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How to Speed Up the Process to Find and Hire Top Content Marketing Talent

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Half the battle is won. You have approval to add a new content marketing position to your team. Now you just need to find and hire the right candidate – in a red-hot market for people with the right skills – before another company snaps them up. Not a simple problem.

Why? Is there really that much competition for top talent? Yes. In a survey from The Creative Group, creative and marketing professionals with hiring authority named “content creation and content marketing” as one of the top three technical skills lacking on their teams.

Content creation and #contentmarketing are top tech skills missing from #marketing teams via @CreativeGroup. Click To Tweet

It’s a stat that adds up to a whole lot of hiring managers looking for the same talent that you are. Luckily, there’s a straightforward way to put your company at the front of the pack: Speed up your hiring process.

Top talent hates to wait

Candidates get frustrated by a slow hiring process. In a survey we did at Robert Half (parent company of The Creative Group), 39% of workers said they lose interest and pursue other openings when companies drag their feet when hiring.

But how slow is too slow? The survey also shows that 39% of workers said a hiring process – from the first interview to when an offer is extended – lasting seven to 14 days is too long.

Even worse, 32% of workers in the same survey said a slow hiring process makes them question a firm’s ability to make other decisions. Now your best candidates wonder if you’re the kind of company that can’t adjust course based on the latest content marketing trends. Or if it’s going to take a year to choose a new social media tool for the team. Those probably aren’t the first impressions you want to make.

A slow hiring process makes 32% of workers question the firm’s ability to make other decisions. @RobertHalf Click To Tweet

Nail down your hiring process

You need to move faster, but how do you do that? One step is to create a concise hiring plan. Great content marketers spend the time it takes to master governance and workflow for a company’s content, and you should do the same when adding to your team. Start by outlining the general system or guidelines around hiring at your company. Then map it in a step-by-step workflow.

You need to create a concise #hiring plan to speed up the #hiring process, says @DianeDomeyer. Click To Tweet

Catalog the roles and responsibilities related to each step. How do you get approval for opening a position? Who needs to sign off? What about the job description? And salary range? Who owns recruiting? And sorting through resumes? Keep going until you document all the way through an accepted offer.

Creating these steps helps you navigate the process, but it also may reveal places where you can streamline or combine steps to gain speed. Challenge your partner in human resources to shrink the window for finding and accepting applicants. Narrow the list of people who interview candidates. Set time frames and deadlines for each step.

In short, run hiring like any other project that crosses your desk.

Build consensus early and often

In an enterprise environment, nothing slows down hiring like red tape and internal politics. Sidestep both by gathering input and building consensus throughout the process.

Ask for feedback — from colleagues and collaborators in other departments — before you write that job description. Make sure you double-check any approvals on the position, salary, and benefits. And send updates to the team when you hit milestones in the process, such as “job description published” or “three interviews scheduled.”

It’s also key to build consensus around going fast. Tell everyone why speed is important by sharing some of those stats above. Then slowly build excitement around how going faster will help you snag the best talent. Sharing your strategy early helps you nudge everyone in the hiring process to keep things moving when you hit the crucial interview stage.

Move faster from interview to offer

In that same Robert Half survey, more than half of workers say the most frustrating part of the job hunt is that maddening stretch of silence between the interview and offer. Nearly 25% of candidates say they lose interest if they don’t hear back within a week after the interview, and 46% lose interest without an update within one to two weeks of the interview.

Shrink your time-to-offer with careful planning. Schedule interviews with top candidates within a two- or three-day period, ensuring that key hiring decision-makers can meet the candidate. Then, once everyone has met the prospective employee, plan a meeting so your team can give its input. Set the expectation that you’ll use that time to choose a top candidate and make a goal to extend an offer within five business days of the final interview.

Shrink your time-to-offer for a top #contentmarketing candidate with careful planning, says @DianeDomeyer. Click To Tweet

In a competitive job market, hitting the gas is one of the best strategies for landing the best employees. While you shouldn’t move so quickly you fail to properly vet any candidate, you still want to move into the fast lane if you expect to win the race for top content marketing talent.

Do you subscribe to the CMI daily newsletter or weekly digest? It can be a helpful resource to expand your skills even further and grow your career in a world with too few content marketer candidates. Sign up today. 

Cover image by Viktor Hanacek via picjumbo