A financial research and information business serving the investment community engaged Hanson Search, part of our Hanson Brand practice, to build out a marketing function from a standing start. The company had grown rapidly on the strength of its product and its client relationships without a formal marketing team in place, and following the appointment of its first chief marketing officer the priority shifted towards building brand equity and establishing a full view of the client journey. Five appointments were required across digital, brand, marketing technology, social and content.
The challenge: hiring marketing specialists rather than generalists
Building a marketing team from nothing is a position few marketing leaders find themselves in, and it brings a particular set of difficulties. Marketing has moved over the past decade from generalists towards specialists, a shift compounded by the growth of marketing technology platforms and the pace at which those platforms change. Hiring specialists is the right direction of travel, but without a clear understanding of scope and remit for each role a team can end up weighted towards strategists with too few people able to execute. Extensive requirements combined with limited exposure to how these specialist roles operate can also produce job specifications that no single candidate will ever satisfy, so part of our work was shaping the briefs themselves before any search began. This applies as much to digital marketing recruitment as it does to brand and content hires.
Our approach to marketing recruitment across a full team build
Supporting any client with talent requirements means investing time in listening to their challenges and objectives, understanding their service offering and workplace culture, and getting to know the teams and individuals that new joiners will be working alongside. After an initial discovery call and a face to face consultation, we mapped talent across each of the five hiring areas, working through our marketing recruitment specialism and drawing on our corporate communications network for the content and social appointments. The marketing technology brief drew on our data and digital transformation practice, where platform experience matters as much as marketing judgement. We reported market feedback throughout so the client stayed close to any shift in expectations on salary or availability, and we closed each search with a focused shortlist rather than a long list of approximate matches.
The outcome: five specialist marketing appointments delivered
Every one of the five roles was filled from a Hanson Search shortlist, contributing to a 100% conversion across the seven shortlists delivered to the client that year. Our approach to candidate and client experience, built on considered role descriptions, active listening on what matters to each candidate and constant availability to both sides, produced appointments that have held. The client reported strong satisfaction with the calibre of talent delivered and with the team culture developing as a result.
Hanson Search Group is a global talent consultancy providing executive search, recruitment and leadership advisory services. Built on more than twenty years of trusted relationships, we operate as a connected global platform of specialist practices with expert consultants embedded in key markets. Explore more about corporate communications practice in London here.
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