3 Tips for Hiring Digital Marketing Professionals

From placing ads to creating content, you want your digital marketing team to be the best that it can be. But how do you find the talent, vet them, and bring them on board? Navigating the hiring process for any position can be difficult but there are a number of unique factors to keep in mind when hiring digital marketing professionals. 

Here are 3 important tips to follow when you’re building out your digital marketing team to set your company up for success. 

#1: Decide on Your “Dream Team”

There’s more to screening your digital marketing candidates than running the standard background check for employment (although it’s still essential to protect your business). When filling these positions, you need to take a strategic approach to finding the right fit. To build your ideal digital marketing team, first ask yourself this question: what roles do you need to fill? Some of the essential members of content departments include: 

• Writers
• SEO specialists
• Designers
• Social media managers 

And more than that, what skills or personality traits do they need to bring to the team to help it operate at its highest possible level. If you’re running a small business, you may be working with a limited budget. If that’s the case, try to find someone with several or all of these skills. 

Fortunately, you’ll find that many digital marketing professionals are cross-trained in these areas. However, you want to make sure whoever you’re hiring is an expert, not just familiar with the basics of these essential duties. As your business grows, you’ll likely want to fill each of these positions individually, but it’s a good starting point.

If your organization is just starting out and you’re not quite ready to dedicate a large part of your budget to these roles, there is also the option to bring on interns. However, due to the value these positions bring to your business’ overall success, it’s highly recommended that you hire experts in these fields as soon as possible.

#2: Know Where to Look for Top Talent

But how can you attract these candidates? This is one of the biggest challenges that businesses face during the hiring process, but when it comes to finding digital marketing professionals that are the best at what they do, this is especially important. To find the best candidates, it’s recommended that you rely on legitimate job boards or professional networking sites. Not only do these sites allow you to post job ads, but they also give you access to professional groups and connections that may lead you right to someone who will make a great addition to your team. 

Since many professionals in this industry are very on top of their social media feeds, posting job listings and having other professional connections share them is a good strategy for attracting the most qualified candidates. If you have the budget, you could even place targeted paid ads on social media sites.

#3: Open Your Search

When it comes to digital marketing staff, it doesn’t make sense to narrow your search to just locals. Instead, broaden your search on a nationwide or even global scale to truly find the top talent for each position you need to fill. 

You’d be surprised at the increase in viable candidates when you don’t restrict professionals in this sphere to working in-office. In fact, remote work has become a highly sought out perk, which can help your company beat out the competition when candidates are searching for employment opportunities. Fortunately, the work associated with these roles (especially those for higher-level positions) can be completed nearly anywhere at any time. 

While they’re not in the office, that doesn’t mean it has to affect your ability to collaborate and strategize either. You can set terms for attending remote meetings at specific times when everyone else is in the office to keep the lines of communication open and the entire team in stride toward the same goals. 

Starting with these three tips will get you on the right track to finding top-tier talent in the digital marketing industry. When you’re building out your team, you should also consider how these roles will need to work together and put expectations and practices in place to facilitate team collaboration.