Jeremiah spoke with a Matt Raggio, a recruiter in specializing in hiring for social media startups, about how to hire a VP Marketing who understands the divide between marketing experience and social media. His piece asks the question:
What do you think, is it easy to find a VP of Marketing that gets both worlds of natives and immigrants and do an effective job?
My thoughts are that the impact of social media is big, but it shouldn't be treated as such. A VP Marketing shouldn't be any harder to find if they are implementing a social media strategy, anymore than if they are implementing an SEO strategy or a direct mail campaign. Asking the right questions and hiring the right people (including consultants), is the same across all industries, and if you have a candidate who is open-minded, flexible, and smart, you can coach them where they need to be (I actually just did that with a client).
I wrote it before, so let me reiterate - you don't get paid for your social media experience. You get paid for your experience in driving results, and increasingly, SEO and SEM marketers see the value in social media in their fields. That's what you look for. A background in marketing and a vision of where it's going is what I look for.
For many clients, there's a real danger in hiring a heavyweight in the social media space, because they by nature are excellent at self-promotion, and its too easy for them to move around. Jeremiah's a good example. He went from Hitachi to Podtech to Forrester, and if he wants to move somewhere else, plenty of people would hire him. He's good, and his blog shows us how good he is. It's doubtful he'll ever have to look for a job again.
This can work out really well for a company. Think Marshall Kirkpatrick, who moved from TechCrunch to Splashcast. I was blown away at how effective he was pushing their social media strategy, and when he left, he left a great platform. But I've also seen (and so have you) social media hires where the candidate really struggled to get buy-in, and then threw in the towel because the company wouldn't or couldn't change fast enough.
Hiring a VP Marketing who understands this (or who can be coached) is difficult, but it's not more difficult than any other search.
Back to Matt, he's not the only other recruiter I've heard of making social media placements, but he's only the second I've heard of specializing in social media recruiting. His geography makes it an easier sell, but I'm okay with that. He may bill more than me, but I'm the better brander.
