Building Great Marketing Teams
Sharing Everything I have EVER learned
You Can Still Get Growth on Track
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The biggest unlock to your career as a marketing leader is learning how to be amazing at hiring.
It is a skill you need to master to be successful.
But no one ever really teaches you how.
They just assume you should know how to interview.
Assume you know how to find great people.
The only way to learn that skill is by doing and probably screwing up a ton like I did. Until now... Today, I am sharing everything I have EVER learned about how to hire great marketers. Whether you are a Founder making your first marketing hire or stepping into a Marketing leadership role for the first time - this one is for you.
Source Your Own Pipeline
If you are banking on your HR team to simply post the job and have the great candidates roll in, you are going to be disappointed. The fact is that the best marketers aren’t coming to your website and applying.
They have a network of people they rely on to get them the intros they want. They also get inbound requests from recruiters and founders weekly.
You need to be involved in sourcing the candidates you want. So how do you actually do that?
First - Don’t wait until you are hiring for the role to start networking.
Start by identifying companies you admire and reaching out to connect with their teams—not with the immediate goal of hiring, but to cultivate your network.
If you anticipate the need for a product marketer in six months, now is the time to start engaging with the best PMMs you can find. This proactive approach not only widens your pool of potential candidates but also, when it comes time to hire, you have a network of people you can now ask for referrals from.
Good marketers flock together like birds of a feather.
If I had to hire a content leader tomorrow, I have a pool of about 10 people who are considered the best at what they do I could reach out to. This is one of the easiest ways to supercharge the hiring pipeline on your own.
Build Your Own Personal Brand
Whether you like it or not, building a personal brand makes a huge difference when you're looking to hire. It's like having a shortcut to meet awesome people.
When you're active and known in your industry, you naturally get to know more folks, and that means when it's time to hire, you've already got a pool of great contacts.
Plus, if you're out there sharing your thoughts and being part of the conversation, more people see when you're looking to add someone to the team. It's not just about getting more applications; it's about getting the right ones.
People want to work with someone they admire and trust, so if they like what you're about, they're more likely to want to join your crew.
It's pretty simple: the better your personal brand, the easier it is to attract the kind of talent that gets excited to work with you.
Learn how to interview marketers
Interviewing marketers is hard. It took me a long time to get really good at it. It's also an area I spend a ton of time on with the founders I work with. So I thought I would break down what makes it so hard and 2 of the approaches I use in every single interview process.
Show some personality
The best marketers have options. They don’t just want to work somewhere to have a job. They want to work for someone they can learn from, they think will be fun to be around, that isn’t some corporate robot.
You are being interviewed as much as you are interviewing, so don’t think you shouldn’t be selling yourself and the company.
Always give them plenty of time to ask questions.
Ask them what their hesitations are with anything on the role.
Share your vision for the team, for their potential role, and how it could evolve into something bigger down the road.
Act excited when you have someone you like. People like to be liked.
Fun story - when I was hiring for a head of growth at G2 to report into me, we had a candidate who I was really excited about. The interview was on a Friday, and he was coming from out of state. He mentioned to me that he was staying on the weekend with his girlfriend to hang out with old friends from college.
We decided we wanted to make an offer, but I didn’t get the formal approval until about 9 pm that night. So I called him immediately, knowing he was out at dinner or the bar with friends at this point, and gave him the verbal offer. Told him how excited we were and that I thought it would be a fun way for him to find out and hopefully celebrate.
He joined, was amazing, and brought that story up to me several years later, stating how awesome he thought it was I did that.
Lesson is - it’s okay to not be a corporate robot in the hiring process. Having some personality goes a long way.
There you have it.
Start networking early.
Build your own reputation in the industry.
Learn to conduct meaningful interviews.
Don’t be a corporate robot.
Thanks for reading!
Adam