The Secret to a Great Marketing Team: Hire Non Marketers

It’s that time of year when the business world is filled with new college graduates. Individuals with varying experiences who are hungry for a (paying) job fill your recruiter’s inbox resulting in virtual stacks of cover letters and resumes. Many Marketing leads look for candidates to fill their entry level openings with those applicants sporting marketing specific degrees. However, there are several other majors that are worth considering when building a robust team. Some of my favorites:

-Journalism: There may be no better asset in writing content, especially customer case studies, than a writer trained to be inquisitive. The angle at which they approach the writing assignment, the strength of their writing AND EDITING is bar none. I’ve leveraged journalist majors in everything from ghost writing blogs and articles to customer case studies and press releases.

-Business/Data Analytics: A person trained in performing and understanding analytics drives a Marketing Team to put out better content perhaps better than any other skilled contributor. Content needs to be put out based on hard numbers of what resonates with readers, not gut instinct and feelings. An analytics trained individual can improve team output in everything from the content calendar to targeted demand generation efforts by constantly bringing it back to the metrics.

-Entrepreneurship: While most of us think about this degree being a pre-requisite for all budding business owners, it’s actually a great composite of courses in everything from business strategy to consumer behavior and advertising. This wide range of courses can bring value to many different aspects of the team including persona research and development and inside sales.

-Technical Writing – if you’re an organization that puts out a good amount of thought leadership content to gain inbound leads, a team member with a technical writing background is an almost necessity. The writing of white papers, checklists and guides may be best done by the skills learned in a technical writing curriculum.

Business Management – this particular major, similar to entrepreneurship, covers a wide range of topics including the management of people, tasks and information systems. While these may seem like basic business skills, mastering those places these candidates in a strong place to be effective event managers.

Marketing majors make great candidates. This list doesn’t change that. But when you’re growing your team, don’t be afraid to look outside of traditional marketing degrees. The diverse skills and background these candidates bring to a team will help your organization be more robust, flexible and suited for growth.

Interested in growing your team, but don't know when or where to start? Contact me and we can compare your needs to your goals and position your organization for growth.