‘Round peg, round hole’: Recruiters on the ‘indecision’ impacting the marketing job search

When recruitment intent hit a four-year low in April, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to the vast number of marketers navigating challenging job searches.  

Last month, more than a fifth (22.4%) of marketers said they expected marketing job cuts at their brands in the following quarter, according to exclusive IPA Bellwether data for Marketing Week.  

Speaking to marketers, many are facing persistent challenges: ghosting, lengthy interview processes, indecision and struggling to cut through with recruiters and hiring managers.  

On the recruiter side, many are inundated with high applicant volumes and indecisiveness from brands when it comes to actually making the hire.  

It’s all part of the ongoing problems with marketing recruitment charted by Marketing Week. Brands have had their budgets cut, with marketing often the first line to be questioned. Marketers who are in role aren’t moving on as they might have in the past, out of worry the job market is as bad as they fear. Many people find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place.  

We caught up with recruiters and headhunters to see how the market is faring this summer, and whether there are green shoots emerging.  

More senior searches?

“The quantity of opportunities is definitely up, unequivocally, there are more senior searches out there,” says Rowan Fisk, founder of GrowthKind, a senior level marketing recruitment company and former partner at 3Search.

It’s also been a busier than usual August, he adds, perhaps because of the “always on” nature of work today. However, Fisk cautions brands are taking a long time to make decisions.

“They are very uncertain about when to hire, what to hire,” says Fisk. “There’s a lot of good talent and sometimes that can really force indecision.” 

In other words, what if there’s a better option than the person in front of you?  

For any senior marketer looking to hire into their team, they need to “spend the time up front” to really understand what they’re looking for, says Fisk, so they can “operate with clarity and vision”, and then move quickly.  

[Businesses] want creatives in performance, whereas five years ago you would never have a creative in a performance role.

Jodie Clayton, Major Players

There’s a difference between recruiting for growth and recruiting to fill vacant roles. Founder of marketing and sales recruitment company Marvel FMCG, Rich Howell, is seeing this play out.

“They’re not coming to us and going: ‘Here’s 18 new roles.’ That’s very rare,” he explains. 

When senior roles do get advertised, the number of applicants reflects how many people are looking for work.  

“The moment a senior role comes up, even if it’s a head of, the amount of applications you get – because there are so many people actively looking – is huge,” says Jodie Clayton, head of permanent recruitment at Major Players.  

For each job, she’s receiving anything between 300 and 1,200 applications. Clayton included her phone number to field any questions from candidates when she was recruiting a head of role earlier this year – a move she’s had to stop following non-stop calls.  

This isn’t to suggest the majority of marketers are doing anything wrong in their searches. Candidates often think their CV is the issue.

“Ultimately, nine times out of 10 there isn’t anything wrong with it at all. It is just, there isn’t the volume of roles, particularly at a senior level, that you would like or that you would normally have,” says Clayton.  

She echoes Fisk’s sentiment on indecision: “If someone has a niggle, they don’t take a chance anymore. They are just like: ‘No, we’re not going to risk it.’”  

Short-term hires

The rise of the fractional CMO has been fast over the last two years, tallying with the difficult job market and marketers realising they don’t need to be full time at one brand to build a successful career.  

The rise of the role aligns with the caution brands have now for hiring permanent marketing leaders.

“One of the reasons why the fractional market has been doing very well over the last couple of weeks and months is that people in uncertain times like to fall back on short-term or part-time solutions,” says Fisk.  

If someone has a niggle, they don’t take a chance anymore. They are just like: ‘No, we’re not going to risk it.’

Rowan Fisk, GrowthKind

While taking on freelance work, many marketers are using the downtime in their careers to retrain, get qualifications or hire coaches, says Howell, where they can afford to.

“They’re using the opportunity to upskill themselves and better themselves,” he says.  

Some brands are open to hiring a marketer from a different sector background, because they don’t want to recruit someone running marketing at a similar type of brand, suggests Howell. He’s seen some interesting sector switching recently, particularly marketers moving into fintech and B2B.  

The majority of brands want “round peg, round hole”, says Clayton.

“At the moment, it is a case of the volume of people looking,” she adds. 

Social media and digital roles are up

While the job search for marketers has been rough for the last two years, there are areas where it’s buoyant. More brands are putting their hiring budgets into social media and digital roles.  

This approach suggests the “penny has dropped” for companies which see they can build a brand through social media, says Howell.  

Major Players typically attracts brands in the scaleup, direct-to-consumer space, but not exclusively. 

“Everything that we’re getting through is specialist and is in particular areas,” says Clayton.

Key hiring areas are digital, performance, CRM, paid media and paid and organic social media. It’s the combination of this type of work being measurable and proving ROI, but also lots of roles today are combining creative and brand with digital platforms.  

‘A divergent market’: How recruitment pressures are impacting the job market 

Brands keen to elevate their social media presence through effective content are looking to marketers with a combination of brand marketing experience and the ability to grow online. While it may be daunting to “traditional” and generalist marketers, there is an opportunity for something different.  

“[Businesses] want creatives in performance, whereas five years ago you would never have a creative in a performance role,” says Clayton.  

Fact is, the marketing industry isn’t short of talent, but it is short of jobs. Because of the lack of roles, particularly at the senior end, “the attrition rate hasn’t been there,” says Clayton.

“People haven’t moved,” she explains. 

With high levels of frustration among candidates, recruiters should be actively supporting and helping people, especially when they are struggling with their mental health and financial responsibilities, says Howell.

Support starts with providing good feedback and giving good explanation to why they aren’t progressing, he says. 

“Businesses and recruitment companies have got a real duty of care to candidates in this current climate,” Howell insists.