The Great Resignation has impacted businesses throughout the US for the last two years and more specifically, it has created a talent gap for many departments. Marketing teams in particular seem to be taking a big hit, mainly when it comes to specialty roles like digital marketing and marketing operations/technology.
One theory behind the Great Resignation is that it can be traced to the earlier part of the Covid-19 pandemic; workers reevaluated their current employment and determined if their role at said company was still in alignment with their needs and wants. Whether that was tied to company policies around PTO, working from home or their level of pay, workers started to seek out new opportunities and leave their sometimes long-held positions.
Whatever the impetus behind the Great Resignation, it has caused many business leaders to take pause and evaluate both how they retain and hire top talent.
Retaining and hiring marketers in the Great Resignation
Retention often means understanding what your current marketers want and need in their job to stay satisfied. It’s time to break down some of the old traditions of once a year, one-sided evaluations as an indicator of worker satisfaction. Do those evaluations fully articulate satisfaction anyway? Probably not. Internal surveys, informal check-ins and reverse evaluations can offer both qualitative and quantitative insight.
When hiring is the next feasible option, your company’s reputation, training and benefits are what will be of most import to the job seeker. If resourcing becomes more critical in terms of immediate need, there are additional options to consider and supplement until top talent can be brought in or even in lieu of onboarding new employees.
Use your company website as a talent pipeline
A company career page isn’t solely a place to post job descriptions, it also provides insight into the culture and values that a particular company holds. This can be articulated through mission statements and core values, but also pictures of team building trips and activities. First impressions hold true in many circumstances, but especially for potential candidates searching your site for a glimpse into your company’s culture and overall vibe.
Since review sites like Glassdoor.com exist and often display as a top search result, establishing your company’s image first can make a significant difference when it comes to reputation management and drawing in the top candidates you seek.
On this career page, within job descriptions themselves, you have another opportunity to snag the attention of top marketing candidates. Give the job description a broader appeal and provide a vision of what the position’s “day in the life” can be like.
Crafting a story within the job description can help job seekers envision themselves in that role with greater ease and get a better understanding of expectations and cross departmental functionalities. Here’s an example from the Sercante website.
Another way to capture the attention of the ideal marketing technology candidate is to include a pay range within the position description. This can make your company stand out and create good faith moving forward, especially for previously underpaid demographics. Pay transparency is the new unlimited PTO.
Train marketing talent from within
Instead of looking outside the company for the ideal marketing ops candidate, empower existing team members to learn something new by offering training opportunities.
Many “traditional” marketers can feel pigeonholed and often want to learn a new skill to expand their expertise. For example, a PR professional might be tired of writing press releases and want to delve into the social media world, or content writers might wonder how their email copy is being used within a particular marketing automation platform.
Giving your internal team members the time to learn on the clock can be a major confidence booster. Assign a task in Asana (or other project management tool) with 3-5 hours per week to team members open to learning new technology.
Allowing company time for learning and growth opportunities may help build toward a positive impression with your current employees. Salesforce Trailhead is one of the best platforms to turn marketing-minded individuals into marketing technology powerhouses. Likewise, HubSpot offers free marketing certifications. Take it one step further by paying for certification tests and/or tying certification completions to additional bonuses.
To supplement self-guided training, setting up a company catered Lunch & Learns results in a pro-learning environment and is a beneficial team building tool. When the training models are checked off and certificates produced, the next step is aligning team members on openings and evaluating opportunities for advancement in title and pay.
Offer solid benefits + competitive pay to stand out
Competitive pay will often be the number one indicator of a company’s ability to obtain top talent. In addition to pay though, a generous and even unique benefits package can help your company stand out among competitors.
The standard (or expected) benefits such as a tech stipend, retirement investment account, healthcare and PTO are now considered the bare minimum. Here are additional benefits that businesses have recently started offering:
- Fitness reimbursement
- eBook subscriptions
- At home office stipend
- Meditation app subscriptions
- Nap pods
- Food delivery/meal prep service discounts
- Unlimited or extra PTO
As family structures change, more forward-thinking companies are aligning to different parental leave benefits or PTO for recent adoptions or foster care placement. Perhaps some of the more sought after benefits aren’t just tangible, they are about breaking down the very structure of how folks are seeking to work such as 100% remote workplaces or even 4-day work weeks.
Leverage external resource for team expansion
So you’ve tackled your reputation, finessed the job descriptions and looked internally for resources but have a gap and have an immediate resource need. After all those emails won’t trigger themselves and that landing page won’t magically layout on its own. For some companies, the immediate need for marketing technology individuals can hold up business processes and slow down the marketing to sales pipeline if not fulfilled.
So who can you turn to when looking to supplement your internal team? This is where hiring managers can tap into freelance marketing professionals or consultant agencies. Agencies, like Sercante can act as an extension of the team, function on a project basis lending expertise or fill in for someone on health leave. Sometimes you can even have a fully trained team but too many projects that are all priorities. This is where the external support can assist with minimal ramp-up time.
The Sercante motto is we make marketers wildly successful with the Salesforce platform. This means we share our expertise for all things automation and Sales Cloud and training teams to use the tools themselves.
Looking toward the Great Resignation bright side
One of the benefits of the Great Resignation is opportunity for realignment both inside companies and for the new job seeker.
The last two years have shown us that workers want to feel valued and seen for their contributions and companies are starting to see the importance of finding the right talent or resources to assist with marketing technology projects.
Are you looking to become or obtain top marketing talent within the Salesforce ecosystem? Feel free to check out the Pardot & Marketing Cloud Job Hub.
