Time to hand over the reins…
It was late August when this employer contacted us requesting help for them to recruit their first Digital Marketing Manager.
Their back story is an appealing recruitment scenario. To date, all digital marketing activity had been done by agencies who were being managed by an already busy Creative Director, Alex. It seemed the right time to take the reins inhouse, hiring an experienced Digital Marketing Manager to own and drive the brand’s online growth. With the anticipated push being on social media, it was important the right hire brought a strong track record in social campaign creation and strategy and could strategically manage the agency relationship.
It was equally important that hire was steeped in creativity and storytelling. This global brand is already well established and has unique exquisite digital assets from one of the best selling art photographers, David Yarrow. Those assets also included a successful podcast and new YouTube channel which just added to the hugely appealing components for any ambitious digital marketer to work with.
Consulting with Alex, the Hiring Manager, we refined the job description to be a more realistic and yet appealing job opportunity. We also rephrased it, better highlighting the skills and type of person we’d be looking for. At the same time, I busied myself reaching out to my own network; using my deep industry knowledge to target appropriate people. I’d prescreen them and if appropriate sell them the opportunity.
Just one week since we’d started the project I approached the successful candidate. Then the subsequent weeks were spent going through the interview process and the Hiring Manager agreeing we’d found him the perfect applicant. In total, he only saw three CV’s from us.
“Barely a day went by when [Natashsa’s] persistence and care were not on full display. Thanks again, we are very excited by our new recruit and only saw 3 people – such was the efficiency and service provided” -Alex, Creative Director at David Yarrow Photography
I won’t tell you how many people I’d contacted in that first week for this job but let’s leave it as ‘quite a few.’ Lots of people look like they might be right for a job but it’s only drawing on years of interviews and a lot of industry know-how that you can read between the lines in those initial calls and shortcut the selection process. That’s the job of the recruiter, to take away the faff for employers. The pain of processing hundreds of CV’s and working their way through a lot of interviews to find our gem.
It’s interesting to note, our successful candidate didn’t actually apply for the job. I headhunted him. It just goes to show, even though recruiters run extensive databases, good people don’t just sit around waiting to be found. When hiring, you need to use both database and headhunting activity to cover the market and find the right people.
From my selection the successful digital marketer was Chris. He is superb and stood out from the rest, clearly, he thought I was too as he wrote in his feedback that I was…
“…great to work with through this process. We connected on LinkedIn first and from there had a few calls discussing optimising my CV and then moved on to the interview process” –Chris, Head of Digital Marketing at David Yarrow.
It turned out he’s engaging, intelligent and clearly good at what he does, let alone brought a great pedigree of experience. His CV even read pretty well (and bear in mind CV writing is one of my hang-ups, that a CV should be as good as the person IRL). We only made a couple of tweaks here and there and overall he definitely lived up to his CV in the subsequent interviews!
Like most good job seekers, Chris was still employed elsewhere, so arranging interviews took a bit of negotiation but it helped with everyone being a little bit flexible. Alex then set Chris a task as part of the interview process where Chris got the chance to go away and pull together a great response and deliver it back to the team. I love this. Doing this as part of the interview process gave Alex a chance to see some of the skills, knowledge and flair not so easily demonstrated in a chat but also offers a chance to scrutinise Chris’s style of communication.
In the background through all of this, there was a lot of back and forth both pre and post interviews. “Natasha goes above and beyond when it comes to communication and checking in. Every part went smoothly. I am very pleased with how the process went and would definitely recommend using clockworkTalent.” –Chris, Head of Digital Marketing at David Yarrow.
I confess I did get to see what Chris submitted in response to the task. It really was, quite simply, great. At this point, I knew with great confidence clockworkTalent’s 100% recruitment guarantee would yet again be safe!
What people don’t realise (or forget) is that there is a lot of handholding through the recruitment process. Not just through the interviews but also through resignation and then even through a notice and probation period. On this occasion, it was a long time before Chris got to start in his new role but it’s here now and having checked in he’s loving finally being able to join the team and get stuck in.
For me, it’s been another great project, helping a brand recruit its first Digital Marketing professional. If you have a keen eye for detail you’ll have noticed at the beginning of this article I said David Yarrow Photography was looking to hire a ‘Digital Marketing Manager’ but you’ll see Chris is the ‘Head of Digital Marketing’. This pre-employment promotion came during the course of the interview process, where Chris displayed exceptional calibre, quality and potential that the decision was made to upgrade the role in advance of Chris joining. Incredible stuff, congratulations, Chris!
Read about our other recruitment projects:
⭐ Learning with Experts
⭐ Builtvisible
⭐ Urban Industry
⭐ Receptional
If, like David Yarrow Photography, your goal is to hire an experienced marketing professional to support your businesses marketing activity or to help you get started online, get in touch by emailing hiring@clockworktalent.com.
