Want to hire a successful email marketer? Use this job description…
I have previously written about how frustrating job descriptions are to read and that I truly empathize with recruiters who have to try and find people (that don’t actually exist) to match a set of requirements. Now, please don’t get me wrong…I believe a tenured professional can have experience in a variety of channels, obviously. However, my concern has less to do with whether a person has the experience to satisfy various functions, in general, inasmuch as whether they can possibly execute this work, simultaneously.
As an example, I received a job description the other day (you can view part of it here) and I would love to know who it is that believes they can do all of these things and still be able to breathe? It is literally impossible for one person to do all of this work, effectively.
Lately, I have been thinking about email marketing, specifically, and felt that unlike the role I referenced above, these positions tend to be lacking specifics.
What is missing-
- Technology background — A strong email marketer understands the foundation on which a consumer marketing database has been built. They are not a developer and likely couldn’t program a database but they understand how it works, how data is fed (e.g. the difference between an API and a batch file).
- Tenure — I’ve seen text similar to this in several email marketing job descriptions at the manager or specialist level- “you’re an email marketer with roughly two years experience working on campaigns.” Two years in email marketing is nothing. At best it would align with someone at a coordinator level.
- Specific Needs — The same quote above, (“roughly two years experience…”) is also vague, lazy, and frankly, insulting to someone who has truly invested themselves into choosing email marketing as their career. Seriously? Would you hire your dentist because he has two years working with teeth?
But let’s also consider what is not needed-
- No coding requirements. Marketers are not developers.
- No design requirements. Marketers are not designers.
- No certification requirements. 99% of the certifications I see are ridiculous. Hubspot is one of the worst as much of what is taught in their training is inaccurate or based on hype, not data.
- No experience with a specific ESP (Email Service Provider). Give a chef the tools she needs and she’ll cook you a meal. It doesn’t matter the physical location of the kitchen. Same deal here. From deployment to analysis, it takes a (qualified) email marketer fifteen minutes to navigate through any system. Focus on experience as an email marketer, not which specific systems a candidate has used. Let’s also remember that the overwhelming majority of decision-makers who choose which systems a company will use are vehemently unqualified to do so. What is more important is to find an email marketer that can tell the company with which provider they should be using.
Email marketing is as much about data as it is marketing. It is a complicated job and to oversimplify it sets both your company and new hire, up for failure.
