Locating staff with the right skills and attitude is crucial. Mark Nicholson from Digital UK talks to Marketing Week about Gekko’s involvement in delivering an outsourced team of trainers.
Marketing Week (MW): How hard is it to find good people for your marketing teams? How do you go about this?
Mark Nicholson (MN): We recruited a team of ambassadors to broadcast the Digital UK message to retailers and train their staff on the switchover. Finding candidates of the right calibre in London was very time-consuming.
The flexibility required of such a team working in different regions convinced us to outsource the recruitment and management to field marketing and training specialist Gekko.
MW: There is a trend for marketers to look outside their industry to find people, including from the data or digital sector. Is this something you are doing?
MN: When recruiting for field marketers for Digital UK, there is less of a need for candidates to have a traditional marketing background. Face-to-face roles are best suited to enthusiastic people who can quickly develop strong relationships.
MW: What is the benefit of hiring someone from a technical background into a marketing role, or vice-versa?
MN: While hiring someone with a technical understanding of digital TV would mean a quicker induction process, personal skills are more important. Generally, the technical knowledge required to perform the role can be learnt. It is far more difficult for someone to adopt or develop new communications skills.
MW: Can you give an example of the best internal training course you have run and explain why it was useful?
MN: The most beneficial course run internally for the Digital UK team by Gekko has been the ‘powerful presence’ training.
The course was designed to provide the team with enhanced communication and relationship development skills.
MW: What trends do you see happening in the recruitment of marketers in the coming years?
MN: When outsourcing the recruitment of field marketers, brands will be more involved in staff selection because successful applicants do have a significant impact on a brand’s personality.
Full article available:
http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/trends/finding-the-brightest-and-the-very-best/4001847.article
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