I have been a hands-on marketer who has handled multi-million dollar campaigns every month. Apart from the post being slightly self-promotional (a pitch to hire the author as a consultant), I strongly feel this is not the way to hire your first marketing person.
This is pretty much like saying your first tech hire should be a VP of Engineering who can roll up their sleeves and do front-end and back-end and data-infra and create neural networks. Sure, maybe they can do it. But how good a job do you think he will do overall?
The first marketing hire, especially when you don't really know how to hire a marketing person, is going to be a gamble - no matter what the experience of the person is or what level of success the person has achieved in the previous company. I have hired very successful hands-on marketers who have failed terribly because the dynamics of the company changes. So does the target audience, the message, etc.
Often times, most marketers will take credit for the success their team achieved. For e.g. if you ask what was the metrics you handled, they'd most likely share the team metrics that was a collective responsibility and give you numbers based on that. You need deep experience to see through these claims.
Also, the first hire you make almost always needs to be tactical unless you have a large budget. But even tactical markets cannot do anything unless you have enough marketing budgets. Also, the medium of promotion is important. FB marketing is very different from LinkedIn marketing. Both of them differ from AdWords as well. These are almost entirely different from content networks like Outbrain and Taboola. Oh did I talk to you about DSPs?
Unless you know which medium you will be using to promote, you cannot hire a specialist. And there's no one who is going to be equally skilled in all channels. I have seen marketers waste tens of thousands of dollars because they wanted to try a new channel which they had no idea to optimize.
In short, don't think following this guide is going to help you make the right hire. Unless you are a marketer yourself, most likely you will make the wrong hire.
If I were to hire a marketer for a startup and I cannot spend time hand-holding the person, I'll just hire someone who has some experience running organic as well as paid campaigns and is willing to experiment and learn. Marketing is mostly a function of trial and error. So hire someone who is willing to do this.
This is pretty much like saying your first tech hire should be a VP of Engineering who can roll up their sleeves and do front-end and back-end and data-infra and create neural networks. Sure, maybe they can do it. But how good a job do you think he will do overall?
The first marketing hire, especially when you don't really know how to hire a marketing person, is going to be a gamble - no matter what the experience of the person is or what level of success the person has achieved in the previous company. I have hired very successful hands-on marketers who have failed terribly because the dynamics of the company changes. So does the target audience, the message, etc.
Often times, most marketers will take credit for the success their team achieved. For e.g. if you ask what was the metrics you handled, they'd most likely share the team metrics that was a collective responsibility and give you numbers based on that. You need deep experience to see through these claims.
Also, the first hire you make almost always needs to be tactical unless you have a large budget. But even tactical markets cannot do anything unless you have enough marketing budgets. Also, the medium of promotion is important. FB marketing is very different from LinkedIn marketing. Both of them differ from AdWords as well. These are almost entirely different from content networks like Outbrain and Taboola. Oh did I talk to you about DSPs?
Unless you know which medium you will be using to promote, you cannot hire a specialist. And there's no one who is going to be equally skilled in all channels. I have seen marketers waste tens of thousands of dollars because they wanted to try a new channel which they had no idea to optimize.
In short, don't think following this guide is going to help you make the right hire. Unless you are a marketer yourself, most likely you will make the wrong hire.
If I were to hire a marketer for a startup and I cannot spend time hand-holding the person, I'll just hire someone who has some experience running organic as well as paid campaigns and is willing to experiment and learn. Marketing is mostly a function of trial and error. So hire someone who is willing to do this.