It’s a brave, new world out there. According to Gartner, the average company’s marketing technology spending now outstrips advertising spending, and 81% of companies with more than $500 million revenue now employ a chief marketing technologist.
Martech professionals are in high demand, and finding the right talent for your team is a crucial component of your continual competitiveness and growth.
As a marketing leader, you need to keep up-to-date with any advances in martech skills and development, as these factors will shape your approach to martech recruiting.
So how can you determine what skills you’ll need to recruit for?
What martech skills does your marketing team need?
According to MarTech Advisor, there’s a few must-have martech skills you should look for:
- An understanding of both the strategy and execution of marketing, it’s not enough to just know the technical side, martech pros should also understand the wider marketing objectives and considerations
- Specialist knowledge of the martech landscape, and how leading martech tools work together and integrate into a functioning, productive stack
- A creative approach to technical problem-solving, while keeping in mind business needs
- The ability to manage data across multiple systems and tools, ensuring that all data is captured and analyzed effectively
- A voracious appetite for continual learning, which is essential in such a fast-moving sector
Erica Seidel is the founder of executive recruiting firm, The Connective Good, which sits at the intersection of marketing, tech, analytics, and data.
We recently chatted to Erica and she stated that martech recruiting has changed significantly as companies have matured their martech stack.
“A few years back, many companies needed somebody to manage email marketing, general marketing automation, or build their first martech stack. Now that that’s in place, they are looking at optimizing, scaling, and leading potentially bigger teams. That said, there are still many companies that are at that MarTech 101 level, where the sophistication needed is as much political as technical.”
What to look for in your next martech hire
When Erica is recruiting for a new executive martech role, she looks for three things:
- Aptitude: Can they do the job?
- Attitude: Does their personality and work approach fit well for the role and the company as a whole?
- Altitude: Can they handle the technical side while being strategic enough to talk to a CMO or CEO in the language they care about?
Interestingly, altitude is the area where many martech professionals fall down. Being able to speak to the cultural, financial, and organizational ripple effects of a martech decision is essential for any martech executive.
When it comes to the specific recruitment search, Erica has some good advice for hiring decision makers. “With martech, often the top candidate is someone who went to a school you’ve never heard of, worked in radio, was a programmer, started a business which either succeeded or failed, and then migrated to marketing and now is tying it all together.”
“There are umpteen different stories like that as you talk to marketing technologists – all these different paths to get where they are. I tell my clients to embrace the weird. They’re going to see career paths with zigs and zags that don’t necessarily make sense at first glance.”
How to ensure your martech pros evolve with the times
Once you’ve found the right martech pros for your team, it’s time to ensure they’re supported and encouraged to continually develop their skills.
In such a fast-moving industry, there’s no option to sit back and see what happens. Martech pros need to be constantly researching, learning, and trying new tools.
As a marketing leader, you can help them in this endeavor by encouraging them to sign up for development courses, conferences, and networking groups (and footing the bill).
You’re investing in their continual growth, and as such the continual growth of your organization’s martech prowess and capabilities. It’s worth it.
To read the full interview with executive martech recruiter, Erica Seidel, check out our blog; Marketing Masters: Erica Seidel on the State of Executive Recruiting in Martech.
