There’s been some thawing in the job market and companies have slowly been refilling the marketing positions they had to cut during the recession.  Here’s an overview of the different phases I’ve seen over the last three quarters and what we can expect for this quarter:

The First Phase: “Intent To Hire”  
A positive shift in the intent  to hire--but the inability of companies to actually do it because they were recruiting for  “The Unicorn”  (see my blog post from Q4).  Basic summary: Companies took six job descriptions, turned them into one and then didn’t fund the position with the appropriate salary.

Enter Phase Two: “The Evaluation”
In the next phase companies acknowledge  that unicorns don’t exist.  They get smart about what the company truly needs from the marketing function.  They ask the question “What are the business goals and how does marketing support that?”.  A deep dive into the job description, not just a cut and paste from past descriptions from five years ago, but an evaluation of what new skills and experiences are required.  This is a great exercise with lots of bargaining about the type of person that is needed--what skills are critical, what industry experience required, what personality traits?  The outcome is a realistic job description that supports the business objectives and allocates the appropriate level of compensation.

Phase Three: “Let’s Hire!”
I think the majority of companies that intend to hire have moved to this phase.  It’s in the early stages, however, meaning the active recruiting for these positions is just beginning. Recruiting will be a challenge because it’s not business as usual.  Many of the positions have never existed in the form they are now.  Evaluating the talent against the criteria is new to everyone.  Candidates have to be extremely adept at homing in on the specifics of the job spec, and those who are influencing the hiring decision have to be extraordinarily disciplined in their approach to evaluating candidates based on the new reality.

Phase Three is going to have its difficulties.  Many positions will need fine tuning as the interviews take place.  There will be adjustments to the roles based on the talent, some business objectives will shift, and others will revert back to their old ways.  All of these things will unfortunately cause hiring to take longer than usual, but that’s to be expected. All things considered, this is the best hiring climate we’ve seen in a long, long time.