Marketing services covers a broad church — print management, marketing procurement, campaign fulfilment, digital asset management, multichannel operations — and the talent market for it is correspondingly nuanced. After placing candidates across this space for a number of years, we have identified five recurring mistakes that make hiring harder than it needs to be.
1. The brief is too broad
Marketing services roles often cover a wide range of responsibilities, and clients sometimes try to capture all of them in a single job brief. The result is a role that no experienced candidate fully matches, and a search that stalls because the bar keeps shifting. A tighter, more prioritised brief — what does success look like in year one? — nearly always produces a better outcome.
2. Sector experience is weighted too heavily
It is natural to want someone who has done exactly the same role at a direct competitor. But the pool of candidates with that precise background is small, and the best people often bring transferable experience from adjacent sectors. A client services director from a logistics-adjacent managed services background can often be as effective as one from a marketing print background — sometimes more so, if they bring fresh thinking.
3. The process is too slow
Strong candidates in marketing services are in demand. A four-stage interview process that takes eight weeks to complete will lose the best people. Consolidating stages, giving clear feedback at each step, and making decisions promptly are not signs of rashness — they are signs of a well-managed hiring process that respects candidates’ time.
4. The salary benchmark is out of date
Marketing services salaries have moved significantly in the last three years, and businesses working from pre-2022 benchmarks are frequently surprised by candidate expectations. A frank conversation with a sector recruiter before opening a brief is time well spent.
5. The counter-offer is used as a fallback
When the preferred candidate accepts a counter-offer from their current employer, the temptation is to assume the process failed. In most cases, the counter-offer will not hold — a significant proportion of candidates who accept them move on within twelve months. Having a plan B candidate — and staying in contact with them during the counter-offer period — is worthwhile.
