I get this question a lot:
I replied – The key is to market the job at the right places, making the job description as broad as you can, focusing on candidates with previous remote work experience & listing the right kind of job perks.
BUT it’s definitely hard to hire A+ talent for your team, especially if it’s a remote marketing team. Here is a running list of unique tactics to find your next top 1% remote employee.
1. Actively reach out to potential candidates (#1)
For this, you need to have a list of ideal companies and job titles. In the case of SEO, we realised our kinds of hires had job title as SEO Strategist (Spend 80% of the time there)
2. Get your job on as many remote job boards as possible (#2)
WeWorkRemotely is a no-brainer. A lot of other job boards syndicate jobs from WeWorkRemotely and therefore it gets a ton of visibility. Also, the volume and quality of remote candidates is much better than all other remote job boards.
Angelist and LinkedIn are also good places to source candidates.
There are other job boards for specific niches on micro-sites. Those are great to explore if you’re hiring for a specialist role. For example, for a SEO role, there might be a private job board in a closed door SEO community. You want to find a way to get your job in that community.
3. Ask on social media (pair it with a video)
Ask on social media (Twitter & LinkedIn work best) for someone so good that they won’t join your company. Often that’s the hire you want to make. Pair it with a video and talk to them human to human.
The video should be created by the person who this hire will be working with. Runs ads on your video/social media post if you want.
Examples:
4. Leverage your team’s professional network
- Employee advocacy – ask your team to share your hiring requirement with their networks.
5. Interview the 2nd best candidate who didn’t get hired
- Interview the 2nd best candidate who didn’t end up getting hired for the same role at another company – Know someone who was hiring for the same role as you a couple of months back? Get in touch with them and ask them if they can intro you to their second and third best candidates that they didn’t end up hiring.
- Ask your peers who were hiring for a similar role to introduce you to the second best candidate that they didn’t end up hiring but thought they were pretty good.
Example email:
| “Hey <name>, A couple of months back, you were looking for a Customer Lifecycle Marketer at <company> and it seems like you made the hire. Congrats! I’m hiring for a similar role (customer lifecycle marketing) and wanted to check if you can recommend me 2-3 of your final candidates that you didn’t end up hiring but thought they were great candidates? I’d love to talk to them and see if they’re a potential fit for our company! I’d be super grateful for your help and happy to sponsor a dinner for you if we end up hiring them.” |
6. Use content marketing to promote your job
- Get on a couple of relevant podcasts (if you’re looking for a marketing hire, get on a marketing podcast) and announce that you’re looking for a new hire.
- Create a recruitment landing page to attract your potential new hire. Some good examples in here.
- Write a blog post (if you have a popular blog) and share it with your email list. Writing a blog post to support a new job role and explain why you’re hiring for it. This is not a blog post about the job, but about the journey to why you got here and are hiring for the job role. Here’s an example from the guys at Drift – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/im-hiring-designer-marketing-team-drift-heres-pitch-dave-gerhardt/
Here’s a snapshot of a great candidate we got via one of my posts:
7. Always be in “hiring mode” and keep connecting with good people
I read this advice in a private group:
“I once heard a copy chief (someone who manages/hires freelance and in-house copywriters) say that she’s constantly building her network of copywriters.
That way, if one of her copywriters leaves – or freelancers becomes unavailable – she’s got a list of writers she’s already checked out, and she can contact one of them. It gives her continuity, rather than projects being undone for weeks as she tries to find a writer from scratch.
IMO, SAAS founders/CMOs should be doing the same thing. They should be building networks of marketers, copywriters, developers etc before they next need to hire someone for any of these roles.That way, when you need to hire, you don’t have to run a recruitment ad, you can reach out to your network.”
Some tips on hiring GREAT marketing employees
- You need to constantly keep looking for good candidates. It’s an ongoing process. Direct sourcing is your best bet for top candidates.
- Try to outsource stage 1 of the process to freelance recruiters so you can focus more time on filtering through the stage 2 applicants. Remote positions tend to get a LOT of applicants and it can take forever to sort through stage 1 applicants (>50% applicants are rejected right away).
- Whenever you come across good work by somebody – find their LinkedIn profile and connect with them. Examples – someone wrote a good case study and looks like a great copywriter? Connect with them on LinkedIn, Twitter or Email. Found a marketing director who’s shown good results? Just connect with them and keep following their journey. Like a site’s website design? Connect with their marketing designer.
- Start a conversation with them – if they’re looking to switch roles or willing to come onboard as an advisor. Sometimes they’d say that they’re too busy right now but get back to them 3-4 months later. Sometimes they’d be open to have a conversation and sometimes they’d be open to consult and a couple of months into consulting – they might actually want to start working full-time with you. It’s important to be in the radar of such good hires.
- Keep following up 😉
Some email templates I use (will add soon):
- To connect on LinkedIn
- To ask if they’re interested to hire
- To follow up