How to Hire and Retain Top Marketing Talent in the Washington, DC Area
There are few job markets in the country more competitive than the Washington, DC area. The region is rife with driven and motivated professionals looking to make their mark. When you’re hiring for marketing jobs in DC, you’ve got to bring your A-game to retain top talent.
Up your attraction game
It is rare for top candidates to beat down your door for a new job. After all, many of the most talented marketers are already employed. It is crucial that you retain internal marketing talent. Are you spending enough time branding your company as a great place to work? Promoting your organizational culture? Building relationships with passive candidates? If not, you may fall behind your competitors.
If you want to find dedicated, driven, talented people, then become a place where dedicated, driven and talented people thrive. This means building your employer brand online and reaching out to passive candidates in professional networking settings. Do this both online and through social media.
Streamline your hiring process
A thorough hiring process is critical to finding the right person for a marketing job. If your process is too long, and drawn out, or involves too many hoops, talented people will go elsewhere.
A thorough hiring process involves good resume screening, a prescreen interview, in-person interviews, perhaps one call-back, and finally, reference and background checks. It also involves good communication between the hiring team and the candidates, to keep them interested. You can hit every step without cutting corners if you commit to a timeline and stick to it. Remember, candidates are evaluating your company during the hiring process too. If they feel you are disorganized or disinterested them, they will lose interest. It’s also important to stay in touch after the candidate has accepted the offer to help with a smooth transition to their start date and ensure that they don’t get scared off by your silence.
Look beyond skills
The key to long-term employee retention actually lies in the hiring process. If you hire the right people from day one, you’re less likely to experience turnover. No one can ever predict the future and it’s impossible to keep every employee you ever hire. Nonetheless, you can still increase the chances of hiring a long-term employee if you get the interview process right.
While it is critical to evaluate candidates’ skills and knowledge, every interview should also involve behavioral questions. Have candidates to draw from examples in their past work history. How someone performed in the past is a good indicator of how they will perform in the future. It is also critical to evaluate cultural and values alignment in the hiring process. Cultural misalignment is one of the biggest sources of job dissatisfaction today. Candidates with the right personality to mesh with the team and who’s workstyle compliments the group are much more likely to be happy and have staying power.
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