At the best of times, experienced professional services marketers are tough to find and even tougher to recruit. There is only a small pool of qualified people in each Canadian market, so set out to attract and hire the best your budget can support.
In large firms, human resources can help with the search, but they may not be equipped to verify the technical skills of a marketer. Of course, you can hire an external recruiter, but the hitch is the cost, which can be as high as 33 percent of the position’s annual salary, though usually it comes with a 6-to-12-month guarantee.
Small and mid-sized firms may be inclined to go it alone. Here are five steps to finding a great marketer for your firm:
1. Write an appealing job description
If you have someone in the marketing team currently, it’s likely that this person can take the first crack at drafting what is required for this role. If not, lean on online job boards that describe various roles and zero in on the one that best suits your needs. A good one to try is www.legalmarketing.org.
If the position is new to the firm, consider how different marketing positions might interact internally, and plan collision avoidance by mapping various tasks of the marketing team and discuss “who does what” before you commit anything to paper. If it’s a current position, consider critically what worked well and what needs adjustment.
Avoid the kitchen sink variety of descriptions where it’s evident someone with the pen succumbed to the temptation to include an exhaustive laundry list of responsibilities. Instead of jamming everything into this poor sod’s role, be measured and disciplined; consider the job’s priorities and workload volume, then cross out anything that seems vague or unrealistic.
- Junior roles – send the job description around internally first. You never know if one of your staff is restless and seeking a new role, it may be to your advantage to keep this trained person among your staff, but in a different department. Be sure to budget for professional development – on the generous side if there’s no one to mentor this person internally.
TIP: if you run an ad, hire a graphic designer to ensure your ad is attractively presented. You are targeting marketing professionals, after all.
- Senior roles – get consensus among your executive committee as to what this person’s mandate will be and, just as important, what it won’t be. How will you recognize this individual’s success after one year? How will the executive team champion this person’s role? Speak to other marketing professionals, marketing partners and managing partners about realistic job expectations — and the current sticker price.
TIP: This is an employees’ market, so do craft your job description with a section that describes your firm in favourable terms. Everyone wants to work in a firm that values employees and most sophisticated individuals see the employment relationship as two-sided. What is it that your firm has to offer in return for a skilled person besides the ubiquitous “competitive salary”?
2. Publicize your job opportunity
Even if you’re certain you don’t have a qualified marketing director lurking amongst your current staff, it costs nothing to send an internal communiqué that a search is on. The grapevine is your cheapest and, at times, most effective method in spreading the news.
If you have an advertising budget, running a short campaign appearing on peak days of your daily newspaper can generate a lot of interest, but you risk attracting the wrong candidates and the cost is usually high.
Instead, consider promoting this position on the web. Places to post jobs:
- Your firm’s website
- Legal marketing association website. Vancouver or Toronto Chapters each have their own job boards
- American Marketing Association
- Canadian Marketing Association (http://www.marketing-jobs.ca/)
- Canadian Society for Marketing Professional Services (http://www.csmps.com/profile/index.html)
- Your local Board of Trade
- Consider posting to the marketing associations of accountants, engineering, architecture, and financial services.
Some of these job postings have modest fees attached.
3. Sift through the résumés
If your HR team is unavailable to assist you with this, find a system to weed out the unqualified people in the pile. Whip through with the key criteria in mind and create an A, B and C pile. A’s are your stars, B’s are hopefuls and C’s are your non-starters.
Think carefully if you want to hire someone with mistakes in their cover letter or resume. If this is present in one in your “A” pile, do plan to test that individual for detail orientation. More on this to come.
4. Ask good interview questions
Ask good questions by first talking to other internal or external marketers. Seldom do marketing professionals get the chance to shine in an interview process, and that’s simply because the partners aren’t equipped with the right questions.
If you don’t have a consultant or senior marketing person currently, reach out to well-managed companies that you may be associated with and ask if they can help you craft some thought-provoking questions (with answers too!) that will help you evaluate each candidate.
For marketing managers and director-level positions, give them exercises to do at home and/or right before the interview.
Here are some examples of some great pre-interview questions:
- What would your first six months in this position look like? Please outline your priorities and approach.
- How would you gain buy-in from lawyers who may not support your initiatives?
- Scenario question: let’s say you’re working with a lawyer who is in favour of a marketing strategy you know is likely to fail. He is headstrong, and you’re concerned about activating a tactical plan that is doomed to be costly and embarrassing for all. What would you do and why?
To ensure you’re receiving answers derived from the candidate themselves, and not their friendly marketing professor; here are some examples of questions that can be provided in your office, just prior to the interview:
- What are the key elements to a business plan?
- Where do you start in developing a marketing strategy for a particular goal? Please provide the first two or three steps.
- What’s your position on the use of advertising to market professional services?
- How important to you is measuring your marketing activities, and why?
Ask a senior marketing professional to evaluate the answers to the questions above. This will provide you with assurances that each candidate is technically sound.
Before making the final offer of employment to a senior person, consider which partners you need onside with the hiring of this person. Rainmakers, practice group leaders, the business development committee, senior partners, or even up and coming associates may be among this group, but do facilitate an opportunity for a handful of them to meet your final candidate.
5. Lay the groundwork for success
Ensure all the key people in your firm understand this person’s role so that everyone is reading off the same song sheet.
The higher a marketer is in the marketing department’s hierarchy, the more they need to know about where the firm wants to go, and how it’s thinking about getting there. Provide your new marketer with intelligence about the firm, such as updates of billable targets, new file opening reports, the firm’s strategic plan and other information that’s important for them to do their job effectively. Grant access wherever it’s warranted and enable your new marketing professional to shine, and shine they will.
Susan Van Dyke is the Principal of Van Dyke Marketing & Communications. She is a law firm marketing consultant based in Vancouver, B.C. She can be reached at 604-876-7769 or svandyke@telus.net.