No matter how innovative your organization’s product or service is, hiring the wrong people can curtail the company’s growth. What’s even worse, though? Hiring the best people for the role and failing to set them up for success.
As an in-house hiring manager and as a consultant helping marketing teams recruit and hire content marketers, I’ve seen the full spectrum of onboarding processes first-hand. And I can tell you with certainty that while there isn’t any definitive “right” way to approach hiring and onboarding marketing talent, there definitely are some very common avoidable mistakes that many marketers make.
Avoid These 3 Marketing Hiring Mistakes
High-growth organizations—especially startups—are notorious for having a revolving door of talent. One of the key reasons is the focus on hitting the ground running often means they rush through the recruitment and onboarding processes. In the haste to speed up the new hire’s ramp-up time, managers can overlook some critical steps for ensuring their new marketing hire has what they need to become a productive part of the team.
Regardless of the seniority level and pay grade, all job candidates and new hires deserve:
- Transparency throughout the recruitment process
- To have their time respected
- An opportunity to succeed
To fulfill these criteria, it’s time to review your hiring process and ensure you’re not making these all-too-common mistakes.
1. Not Involving Direct Reports and Peers In the Interview Process
Your company culture is built with each hire. If you don’t connect a candidate with their potential direct reports or peers during the interview process, there could be a jarring cultural misalignment that risks everyone’s workplace satisfaction.
A 15-minute video meeting is plenty of time for most candidates to connect with individual peers or reports, or you can host a longer, large-group discussion with the candidate. If you are hiring a senior-level marketing executive, consider more extensive meetings, in-person meetups, or lunches.
Three best practices for these meetings include:
- Ensure your team makes the meeting a priority. Do not continually reschedule meetings or ghost candidates, as it wastes their time. It also implies they are not a priority, or that your team has an intense workload.
- Explain to your team what you hope to gain from their conversation with the candidate. Suggest questions they can ask if they are unsure how to guide the conversation.
- Conduct meetings as one of the final screening phases and only if you are seriously considering the candidate. It is a time investment for everyone involved, so respect their time.
2. Skipping the Onboarding Plan
The early days of any new job set the tone and create excitement in the new position. Simply leaving your new marketing team member to “figure things out” or “just get started” will lead to confusion, anxiety, and, ultimately, disappointment or frustration.
Prepare a complete onboarding schedule that explains at least the first two weeks of their role. Many teams provide a comprehensive schedule for the entire first week with a clear schedule of meetings and activities.
Also, discuss general milestones the candidate should expect to achieve by the first, second, and third month. This helps them understand whether they are progressing in their role as needed. Check out our Content Director’s First 90 Days onboarding plan template as a starting point.
What to include in content marketing onboarding
After the required human resources new hire paperwork is out of the way, an onboarding schedule can include elements like:
- Educational materials: What existing brand content should they read? Provide a list of exemplary blog posts and other content, company background information, and social media channels they can browse. Share those strategy decks and any research you’ve undertaken in the past year. Make sure to give them time to conduct their own research on the company and familiarize themselves with your content. Schedule time to review any questions they have.
- Team meetings: Connect the hire with their peers and direct reports for a casual onboarding conversation. The team members can explain more about their own role, how they will collaborate with the new hire, and general tips for succeeding with the team.
- Technology demos: Explain what tools the marketer will use in their day-to-day work and ensure they can access everything they need to. Provide a demo, walk them through the solution, and show them the help resources available as they dig into their official work.
- Light work assignments: It can be valuable to blend work assignments into the onboarding schedule. However, do not expect the new hire to produce important, high-impact work during the first week. A social media audit or competitor content audit could be a win-win for helping the new hire learn more about your brand and its competitors while uncovering ways to improve your existing content strategy. Asking them to ghostwrite a CEO all-employee email on their second day? Not a great feeling (ask me how I know.)
Check in with your new hire regularly and ask for candid feedback about how their onboarding experience could have been better. Take all feedback seriously and find ways to gradually improve your process.
3. Withholding Information
As the saying goes, secrets don’t make friends… or satisfied employees. Be transparent at each step of the recruitment and onboarding process, including clear details about expected working hours, key deliverables, resources they need to thrive, and channels they can use to voice feedback or seek help.
I once had to choose between two relatively equivalent job offers. I ended up turning down the one with the fancier title and higher pay rate to go with a startup. Why? Because I hadn’t met my peers and I had the feeling I wasn’t being given the full scoop on the company. Flash forward a few weeks, and local news about a massive restructuring and issues within the organization showed me my instincts were spot-on.
Presenting conflicting information or appearing secretive can cause hesitation for the new hire. If certain information cannot be shared for legal reasons, explain that upfront.
Ethical Marketing Hiring
For more resources to perfect your hiring process, check out our article on why companies need to stop requesting free work from job candidates. Content marketing job description development, recruitment, and onboarding are a regular part of my fractional head of content retainers. Get in touch if you’d like to hire us to help.
