How to find an expert in marketing for an IT company
In the modern world, there is a very high demand and interest in marketing activity. IT companies started to understand the essence and importance of high-quality marketing, and therefore many of them are looking for a qualified specialist.
Finding a truly “knowledgeable” marketer is problem #1 for all business executives. What do you need to do and to know to find a worthy specialist?
Where to start?
Start your search for the right IT marketer with preparation. You must first decide on the tasks you need to have solved, the time frame for completing the tasks, the specifics of this type of work, and what kind of specialist – their personal qualities – will be suitable for a professional.
Answer the following questions:
- What are the responsibilities? If they are not chosen yet, then create and describe the vacancy in more detail. This will allow you to find the necessary candidate.
- When it is impossible to describe the target responsibilities clearly, just mention the specific goals that need to be achieved.
- You need to present your company as a place for the expert’s creativity in marketing since a marketer is a creative person and can work efficiently only in comfortable conditions.
What should you pay attention to in a CV?
CV is a great way to quickly get to know a candidate and provide a lot of information about them. How to determine that a marketer is truly professional in their field?
- The CV includes the results of their work presented in numbers: certain performance indicators, indicators of revenue growth, etc. When a person can show their results in numbers, it means that the specialist is working mainly on a specific goal and knows how to achieve it. The more detailed the results and statistics of work are in the schedule, the more competently the specialist communicates with you.
- A very important aspect is the terms of cooperation with the sales department. For marketers, it isn’t easy to build relationships with the sales department, and they can also compete. The importance of mutual help between marketing and sales department can hardly be overestimated. An employee who can combine these two areas can be beneficial to the company.
- Specialized education also plays an essential role since this is a guarantee that the specialist knows the basics of marketing, and this is not their first year in this business.
- Specialization of a marketer – whether a person worked in many areas, for example, event-organizing, creating pages, etc. It is crucial to understand how profound a specialist’s knowledge is and to look for marketers with a narrow specialization that is necessary precisely for you.
- It will be a significant advantage if the specialist has already worked in the IT industry and knows all the nuances. Therefore, the results of the work will not take long to come. And vice versa, if a person is a professional in the field but has not worked in this area, they will need time to adapt.
Pay attention to the time they spent at previous companies. When a person has worked for about 7-8 years in one place, then their tools and skills developed in another company can benefit you.
What to ask an IT marketer during an interview
- To determine whether the client’s stories are real, you just need to conduct a test and find out how competent they are in specific issues.
- It is necessary to create test problems as close as possible to the realities of the workflow. For example, for an Internet marketing candidate, you can ask them to choose words for SEO promotion or conduct an IT audit of a page on the company’s website. When selecting an SMM manager, provide them with an assignment to choose a social network suitable for promoting your offers or simply write a selling text.
- New employees may not immediately comprehend all the difficulties and nuances of a new job. It is important to assess their speed, desire and the result of the training to understand whether they are really suitable or not.
An exception to the rule is if you want to attract a true specialist in your field. When you know exactly who this person is, then the above tips are no longer appropriate.
Interviewing an IT marketer
- When communicating, ask clear and detailed questions about their specialization, what methods they used in the past, and why.
- Find out the results of the work done if this information was not indicated in the CV. At the same time, you can assess the professional qualities and self-criticism of the future employee.
- Find out that the person knows about the company. Good marketers in advance check the company they want to work for, assess the website, highlight the main development problems and offer some fresh ideas during the interview right away.
Feel free to ask non-standard questions. You can ask about their spheres of interest, find out their favorite movie or book, whether they love animals, and what they prefer to do in their free time. Depending on the answers, you can find out about the candidate’s personal qualities and whether they can work along with the team. - “What specialized literature do you read?” – this question will let you find out what the candidate reads, in which webinars or training participates and how long ago they did it.
What can the candidate ask?
- By asking questions, the candidate can additionally demonstrate their professionalism and skills, namely:
- The setup of a marketing department. How many people work there? How are responsibilities divided?
- Is there a marketing strategy, and who is shaping it?
- What tools are used at work? Which of them were fruitful and not?
- What are the responsibilities? – It is necessary to answer this question in the most precise way possible so that a person makes an objective decision.
We want to warn you that finding a good marketer is a difficult task that can take a lot of time, or you will just be lucky to find a good specialist fast.
Following the above tips, you can quickly and effectively find a truly qualified specialist for your team who will quickly find the common language with the team and bring profit to your IT company.
