Addressing the senior marketing professional skills gap

As the demand for senior skill set in marketing across the region reaches it’s highest point ever, The Candidate have responded by growing their Search & Selection Team to provide more effective headhunting. With the team already making successful placements for a range of clients in various sectors, we give you an interesting insight into how we are helping address the skills shortage at this level. 

Headhunting marketing professionals has become our specialism in the 5 years since we launched The Candidate, sourcing the best talent available and matching them to the best jobs. As we’ve grown, the relationships with our clients have matured and we’ve become closer to them. We’re now privileged to share and discuss their marketing strategies and business plans and how this relates to staffing and recruitment. Only by truly understanding what our clients are trying to achieve can we recruit the right calibre of staff and type of person for their business and its culture. That in turn naturally gives us the level of understanding needed to discuss detailed plans with senior hires. What these candidates want is to make the right decision, the best next step in their career that is so crucial to them, which demands careful consideration and advice, to build on their foundations and aim towards Managerial, Director or Executive level roles.

Northwest’s strong calibre of candidate
We’re talking candidates over £70k usually, but not unusually £100k-£120k and beyond. Encouragingly that’s the level of recruit that many of our clients and other businesses across the Northwest are making in their marketing teams. After all, success in the region is rife, from boohoo.com’s most recent results of their profits doubling and becoming a £2bn valued company to Mediacom’s acquisition of Code Computer Love. We’re seeing senior marketing candidates moving from client side backgrounds into growing advertising agencies, and vice versa as each side of the fence attempts to gather knowledge on how to best deliver complex and successful marketing strategies. They’re just a few examples of teams that clearly need experienced senior marketing staff and we’re only seeing investment levels in senior staff increasing.

Our successes

Recently placing Fiona Hunt into a Senior Board Director role at Mediacom, Simon Clarke, Recruitment Operations Director and Advertising Agency Executive Headhunter, tracked her down from Sydney Australia and used our in-house networking and communication technology to source, approach, interview and screen for that senior role. The process itself couldn’t have been more smooth and effective, with Fiona saying that she ‘Couldn’t have asked for a better recruitment process. Most importantly, Simon checked in with me regularly as I went through the interview process, helped work around time differences and technology issues with working overseas. I never had to worry about where the process was at, he was always available to answer any questions or concerns I had.’ Fiona is just one example of Board Directors we have placed both Advertising Agency Side and Client Side helping build our network and growing the number of briefs at this level.

In another successful senior recruit, Laura Walters, Recruitment Director and Headhunter in eCommerce, Fashion, Finance, Travel and Media Sales recently placed Nicola Fox as Head of CRM at Missguided in a successful senior recruitment brief. Using her network of over 14k connections, built from the 10 years in the digital media industry and successful move to recruitment at The Candidate 3 years ago, Nicola was shortlisted within 1 week of the briefing and unsurprisingly wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Laura to clients in need of senior search & selection assistance, 'Laura was thorough and more than helpful, always being available to advise and direct me any time of day or night. She provided honest, professional, hands-on support, during my search and was always prompt in providing updates on the position. I found her approachable and human in what is always unsettling process [moving job.]’

Effective retained activity
The demand for senior staff in marketing has never been higher than it is today across the region. We’ve successfully sourced and placed a range of candidates in senior positions in roles across various sectors in the region and the volume of briefs is only increasing. We’re growing our senior staffing team to meet this demand and have dedicated resource to service agency side and client side roles. We’re experts in identifying the select few people suitable for the roles briefed. Usually, it’ll be from a small pool of passive candidates, not actively looking but always ready for a discussion about the next step in their career. That’s why retained activity is so effective, dedicated time is put into sourcing that chosen few, finding the right person in our network of tens of thousands, engaging with them and opening their eyes to the career opportunities exist. It’s what we do best.

Our clients benefit from our Director’s combined networks, knowledge, experience, professionalism and ethical approach. They benefit from dedicated resource through a retained based service, which is still linked to staged performance. Our social media network numbers and connections are vast, giving us the ability to communicate with both active and passive candidates interested.

Feedback to improve and develop our service
The demand is there and our feedback continues to tell us that there’s a real need in the region for experienced and knowledgeable recruiters to service the senior market. We continue to be all ears, listening to our candidates and clients on what’s needed to really help this emerging skills gap at a senior level. Watch this space for more developments in this area.

Having successfully built a database of thousands of candidates across the Northwest and beyond, we’re best placed to match these to most client briefs whether client side or agency side. Our services span beyond search and selection with services including mapping of talent, benchmarking of salaries, interim management briefings, competency interviews and detailed candidates assessments (behavioural & psychometric.)

If you would like to use our Search and Selection services please get in touch with our team on 0161 833 1044 or email [email protected]. 

You can read more about our Marketing Headhunting here. 

Meet the Search and Selection Team here.