The Changes and Challenges of Marketing Recruitment

With 2018 drawing to a close, we asked our Marketing Recruitment Manager, Megan Cross, to reflect back on the year and provide us with an insight on what the marketing recruitment industry can expect in 2019.

What can your department offer?
The Marketing department here offers in-house positions across a variety of sectors from Assistant roles up to £45k Managers. This is our biggest department in the company and the growth we’ve seen within it over the past couple of years has been incredible! We’ve got a really strong team from marketing backgrounds who all care about the people they’re working with and have a genuine passion for the industry, which translates into the time they put into each role!

Tell us more about the Marketing Recruitment Team and the types of roles that you have been working on.
The Marketing Team always has a very broad expanse of roles across Paid, SEO, CRM, Email, Social, Content, Affiliates and eCommerce and multi-channel digital roles. In the past few weeks we’ve seen an influx of roles across eCommerce and Social but it’s changing every week and we always have a very mixed bag in the lead up to Christmas when our clients are putting the wheels in motion for their 2019 growth strategies. We always say that for anyone who is thinking of moving role in the New Year, now is the best time to start looking to beat the rush and get themselves in front of clients. The competition of people looking in the New Year is huge – it’s always our busiest quarter!

What sort of businesses are you currently working with?
As they were always our staple market, eCommerce businesses are the bulk of our clients. However, we’ve recently had a number of new clients from Property, Travel, Finance and Technology sectors. The companies we work with are always from an incredibly broad scope across the Manchester market. For anyone who’s looking, the best thing to do is to drop us a message or give us a call to find out more. As the market is constantly changing, we’ll always be able to advise people as to what’s available at the minute and what we can see coming through in the upcoming weeks. 

What challenges have you seen within the industry this past year?
As most companies will say, the biggest challenges this year have come from GDPR and Brexit. GDPR had a big effect on businesses, and how much time had to go into protecting and rebuilding their data meant there was a lull on new roles coming through and workloads increasing for people. The other long-standing issue has been Brexit and businesses being a bit more cautious around the uncertainty of what will happen with partners and wholesalers that are based outside of the UK. However, even with these challenges, we’ve still seen significant growth this year in our team and the number of companies we’re working with.

Top 5 Tips for someone to have a successful Marketing career?

1. It’s not always the big brands that can give you the best opportunities in the long term. We have so many candidates coming through that only want to work for the top companies in Manchester but in doing this they shut themselves off for so many new businesses that are growing quickly and can offer some incredible opportunities. These are companies who want their staff to grow with them, offer brilliant progression and exposure to more aspects of end-to-end campaigns.
2. Think about where you want to be in the next 5 years and then work out the best way to get there. Are you already in the sector you want to end up in? If not, what do you need to change to make it achievable? Sometimes you need to take a step back to get onto the right path and that’s okay!
3. Always leave a previous employer on good terms! The marketing industry in Manchester is small and things always have a way of coming back to you so make sure if you’re leaving a business you do so with respect.
4. Be open minded! Some of the best opportunities are from areas, you didn’t imagine ever ending up moving into.
   It’s always a good idea to hear them out – some won’t be for you but always find out as much as you can about any opportunity that crosses your path.
5. Keep up to date with the market trends! Marketing is a sector that’s constantly evolving so you need to be on top of where the market is going. The most successful people are always those who have spotted a new direction as to where things are moving and jumped on it early!

If you’re looking for a new marketing job then don’t hesitate to contact Megan and her team on 0161 833 1044.

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