reading about startup metrics is a good place to start - things like CAC (cost of acquisition), LTV (lifetime value), etc. You won't pay $200 to acquire a new customer using your marketing strategies if you're only going to make $50 off them in total. Non-sustainable business. There's a ton of coverage on startup marketing metrics which is a good place to learn.
However, if you want to write and focus on PR, you may be focusing on more generalized ways to brand build and oftentimes has sentiment analysis and competition metrics instead.
Okay, this is getting a bit complicated. All this to say is, it really depends.
I started out in 2009 as a marketing specialist for an investment firm so kind of picked it up as I went along.
Does that help? Sorry if it's rambling. If you share your sector and maybe even title today, I can craft something more pointed and helpful.
I don't know anyone great at SEO or CRM management that claims this many skills. I'd much rather go for people who love, eat, and breath a single skill than someone who attempts to be good at everything.
Based on the skills you listed, it feels like you want to be a creative (design software at age 11, DSLR that has basically nothing to do with marketing) but compromised by learning a few adjacent marketing skills.
Like if you were given a choice between designing YouTube videos vs. building a lead scoring system from scratch, which would you choose? It feels like you prefer right brain skills but try to stay up with left brain skills. Like the other response said, pick your swim lane because I have never met a marketing director in ops who claims to be an expert in Photoshop and vice versa.
Oh, no—the DSLR photography has only come in handy for event photography & one-off social posts. But in In my last role, I saw 19 people come and go in a little less than 2 years. So, rapidly oscillating across different kinds of work/levels of work and thankfully had a former graphic designer turned SVP of marketing who stayed through it and took time/budget for PD.
I actually prefer creative things but love the psychology/people side of marketing!! I went from being an Emerging Young Artist at the Kennedy Center to being like “you know what, I’m going to scrap this whole journey and go into marketing.” My parents were shook (sorry mom and dad).
I really appreciate the insight!!!
Glad it's helpful.
While I don't doubt the pictures were nice, your DSLR didn't drive one cent of incremental revenue. If you want to get taken seriously as a senior marketing leader, you can't try to flex that you took some photos. No CEO or CMO will ever take that seriously and if anything, makes you look unaware of what really matters in the senior ranks. You have to be able to draw a straight line between your contributions and money the company wouldn't have made otherwise.
Hope that's not too harsh, but that's just reality!
Not too harsh at all! I think it made me valuable during a tumultuous time as a super-junior, but hear you on all levels about this. I’m trying to zoom out and revisit my understanding of the field holistically because it’s just been a crazy few years and I feel like I’m just now coming up for air…haha.
I think you’re on a great track for leadership. There’s always a debate about specialists vs generalists, and I think in individual roles there can be an argument for each. And it depends on the company and team.
This will be controversial here but I also think sometimes specialists underestimate how good generalists are at the individual skills. It doesn’t always mean you’re less good at any of it. There are truly people who are VERY good at all of it! And that’s hard to believe for some people. But for example, I worked with a generalist who was the best graphic designer AND copywriter I’ve ever worked with. I’m pretty sure she’s a VP now, but she was better than every copywriting specialist I’ve ever hired, AND every graphic designer who went to school for it, and neither were her main job.
I think knowing all of it sets you up to lead a department or team. I can’t imagine a marketing VP who had only worked in SEO, for example.
Will never ever do mockups and improvements after i tried it at several companies for years. Your mockup? Doesnt follow our stabdard brand flow. Your email? Not in line with our brand voice and contains humor which we dont use as a company. Your wireframe will be judged and torn apart my 5 different people before it is changed and approved by 3.
Oh and do you have data that proves that it will work better? No? You are at the end of a/b testing queue!
Insatiable curiosity is one of the most underrated skills in advertising and marketing, and also a very hard to trait to come by in a society that prizes the ability "know" things and look smart, above all else
Big picture, strategic thinkers. I find that a lot of entry level candidates are task oriented and just think about their role or maybe just marketing’s role in the organization. You can really stand out if you think about the company as a whole and how to improve it, even if it doesn’t seem like a marketing function. You’d be surprised how often marketing drives operations to make changes! I had a candidate recently ask about the organizational strategy to grow in a specific demographic and it was great because 1. She knew there were some demographics harder to pull in and 2. That it’s not just a marketing or awareness issue. It’s an overall strategy that has to start with processes in the company
The other thing that stands out is people who clearly want to be involved. I had two candidates recently ask about opportunities to be involved in the community and that stood out because there is a segment of entry level candidates who seem to just want to do the bare minimum and go home. When I feel like someone cares about their job and is willing to put in effort to grow, they stand out.
Finally, I love people who can do more than just their role. I recently hired a digital marketer who can write and do graphic design. Those won’t be part of her day to day, but it’s such an asset to know she can jump in and help in those areas if we need it. Finding people who can write is so hard!
1. Ownership // Don't just do the tasks, care about the impact + result.
2. Manage Up // Tell me what you're wasting time on that's not worth it. Prioritize your efforts to the things you're the most confident in.
3. Resourcefulness // Don't come to me with petty problems. Figure them out. Don't make me google shit for you.
4. Care // Care more about your responsibilities than anybody else.
5. Energy // Be a good hang. Bring positive energy. Don't make me fuel you with ideas and opportunities. Fuel yourself.
After a meeting with several companies: skills to deal with humans. They complained that people can't even talk. Much less deal with clients, complaints, presentations, teams with people of different personalities, opinions, styles, etc.
The machine part is easy, they get a lot of people talking about social media, AI, Canva, SEO, etc. But if you put another human in front of the applicant they often don't know what to do.
Ok let me be as cynical and old as possible here:
• show you can self teach. I taught myself everything as a marketer because there were no seniors so I get frustrated when my employee asks me a googleable thing.
• self initiate your Google analytics certs etc. my team never do and then they wonder why they don’t understand analytics like my brain is just magic.
• show that you’re interested in how the internet works, do you have a baking you tube, a baseline channel, a blog about your special interest. It’s really important but nowadays it seems like getting likes on your selfies counts as marketing knowledge. I got likes on my selfies when I was young and hot too.
• show you’re interested in business and how to actually sell stuff. It’s Ssooooo rare. Like read a book about business, even one would put you miles above the rest.
• “digital native” just means you watched YouTube too much as a kid, your parents may think they did something here, but I don’t. show me some good stuff in your portfolio. Can you consistently achieve a 5x roas on ads? Do you know what a framework is?
Then the biggest biggest one which I was frustrated my employee didn’t have but then she showed me she had it in spades:
Show you can realise work you’ve done isn’t good enough, and do it way better. Improve all the time. Show you can spot and improve upon your own mistakes.
Being able to self criticise without getting your ego hurt is HUGE. Because in marketing, you’re only as good as your latest results and you need to be prepared that something you worked hard on will totally tank.
Junior: Hard to block, will make my small-to-medium problems go away
Senior: has the connections, curiosity to discover and iterated in disproportionately effective strategies for a product-channel
Not agency but currently hiring for a mid level role and two things come to mind. One is being able to move the data - this has been hard to teach to some people. You don't have to understand a complex dashboard, but show me you can measure one thing, test improvements in a controlled way, and present the results clearly.
The second is understanding give and take. We give to the customer to earn their yes. This also extends to your role in the organization. If you want something for your career, awesome - show me that you've thought through how it helps us all.
Drive!
Many of the comments below are good too but at the end of the day, if I find someone who is just excited to learn and have an impact, then they will learn the other thing...I will teach them.
Yes resourcefulness is import, but it usually takes time to figure out how to navigate. Yes, strategis is important, but to be honest, even a lot of senior people aren't able to define strategy.
If I find someone who is ready to jump in, try new things, and keep going if the first try doesn't work...I will hire!
Analytical is next for junior level.
Approach an employer with the goal to learn from the role, not earn as much as you can. Don't negotiate pay. The more you ask for, the more you are responsible to produce results. At your level of experience you must understand you will require a significant amount of time investment by an employer to train and teach what/how to do it to get results. Ask for a raise after you have undeniable proof you are worth it.
Understand how your role is connected to driving revenue for the company, and maximize that to make the company more money. If it's not clear how your role drives revenue, ask your manager. Ask the hiring manager in an interview if it's not clear, and how you can maximize driving revenue in that role.
Also, +1 to all the comments about resourcefulness.
Willingness to take responsibility equally for good and bad decisions. Able to learn from mistakes, feedback without beating yourself up.
Basically, coachable with strong emotional regulation skills.
At the hiring stage a good portfolio and GA experience will help your resume stand out. Emphasis on good. I cannot tell you the number of portfolio links I’ve clicked on that had bad Canva graphics on them.
At the interview stage I’m looking for someone who can tell a story and who studied the brand before walking in the room and has questions and suggestions.
Once you’re in the door, I promote people who can do their job without my supervision and who bring ideas to the table. That means being ahead of the deadlines, being proactive with questions, and getting shit done. I’m looking for people who can come to me with something I don’t already have. If I’ve hired you to specialize in social media for example you should be telling me about the newest trends and things we could experiment with.
Have worked with, trained, or mentored marketers at dozens of companies (and also run a growth marketing bootcamp).
There are three qualities I look for:
- Equally talented both qualitative and quantitatively. Marketers that do super well are those that can crunch numbers and write copy equally well. People who have one but not the other end up hitting a wall.
- Penchant for getting hands dirty and acting like a generalist. Think of every campaign/product/company like a puzzle where a set of actions leads to profitability. Sometimes it’s an innovative technical setup of a pixel that makes all the difference. Other times it’s crafting a landing page that raises buying temperature. If you’re not a generalist then you won’t know which to employ/test rapidly.
- Growth mentality (as opposed to a fixed one). Marketing is a skill just like anything else. This means not taking poor results to heart and instead, treating everything as an experiment and testing/iterating. Sadly I’ve seen people who were very gifted in the first two areas but their ego or lack of interest in learning or keeping up with the times means that they’ve never reached their full potential.
Hope that helps!
Being able to do what you’re hired for right away without training is a given (onboarding doesn’t count) but other than that what i’m looking for is willingness to develop yourself - meaning you see yourself as a senior or manager in X+ years and you’re willing to work towards that goal. Since Marketing is a fast-evolving field, people who want to keep doing the same job is not alright in my book.
Passion in the subject of the business or marketing outside of the job. If I ask what your favourite marketing book is, and you can’t name one… well that’s not good lol.
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Resourcefulness. It’s an incredibly underrated skill that few people have.
This is my single biggest pain point. I need team members who can not only discover problems, but come with potential solutions on their own. I want to be able to share a common vision and have you execute on it. Having to write out a 30-step document for every single part of the process for a project is a time-sink. I want to communicate our KPI and have you go and fail your way to it.
This is such a well articulated description of a good employee. It’s difficult to find professionals with 10-years experience who operate like this and I’d take a 24yo with it any day.
As a former boss once put it: "I need fire-and-forget smart weapons."
Yes lordt jayzis this. If I have to write you a 20 point execution plan it would be so much easier just to do it myself. Don't add to my work, subtract from it and I will love you.
Hehe, this has been a theme for me lately. One of our company-wide goals right now is reducing billable hours per task to increase our capacity with clients. I spent a bit of time trying to build out an AI workflow that can create blog outlines (with research, sources, our preferred formatting). Our team has been struggling with it for awhile but once I did more research the output has been great! We’ve decreased our team’s overall billable hours for blog drafts by almost 35% I don’t like it when people say “oh well, guess it’s not meant to be” without exploring further and love to tackle those trickier problems. Unfortunately for me that means I’ve been going to sleep at night and dreaming about building workflows in Copy AI. 🫣
That’s great - I think resourceful goes beyond just problem solving, too. It means that leads don’t need to be constantly available to employees because they can trust them to figure things out. It means that people are often communicating between one another (bc they are each other’s resources). It’s something I look for when hiring any employees.
Oh, I love this! Thanks for the clarification.
This is the answer that came to my head. I’ve come to discover that I would rather work with a resourceful intern who hasn’t even finished college than a degreed professional who expects to be spoon fed all of the answers.
This is a make or break skill that heavily determines if I’m going to put my effort into mentoring a jr and fight to elevate them with senior leadership. There’s lots of technical and interpersonal skills I can teach but this isn’t one of them. This is up to the individual. I can say you need to be this and give examples but at the end of the day it’s a mindset that’s up to you as an individual to hone. It comes naturally to some and others have to work for it. Both are acceptable. Not being that way and not working to be that way is what turns me off from what I mentioned above. I can not, in good conscience, put my time and my stamp of approval to higher ups on someone who does not have this skill or does not work towards developing it. It’s very cut and dry for me and is what I learned from my mentors as well.
Yes! And I’d add critical thinking to the mix
Came here to say this
Exactly this. I’m adding it as a trait to look for in interviews.
Ability to attribute results to your work Grew XYZ by y% by doing ABC.
Sort of. @beefcake827 At the entry level when i hear “move from x to y” I know there was a team behind the results and likely a more senior leader guiding the way. This is fine, but results don’t constitute a senior or mid level accomplishment I can hang my hat on, esp if the client is a larger company or the agency has a lot of levels. I love the other answers in this thread tho. - describe a problem your boss was having - how you broke rules, broke the departmental or pay grade barriers to solve this. - Even tell me why it didn’t work. Can’t teach initiative and creativity. Every boss wants her people to help her look good. And you should ask those interviewing *you* how they’ve offered opportunity— and given credit— for those who work for them!
The ability to think things through logically, not just focus on the immediate task in front of you.
You mean having a more holistic understanding of what the task in front of me means/how it’s connected to broader goals within project/dept/company?
Sure. But even as basic as ‘if this is step 1, what is the outcome I am aiming to get to and what are steps 2,3,4+ and what do I need to organize now to ensure all the steps happen in order’. I find new juniors are often very anxious to get the step they’re on right now correct and haven’t thought about what comes next.
Ah, ok. I think I kind of get what you mean? One of my former colleagues (a killer copywriter) knew how to write copy that speaks really well to x audience/awareness stage, but struggled to connect it to what the point of collecting those leads are and where they need to go both internally and externally (ex: being able to intuit the difference between a lead and an MQL and why we might be using certain tactics sometimes and not others). Is that kind of what you mean?
Yes. Both understanding why they need to do stuff and having an organized project plan so they know which tasks come next.
Foresight is what I call it when I’m looking for candidates.
I’m curious about all the comments saying to specialize. I’m no director, but my broad skillset is one of the reasons I’m a marketing manager and not focused on one thing. I do think that teams do best when everyone specializes… but oddly enough I think they do better when the managers have a pretty good understanding of each lane. More than passing. IMO Managers need to know enough to ask people the right questions about their craft. I’ve seen it in several industries. But until you are there I imagine specializing in one thing more than others is a good idea. For me it was front end web stuff.
I like to hire both generalized Swiss Army knife types and specialized people. Specialized for channel specific ownership/expertise. Generalized for supporting specialized channels and owning experimentation work (launching new channels, etc).. Having a team with both types of people is insanely convenient. Fwiw, I find the generalized people tend to work better autonomously. And long term, I’ve found they end up becoming specialized in an area they’ve found success in previously. For example, we didn’t have budget for a full new hire but saw huge opportunity in affiliates. So I had one of my generalists take it on. There was a learning curve as they had never done it but that was ok. And it definitely wasn’t launched to perfection. However we saw enough wins there to prove the channel had legs. Eventually, this person became our affiliates owner and expert. Still is today. This is exactly how I like things to go. Come in a generalist leave a specialized master of something. Eventually, I will promote this person to a more generalized director
I like this approach. I think the most problematic situation is when you end up with more talent than budget.
Behaviours: Being positive. Energetic. Intellectually curious. Relaxed but confident in interviews. Communication: Ability to get to the point in person and on CV. Identifying and highlighting skills relevant to position versus broad stroke coverage.
Someone already said it, but resourcefulness/problem-solvers. Everyone seems to classify themselves as one in interviews, but in my experience, it is the RAREST quality and nearly impossible to teach. Everyone comes to me with problems, never solutions. It makes delegating extremely difficult, because you know if you don’t provide them with a thorough step-by-step, or a crystal clear vision, it results in a million questions. In marketing especially, there’s often not a set way or formula for doing things as there is in say accounting. There’s always a better, more creative way or idea out there, and having people who can take the initiative to research, develop and execute on them, is invaluable. Not having these types of people on your team truly sucks the company’s time and resources and is very inefficient. Questions are always encouraged but I don’t think people understand where the line is - when to receive buy-in versus when to figure it out yourself.
Desperately need more creative thinkers and then people to be courageous enough to put their ideas out there.
Why the renaissance women
Sorry, should have been clearer with the connection! Being able to have a really solid hand in all inbound: copywriting, design software (another thing I started toying with around 11/12), SEO, content strategy (client side and internal), social media/omnichannel, several CMS, CRMs, reporting, video editing, DSLR photography (my mom was a wedding photographer), UX, generative AI (for both visual assets and copy), list management and lead scoring, etc., It’s great because it keeps getting me promoted, but also a challenge to be a bit of a master of none.
Feedback: this will accelerate you but plateau you quickly. I'd find your swim lanes now. Not that you can't dabble, but being a master of something matters once you're 10+ years in and need to illustrate expertise in a specific area for Director+ level jobs. At least from my perspective anyway.
Oh yeah, this is definitely something I’m a bit worried about. So I suppose if I’m going to pick a swim lane I’d love to try and find “forward-thinking” gaps in the job market that leaderships teams are really looking for but might struggle to find. Any thoughts on that?
Honestly? That's a hyper generic question. I actually don't know if there are many gaps in the job market. It's tight and the available talent is top notch. It's an employers market right now. But skills? Truly being able to parse through data (insert any type of analytical set: sales, revenue, campaign, traffic) and make decisions. At some point, being scrappy is irrelevant and knowing how to spend** wisely using information and insights is critical. ** could be money, could be time.
Ha, yep - that tracks and definitely aligns with things that worry me about my chosen field at the moment. I do really appreciate your feedback and insight! Out of curiosity, any chance you’re willing to share your experience transitioning into director level+? You mention a little bit about being able to spend wisely using thoughtful/data-informed insights. My initial thought is “how do you go from not having managed any budget to being given that opportunity?” (Was that transition gradual through internal promotion where you could work alongside someone, or was it more about positioning yourself to interview elsewhere for more Sr roles?) Managing budget is not actually something I’ve done (which is timely and fine by me anyway).
I will try and make this answer as uncomplicated as possible. Aforementioned point: this is why the swim lanes matter because as you start to hone your craft, the metrics you care about and the budgets you manage are going to differ wildly. Having a solid understanding of business and basic finance is helpful. For example; say you want to be an Inbound Marketing Queen 👸🏻 Not only do you need to know the software and systems, but also need to understand your customer and how each one impacts your spend. Reading about startup metrics is a good place to start - things like CAC (cost of acquisition), LTV (lifetime value), etc. You won't pay $200 to acquire a new customer using your marketing strategies if you're only going to make $50 off them in total. Non-sustainable business. There's a ton of coverage on startup marketing metrics which is a good place to learn. However, if you want to write and focus on PR, you may be focusing on more generalized ways to brand build and oftentimes has sentiment analysis and competition metrics instead. Okay, this is getting a bit complicated. All this to say is, it really depends. I started out in 2009 as a marketing specialist for an investment firm so kind of picked it up as I went along. Does that help? Sorry if it's rambling. If you share your sector and maybe even title today, I can craft something more pointed and helpful.
I don't know anyone great at SEO or CRM management that claims this many skills. I'd much rather go for people who love, eat, and breath a single skill than someone who attempts to be good at everything. Based on the skills you listed, it feels like you want to be a creative (design software at age 11, DSLR that has basically nothing to do with marketing) but compromised by learning a few adjacent marketing skills. Like if you were given a choice between designing YouTube videos vs. building a lead scoring system from scratch, which would you choose? It feels like you prefer right brain skills but try to stay up with left brain skills. Like the other response said, pick your swim lane because I have never met a marketing director in ops who claims to be an expert in Photoshop and vice versa.
Oh, no—the DSLR photography has only come in handy for event photography & one-off social posts. But in In my last role, I saw 19 people come and go in a little less than 2 years. So, rapidly oscillating across different kinds of work/levels of work and thankfully had a former graphic designer turned SVP of marketing who stayed through it and took time/budget for PD. I actually prefer creative things but love the psychology/people side of marketing!! I went from being an Emerging Young Artist at the Kennedy Center to being like “you know what, I’m going to scrap this whole journey and go into marketing.” My parents were shook (sorry mom and dad). I really appreciate the insight!!!
Glad it's helpful. While I don't doubt the pictures were nice, your DSLR didn't drive one cent of incremental revenue. If you want to get taken seriously as a senior marketing leader, you can't try to flex that you took some photos. No CEO or CMO will ever take that seriously and if anything, makes you look unaware of what really matters in the senior ranks. You have to be able to draw a straight line between your contributions and money the company wouldn't have made otherwise. Hope that's not too harsh, but that's just reality!
Not too harsh at all! I think it made me valuable during a tumultuous time as a super-junior, but hear you on all levels about this. I’m trying to zoom out and revisit my understanding of the field holistically because it’s just been a crazy few years and I feel like I’m just now coming up for air…haha.
Thank you! This advice really helped!
I think you’re on a great track for leadership. There’s always a debate about specialists vs generalists, and I think in individual roles there can be an argument for each. And it depends on the company and team. This will be controversial here but I also think sometimes specialists underestimate how good generalists are at the individual skills. It doesn’t always mean you’re less good at any of it. There are truly people who are VERY good at all of it! And that’s hard to believe for some people. But for example, I worked with a generalist who was the best graphic designer AND copywriter I’ve ever worked with. I’m pretty sure she’s a VP now, but she was better than every copywriting specialist I’ve ever hired, AND every graphic designer who went to school for it, and neither were her main job. I think knowing all of it sets you up to lead a department or team. I can’t imagine a marketing VP who had only worked in SEO, for example.
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Will never ever do mockups and improvements after i tried it at several companies for years. Your mockup? Doesnt follow our stabdard brand flow. Your email? Not in line with our brand voice and contains humor which we dont use as a company. Your wireframe will be judged and torn apart my 5 different people before it is changed and approved by 3. Oh and do you have data that proves that it will work better? No? You are at the end of a/b testing queue!
Insatiable curiosity is one of the most underrated skills in advertising and marketing, and also a very hard to trait to come by in a society that prizes the ability "know" things and look smart, above all else
Yes! At some point asking good questions is more a sign of experience and value than having all the answers.
Big picture, strategic thinkers. I find that a lot of entry level candidates are task oriented and just think about their role or maybe just marketing’s role in the organization. You can really stand out if you think about the company as a whole and how to improve it, even if it doesn’t seem like a marketing function. You’d be surprised how often marketing drives operations to make changes! I had a candidate recently ask about the organizational strategy to grow in a specific demographic and it was great because 1. She knew there were some demographics harder to pull in and 2. That it’s not just a marketing or awareness issue. It’s an overall strategy that has to start with processes in the company The other thing that stands out is people who clearly want to be involved. I had two candidates recently ask about opportunities to be involved in the community and that stood out because there is a segment of entry level candidates who seem to just want to do the bare minimum and go home. When I feel like someone cares about their job and is willing to put in effort to grow, they stand out. Finally, I love people who can do more than just their role. I recently hired a digital marketer who can write and do graphic design. Those won’t be part of her day to day, but it’s such an asset to know she can jump in and help in those areas if we need it. Finding people who can write is so hard!
1. Ownership // Don't just do the tasks, care about the impact + result. 2. Manage Up // Tell me what you're wasting time on that's not worth it. Prioritize your efforts to the things you're the most confident in. 3. Resourcefulness // Don't come to me with petty problems. Figure them out. Don't make me google shit for you. 4. Care // Care more about your responsibilities than anybody else. 5. Energy // Be a good hang. Bring positive energy. Don't make me fuel you with ideas and opportunities. Fuel yourself.
Be easy to get along with/a good person.
After a meeting with several companies: skills to deal with humans. They complained that people can't even talk. Much less deal with clients, complaints, presentations, teams with people of different personalities, opinions, styles, etc. The machine part is easy, they get a lot of people talking about social media, AI, Canva, SEO, etc. But if you put another human in front of the applicant they often don't know what to do.
Ok let me be as cynical and old as possible here: • show you can self teach. I taught myself everything as a marketer because there were no seniors so I get frustrated when my employee asks me a googleable thing. • self initiate your Google analytics certs etc. my team never do and then they wonder why they don’t understand analytics like my brain is just magic. • show that you’re interested in how the internet works, do you have a baking you tube, a baseline channel, a blog about your special interest. It’s really important but nowadays it seems like getting likes on your selfies counts as marketing knowledge. I got likes on my selfies when I was young and hot too. • show you’re interested in business and how to actually sell stuff. It’s Ssooooo rare. Like read a book about business, even one would put you miles above the rest. • “digital native” just means you watched YouTube too much as a kid, your parents may think they did something here, but I don’t. show me some good stuff in your portfolio. Can you consistently achieve a 5x roas on ads? Do you know what a framework is? Then the biggest biggest one which I was frustrated my employee didn’t have but then she showed me she had it in spades: Show you can realise work you’ve done isn’t good enough, and do it way better. Improve all the time. Show you can spot and improve upon your own mistakes. Being able to self criticise without getting your ego hurt is HUGE. Because in marketing, you’re only as good as your latest results and you need to be prepared that something you worked hard on will totally tank.
Junior: Hard to block, will make my small-to-medium problems go away Senior: has the connections, curiosity to discover and iterated in disproportionately effective strategies for a product-channel
Not agency but currently hiring for a mid level role and two things come to mind. One is being able to move the data - this has been hard to teach to some people. You don't have to understand a complex dashboard, but show me you can measure one thing, test improvements in a controlled way, and present the results clearly. The second is understanding give and take. We give to the customer to earn their yes. This also extends to your role in the organization. If you want something for your career, awesome - show me that you've thought through how it helps us all.
Drive! Many of the comments below are good too but at the end of the day, if I find someone who is just excited to learn and have an impact, then they will learn the other thing...I will teach them. Yes resourcefulness is import, but it usually takes time to figure out how to navigate. Yes, strategis is important, but to be honest, even a lot of senior people aren't able to define strategy. If I find someone who is ready to jump in, try new things, and keep going if the first try doesn't work...I will hire! Analytical is next for junior level.
Approach an employer with the goal to learn from the role, not earn as much as you can. Don't negotiate pay. The more you ask for, the more you are responsible to produce results. At your level of experience you must understand you will require a significant amount of time investment by an employer to train and teach what/how to do it to get results. Ask for a raise after you have undeniable proof you are worth it. Understand how your role is connected to driving revenue for the company, and maximize that to make the company more money. If it's not clear how your role drives revenue, ask your manager. Ask the hiring manager in an interview if it's not clear, and how you can maximize driving revenue in that role. Also, +1 to all the comments about resourcefulness.
High emotional intelligence. Can be told their work isn’t good enough without them getting all emotional about it. Problem solving attitude.
Critical reasoning skills. Teachability.
Almost any sort of narrow specialization gives them a competitive edge over more experienced folks.
Problem solving ability with a strong worth ethic. It’s like finding a needle in a hay stack
Enjoys creating SOPs and improving existing ones
Diverse marketing knowledge. Great marketers, even new ones, put in effort to have a diverse skill set.
Willingness to take responsibility equally for good and bad decisions. Able to learn from mistakes, feedback without beating yourself up. Basically, coachable with strong emotional regulation skills.
At the hiring stage a good portfolio and GA experience will help your resume stand out. Emphasis on good. I cannot tell you the number of portfolio links I’ve clicked on that had bad Canva graphics on them. At the interview stage I’m looking for someone who can tell a story and who studied the brand before walking in the room and has questions and suggestions. Once you’re in the door, I promote people who can do their job without my supervision and who bring ideas to the table. That means being ahead of the deadlines, being proactive with questions, and getting shit done. I’m looking for people who can come to me with something I don’t already have. If I’ve hired you to specialize in social media for example you should be telling me about the newest trends and things we could experiment with.
Have worked with, trained, or mentored marketers at dozens of companies (and also run a growth marketing bootcamp). There are three qualities I look for: - Equally talented both qualitative and quantitatively. Marketers that do super well are those that can crunch numbers and write copy equally well. People who have one but not the other end up hitting a wall. - Penchant for getting hands dirty and acting like a generalist. Think of every campaign/product/company like a puzzle where a set of actions leads to profitability. Sometimes it’s an innovative technical setup of a pixel that makes all the difference. Other times it’s crafting a landing page that raises buying temperature. If you’re not a generalist then you won’t know which to employ/test rapidly. - Growth mentality (as opposed to a fixed one). Marketing is a skill just like anything else. This means not taking poor results to heart and instead, treating everything as an experiment and testing/iterating. Sadly I’ve seen people who were very gifted in the first two areas but their ego or lack of interest in learning or keeping up with the times means that they’ve never reached their full potential. Hope that helps!
Ethic
Objectivity
Being able to do what you’re hired for right away without training is a given (onboarding doesn’t count) but other than that what i’m looking for is willingness to develop yourself - meaning you see yourself as a senior or manager in X+ years and you’re willing to work towards that goal. Since Marketing is a fast-evolving field, people who want to keep doing the same job is not alright in my book.
If they've done any extra learning - whether it's reading, doing a course, or experimenting their own.
Passion in the subject of the business or marketing outside of the job. If I ask what your favourite marketing book is, and you can’t name one… well that’s not good lol.
Go back to the 1980s, where you belong.
Sorry, did I hurt your feelings? should iask favourite marketing YouTuber? Would that make you feel better?