Hiring your first - or next - marketer is one of the higher-stakes decisions a small business makes. Get it right and growth accelerates; get it wrong and you pay a salary for activity that goes nowhere. The difficulty is that marketing is easy to fake in an interview. Here is how to hire someone who will actually deliver.
Decide what you need first
Before writing a job ad, get clear on the role. "A marketer" is too vague - do you need a strategist to set direction, a doer to run campaigns, or a specialist in one channel? Hiring a big-picture strategist to schedule social posts, or a channel specialist to shape your whole strategy, wastes both of you. Match the hire to the actual gap.
Look for thinking, not just tools
Many candidates list tools and platforms. Tools change; thinking lasts. The stronger signal is whether they can reason from customer and value proposition to tactics, and explain why they did what they did on past work. A marketer who understands strategy will pick up any tool; one who only knows tools cannot invent strategy.
Ask for results and reasoning
Portfolios can be borrowed and metrics inflated. Dig in: "What was the goal? What did you try? What failed, and what did you learn?" Someone who can talk honestly about a campaign that flopped and what they changed understands testing and refining - which is worth more than a highlight reel of wins they may not have driven.
Test with a real problem
The best interview question is a small, real task: "Here is our business - how would you approach marketing it in the first 90 days?" You are not looking for a perfect plan; you are looking for how they think. Do they ask about the customer and the goal first, or jump straight to tactics? The order tells you a lot.
Red flags to watch
- Talks only in tactics and platforms, never strategy or customers.
- Promises guaranteed results or "going viral" - marketing has no guarantees.
- Cannot explain how they would measure success.
- Blames past employers for everything and owns none of it.
Fit the hire to your stage
An early-stage business often needs a versatile generalist who can do a bit of everything; a larger one needs specialists. Hiring a narrow specialist too early, or a scattered generalist too late, is a common and expensive mismatch.
Consider training over hiring
Sometimes the best "hire" is developing someone you already have. A capable team member with the right instincts can be trained in marketing strategy faster than you might think - and they already understand your business.
Build marketing capability in your team with the Marketing Strategy and Concepts course at London School of Business UK - enquire today.