Getting on board the right inbound marketing guy for your company can be a real tough task. Well, the fact is that the usual kind of marketing skillset can be acquired attending colleges and universities that provide such facilities. However, inbound marketing is much ahead of the basic techniques that are not taught at business schools. Finding the suitable candidate to head the industry is daunting, especially when people with formal digital marketing knowledge are so scarce. In fact, conducting such interviews and attempting to choose the right talent can seem more like a treasure hunt.

The prospect of locating the person that fits the inbound marketing position is an experience. A guide to getting an insight into the qualities and skills necessary for such industry expertise can be a great inclusion into your hiring endeavor. Checking out the candidate’s arsenal of knowledge in the area is a strong way to make the right decision. Instead of aimlessly going through piles of resumes to attain that golden talent, conducting a proper hiring process can make the task simpler. This guide is an attempt to assist hiring managers to locate and find the perfect inbound marketer for the team.

Creating an ideal job description

How will you know which person is best suited for the position unless the job post is clear, assisting in the search? Prior to proceeding to look through prospective candidates, it is good to know what kind of expertise you want them to have. To be able to screen the right people, creating the suitable job description is of prime concern. It should enlist detailed insight into the responsibilities involved, basic skills necessary for the position, experience in the field as well as other expertise that makes a candidate successful to attain the job.

In addition to emphasis on intricate aspects of the position, communicating the character of the company culture is also a quite important. This ensures that candidates get to understand the personality of the job description and the working scenario of the team.

Spotting the right talent

The perfect job description should include the skills and personal traits the role requires. What kind of a candidate does it take to be best fitting for the job you’ve just outlined? Being able to determine the core competencies of the task requires a clear understanding. At first, it is crucial to focus on the specific behavioral traits that the marketer should exhibit naturally when handling inbound marketing responsibilities. The skillset of the professional marketer is also important to realize whether the person will be able to deal with technical aspects of the job successfully.

Core behavioral traits

How does the candidate handle everyday responsibilities? Do they follow a method to get the right marketing rush? When evaluating someone for a role in the team, identifying how the potential employee is able to tackle tasks and responsibilities is quite important. There are certain key behavioral traits that are great to analyze a stellar in the field.

Inquisitive: The web world is so dynamic, changes keep occurring every day. Candidates should have a natural inclination to research, question ideas, techniques and processes, both old and new. The inquisitive marketer naturally illustrates weaknesses by revealing flaws. Conversely, they exhibit their strengths by asking the right questions about your team’s marketing methodology.

Decisive: The field of marketing is really full of surprises. A campaign can perform really well or sales can suddenly drop low. A good inbound marketer will be able to take these situations in their stride and proceed to making quick decisions on how to capitalize on them. They must be able to stand by their decisions and take complete responsibility for their actions as well. These are the professionals who become decision makers and work through every possible scenario in the field.

Adaptable: There will be so many alterations in strategy and planning in an inbound marketing guy’s work life. Changes are prominent and the team should be adaptable to them. Shifting responsibilities in certain situations is also evident; however the workforce should be able to manage every kind of such hurdles. It is the role of the ideal marketer in the team to ensure that the other members can.

Sudden workloads: Inbound marketing takes work. Generating results sometimes means working faster, harder or stronger. The success of big campaigns requires strenuous effort and hard work. You really want a candidate that can survive through such challenges with grandeur. For instance, if your team is hired for a goal and you’re already running late by a month, then can the person get through it and finish the task overnight? If the answer is yes, and the person is capable of going to great lengths to be able to save the day, then you have an asset in your hands.

Key marketing skills

Now that you know the behavioral characteristics of exceptional inbound marketers there comes being adept with the skills that such people need to successfully execute in their role. It is important to look into the technical expertise and other knowledge in addition required in a killer inbound marketing specialist.

Writing skills: One of the most vital skills that an inbound marketer should posses is to be able to write. There are marketers writing social updates, emails, e-books essentially aimed to attract potential customers to the company. What is the significance of writing over the marketing ability in a candidate? The fact is that if you just cannot attract and engage your audience, marketing is not your thing. Content is the most powerful way to draw visitors to you. There have been instances in cases when strong writers with little or no marketing expertise have emerged to become great leaders.

Teaching ability: A good understanding of the marketing industry is not well worth it if you cannot share the insight to the market. The ability to teach is of grave importance if you want to portray your company as a thought leader and establish connection with new businesses.

Ability to comprehend: The capability to teach is as vital as being able to understand new things. The marketer you’re looking for might need to create content, analyze metrics and be able to implement tactics. These are crucial for any marketing expert or the person will have to learn on the fly. Your team becomes more capable when staffed by people who can learn be able to comprehend new strategies more quickly.

Industry understanding: The marketer should have good knowledge about the industry to be able to present best practices in content. More the information and insight of the person more is the chance to induce authority in writing. In fact, when reviewing a resume, you should already be able to understand whether the candidate has strong understanding of the industry, but knowing more from the marketer itself is also important.

Analytics: the field of inbound marketing is largely becoming more data driven. Marketing professionals need to have an analytical mind to be able to process information that can be attained every day. The potential marketer must have the skills to assess ROI, understand marketing metrics and spot trends.

• Specialized marketing ability

When the candidate has most of the marketing traits in the guide, they probably have the specialty of becoming a quality inbound marketer. If your team is large and the staff is starting to specialize in the field given the tasks and experiences, infusing more skills can just be the cherry on cake. The enlisted attributes below are incredibly valuable skills that you may want to consider, supplementing more specific inbound abilities.

Design: If the team is specialized in creating ebooks, images, infographics and other visual content, then a candidate with designing skills is a highly prized inclusion. A member with skills in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign elevates the marketing quality of the team and also the company as a whole.

Public speaking: Marketers may have the opportunity to provide speeches and present educational content to the public. They may even have the provision to offer such market insight to groups within the company. Whether the talk is a presentation, conference or more, the ability to speak in public adds dynamic value to the team.

Excel properties expert: The power of Excel is sometime taken for granted. However, with the right guidance, training and advanced understanding of Excel, marketers will have the power to work through important metrics by breaking them down using the tool. The team will hence perform better with adequate knowledge of the numbers behind your strategies. Look for an Excel star if you happen to find data mining tough or even proving ROI to the marketing.

Producing videos: With the popularity of video content on the rise, a marketer with background in video content creation gives your team an edge in the market. The concept of creating quality videos is a great way to present and share content. An expert in video producing in the team ensures that video content creation becomes a regular in-house activity. Consider the strategy a good addition to your marketing techniques in the longer run and simply find the next video start for the team!

The interview

Once the list of potential candidates has narrowed down using resumes or phone screenings, it is time you invite them to your office to get to meet in person. When conducting interviews of candidates, make sure that every question has real value to reveal specific information in your search for the inbound marketer. Do not waste precious time in the interview session: use every question to judge the competencies critical to the position. The section  involves interviewing the best practices that you can use in your hunt for the perfect marketing pro.

Using open ended questions: Make sure that the candidate talks during the session. Simple replies like “yes” or “no” just cannot give you the perspective of the candidate’s knowledge. Keep the questions open to discussion, giving the candidate an opportunity to be thorough with their answers. Open ended questions are also a lot challenging for candidates that aren’t prepared or not just the right fit for your company.

 Probing questions: Do not jump to new questions immediately. Dig deeper in the mind of the candidate by throwing some questions designed to entail more response valuable to ascertain suitability. Try getting into the “why” and “how” or “who” in particular stories. The strategy assists you to uncover more about the marketer’s decision making and problem solving style.

Listen: The way in which candidates answer questions can simply tell you a lot about how the perspective of the person. When listening to a response, ensure to take into account the confidence level of the candidate, amount of detailed knowledge, data usage or even the tone of voice. So, did the candidate take long to think prior to answering a question? That may be a sign of limited experience in the matter.

 Body Language: You can actually tell a lot about the candidate through unspoken cues or the body movement. Keep an eye on the person; see how the candidate sits, leans, reacts on question, fiddles and eye contact. Paying attention to body language reveals how comfortable, confident or nervous a candidate is about a specific question.

 See whether you enjoy the session: Did you like the time spent with the person? The candidate is someone that the team and company have to work with every day. If you just cannot stand conversing with the person for half an hour, can you be able to work together for the eight hours of a day?

 Allow the interviewee to ask questions: The questions that the candidate posses to you in the interview is a great way to find out whether the person was engrossed during the conversation and also how much they are interested in the industry and your company’s goals. Having inquisitive marketers is a great asset in the team!

Planning the interview questions from before and preparing for the interview ensures that you get to attain vital facts about the behavioral traits and the skills specifically.

Talent scouting

Locating marketing talents is not easy, especially when intrigued into marketing yourself. There are certain great resources that you can look up to help you in the endeavor. These are by no means exhaustive, but you can consider them to search for the marketing superstar for your team.

LinkedIn: With 100 million professional registered on the online platform, LinkedIn is the most suitable place to start your search for quality digital marketers. The provision not only offers flexibility to choose by categories, expertise, experience, company and more but also ensures whether the candidate has actually put in time to update and maintain the LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn groups are great tool to find the ideal candidate and assist in making your search simpler.

• LinkedIn Groups
• Paid Search
• Expertise/Experience/Interests Search
• Organizational Search
• School Search

Industry events: Events are best places to meet potential hires in-person with the benefit to meet such candidates face-to-face prior to inviting them for interview. Search for relevant events that you can attend. These are opportunities to find a pool of new potential inbound marketers.

Searching in blogs and publications: Are there some blogs that you just love to read every day? Do these engross you and offer intricate knowledge? So, why not reach out to them and see whether they are interested in writing for your company? In that case you will be able to find candidates with both writing abilities infused with industry knowledge.

Nurturing interns: Well, there are internship provisions in almost every company. But the fact is that not all such organizations invest time and effort into nurturing them for long-term employment. Interns can be great job candidates. These are people that have already shown an affinity to acquire knowledge and learn from your company. Simply spend time to teach the interns about marketing and let them take into the leadership role once in a while. If such interns are successful in such instances, you have great candidates on hire in your hands!

 Inbound talent search programs: You can also attract potential candidates using the same strategy to attain leads through inbound marketing efforts. Create contents reflecting what it is to work for your company. Further use websites, blogs and the social network to promote the content.

Referral strategies: Company referral programs are great to attract new well-qualified candidates. Offering referral incentives ensures that your employees will be inclined to refer qualified peers, family, friends and acquaintances that add value to your team.

When it comes to hiring the perfect inbound marketer, each marketing team looks for skills diverse and specialized that is great addition to the company’s workforce arsenal. The aim of this guide is to assist in aligning your hiring strategy with proper planning. The thing is that if you’re looking to hire top inbound talent, it is vital to show candidates that you actually walk the walk, too.

Using the tools mentioned in the detailed guide sets the foundation for your next marketing hire. More the addition of suitable job descriptions, competency models, screening process and interview questions, more is the chance to improve your expertise in recruiting the right candidates. The talent pool that your team has is the most valuable resource for the company. Take time to build the team that’ll grow and evolve with your company. The staff so attained assists in elevating your digital strategy to the next highest level.

By Candy Lowe