It is not you. It is the industry. So often, I find companies trying to hire a Graphic Designer -- Social Media Manager -- Paid Advertising Specialist -- for this magical all-in-one position. For a moment, let's just imagine The Beatles were made up of just Paul McCartney. Imagine Paul McCartney trying to play every single instrument in a live show. Doesn't really work, right? He was a lot more successful as a member of a band just in general. I truly question if companies grasp that they are trying to hire three full-time positions in one. I also wonder if they grasp that this person does not exist because it is impossible to play every instrument at one time, as per the above comparison. I do not even know of someone who can do all three of those things in a single day -- day in and day out. I do not think that it is even mentally or physically healthy for one person to try and do that every day. Burnout will happen immediately, and the quality of work will suffer tremendously. There is hardly anyone out there who has the ability to do all three of those things at equally high levels. Some people can do a little bit of this and a little bit of that while being really good at one of those things. This is why you hire a senior project manager, first, who has knowledge in all those digital media spaces, who you can then build a team around. That's how it should be done. #digitalmarketing #graphicdesign #hiringprocess #hiringmanagers #paidmarketing #marketingdigital
Not to mention the entry-level copywriter positions that need to have 10 years of experience in the non-flavored carbonated beverage industry of Zimbabwe. Seriously, who the heck is requiring these stupidly specific job requirements?
Very refreshing post! I never expected to see anyone post about this. I often use the analogy of building a house, you don't want your architect playing an electrician or your plumber pouring concrete. I think you can't blame the companies though. The companies rely on us to educate and guide them in all things digital. When you have mass-produced marketeers playing graphic designer with Canva, and playing web developer with WordPress, this is the result. We're now at a point where most companies think it's normal for a "marketeer" to professionally perform all these kinds of specialized professions. It's up to us to educate the companies on how these departments are supposed to be run and constructed. From the point of view of a company, however, it's much more cost-efficient to hire one marketeer for all these tasks instead of 3 separate professionals. They either don't understand, or care about the loss in quality. So there's that problem as well 🤣 Id say one of the good things about this situation is that there's less competition for true professionals with high-quality output of work. Tbh its mindblowing to see the number of multi-million dollar companies with the digital presence of a gas-station
It’s a common challenge for client-side roles. Agencies hire specialists because they understand the nuance of a designer versus UX strategist versus art director versus creative director. Clients don’t get that as they are not specialists themselves, they are mostly marketing generalists. The two most likely places to find unicorn needs are small companies and small in-house marketing teams.
Louder for the people in the back! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to explain that content writing is a vastly different skill set that videography. (Shocking, right?)
I've seen this plus an event coordinator's responsibilities tacked on as well.
YES! So true. Especially in small business. I think this is hard when you're talking about businesses with less than 20 employees... it's hard to justify 3 or 4 positions, but there is a cost in terms of the quality of what your company can produce when one employee is expected to be the magician marketer who can do every aspect of marketing, and all at once.
This has always been my frustration with all marketing jobs. As I added to my team, I made sure to design roles specific to what was needed. I did not want to continue down the path of throwing everything into one job.
Marketing Director
8moThis largely rings true for me and my career experiences. But, for a small company, I am not convinced that social media management, graphic design, paid ad work, and higher level strategic oversight all constitute full time roles. I believe a marketer in a small company needs to have cross functional skills so that the company is not forced to hire four people to tackle a workload that will very rarely be able to fill all of their schedules for 40 hours a week. That being said, having only one marketing employee siloed with no support and asked to cover all of these disciplines can definitely lead to frustration, burnout, and hard-capped output. Buy-in and participation in marketing initiatives from non-marketing departments can go pretty far to remedy this. I've pushed content generation initiatives out to the sales people on the front lines. Accounting can be tasked with some tracking and reporting pieces of the marketing puzzle. Executives can participate in higher-level goal creation and tracking. There are ways to make it work but it would certainly help if hiring managers understood to enormity of this ask.