Many business owners say that they put a lot of effort in hiring digital marketers and finally end up hiring the wrong candidate.

Problems in hiring the best Digital Marketers

Hiring the best digital marketer is always the biggest problem & an incomplete task for many business owners who are planning to have an in-house digital marketing team. Many business owners invest a lot in finding the right digital marketers by hiring a recruiting company and then offering a job to the person whom they cannot be able to evaluate properly during the interview, which is ultimately a big loss to the employer.

Let’s understand why it’s always difficult to hire a Digital Marketer:

Digital marketing is vast like any other domain, and the problem here is it not being vast, but then the following cases would make it more difficult for business owners to find a good Digital marketer.

1. The candidates play around jargons

If you had taken an interview with digital marketers ever you would have easily felt this, but many times, unfortunately, most of the interviewers face difficulty in realizing this as they don’t posse’s in-depth digital marketing knowledge or they blindly trust, sometimes they might not have an appropriate time to gauge the marketer from all perspectives

2. Candidates bluff and leave false information

Candidates lie that they have handled great projects even if they were never the project owners of it, E.G: A person writes an Article once to one of their client (“x” client) and mostly his/her job would be only writing but then they claim that they have handled Digital marketing for “x” Client. The other disgusting thing about this is they proudly leave this information on their resumes/profiles and which can be actually figured out when the right digital marketer interviews them.

3. Candidates confuse with certifications

Certifications really don’t mean anything if they haven’t learned the core marketing. Certifications are easily available when a candidate takes up the online test, which is usually objective questions and are mostly about the tools. Moreover, these test can be taken anytime and it can be a group of people answering them, but the sign-up name is of only one individual.

4. Most of the time’s candidates resume/profile information is not correct, they lie

If you are a person paying lots of attention to details mentioned on the resume stop doing it, especially when it comes to hiring the digital marketers. As explained in point 2 candidates will have many varieties/types of thoroughly planned stuff and they put all of it on their profile.

5. The industry demand for a good resource is high, but then the quality supply is low

There are thousands of start up’s across and any well funded doesn’t hesitate to invest more in people who are skillful, these startups meanwhile are least concerned about the industry standard CTC’s and are constantly on hunt for right resource and this leaves lots of mediocre around and who would be your employee when you have small budgets or if you haven’t got interviewed by the right person.

6. Many digital marketers have just learned tools but not the real marketing

Digital marketing learning is great only when people deal with lots of data, they should have an opportunity to deal with accounts which can leave lots of data to them and also they should be good at data analysis, interpretation and take action. If they lag skills in dealing with the data, they would never learn the digital marketing to the core and hence remain with only tools knowledge.

7. Digital marketing needs a person,

• To be creative
• Good analytical thinker
• Good logical thinker
• Technically sound to understand the tools and algorithms
• Proactive
• Can foresee things
• Good grasping capabilities
• Good communication skills (oral & written)
• Aggressiveness
• A friendly natured person who can actually coordinate with several supportive teams and get the work done
• Result oriented
• Critical thinker
• Great domain Knowledge

Many times you would not find a person possessing all of these traits and sometimes its hard to find out all of these skills in a person or identifying such person itself is difficult. To identify such talents there should be a well-defined interview process and if that process is not set/known a business owner sees a failure in hiring the right digital marketer.

The best thing that one can do to hire the right person is to get in touch with a consultant/domain expert who can hire a right digital marketer for them.

As already explained the creamy layer is getting into Digital marketing only now or possibly in the near future. In past the talent was not aware of Digital marketing scope and have mostly got into the domains which are widely accepted by everyone and even today people are not completely aware of domain scope and hence majority who have got into this domain are people who would not have found their dream job and have later compromised on Digital marketing profile.

Note:

• The above explanation doesn’t apply to people who had interest in this domain and have got into this domain being conscious about the growth, scope and their passion.
• Also, there are few people who satisfy above criteria have accidentally or being conscious have got into this domain and they are one who is most in demand in the market today.

8. No standard CTC’s for the right talents

Quality Digital marketers keep changing their jobs with the increased demand in the market for them. Many business owners, heads, and top-level people have realized the importance of Digital marketing and they understand the pulse of it and hence are hunting for great digital marketers, these people also understood the right way of hiring right people with the involvement of the consultants or domain experts or mostly through their network and hence they go a step ahead to get the right talents at any cost. Therefore, this increased demand makes it difficult to get the expert for their organizations.

9. Not the real digital marketers

90% of the digital marketers in the experience level of 1-5 years have learned only basics of Digital marketing and tools usage, they are not real digital marketers and mostly they are just used as a resource by real digital marketers or employers

10. Many mediocre profiles/Junk

In every industry, there will be mixed talents/skill sets and one would notice all type of people, but then when it comes to Digital marketing you would see a bigger percent of not so worth profiles. There are two reasons of people not being up to the mark:

• In the initial stages of Digital marketing industry, many mediocre talents have got into this profile due to several reasons
• There are no right mentors, as Digital marketing skill is mostly learned by doing. There are defined process only for the tools usage, but not a proved/accredited/accepted concept in digital marketing as you find it in physics/mathematics/chemistry, where you have well-defined formulas to prove the concepts/assumptions.

11. No right person to mentor the talented people

A right talent would lose their essence when they get mentored by the mediocre skill set people. Finding the right people to mentor your team is not that easy and if you find such person feel lucky. Many organizations if they have to set up an in-house digital marketing team, the first thing they do is that they find a great mentor/domain expert/consultant.

12. Business owners are not the domain experts

At start up’s mostly the interviews will be taken by the top level people of the organization/company such as CEO’s, Founders, Directors, Vice president or any top-level person and these people definitely are great in terms of understanding the market, marketing strategies, people, and can actually get through any numbers, but then the Digital marketing knowledge is also very crucial to gauge the person and hence they end up finding a good person but not always a good digital marketer.

Summary:

If you think you are facing any of the above problems in recruiting a Digital Marketer, you should find a Digital Marketing expert/consultant who can help you in shortlisting the best candidate for your project.

Manjunath Chowdary

Digital Marketing Expert, consultant, Mentor and
Director of KandraDigital Marketing
Solutions Pvt Ltd.