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MCKINLEY’S MANTRAS
What we’ve learned over 20
years of recruiting highly
skilled marketing talent.
1995 to 2015
“During interviews I often ask questions
solely to understand someone's thought
process and logic. I'm a people person and
am in the people business. Having the right
experience is only a part of what's required of
a candidate in our business.”
~Goldy Kamali, CEO, FedScoop
A person is not a resume.
Michelle Boggs, President,
CEO and Co-Founder
I often hear the following
from McKinley’s new clients:
“I don’t know why I can’t find
a good candidate for this job
opening! I’ve been sorting
through hundreds of resumes,
but I just can’t find the right
person.”
This statement reveals a
fundamental problem of the
traditional hiring process:
resumes are not people.
Resumes can tell us a great
deal about a candidate, but
to truly know if someone
will be a good fit for your
organization, you have to go
beyond the resume. You have
to understand their story.
When I co-founded McKinley
twenty years ago, I knew that
recruiting needed to become
more personalized. While we
were still a few years away
from the rapid-fire pace of
online job applications, I
saw the speed of business
accelerating and the art of
recruitment being lost in
the process. So I developed
a candidate vetting process
that we still use today: each
allows us to fully understand
the strengths of each
candidate: what motivates
them, what has propelled
their careers, and, most
importantly, how and why
the candidate’s behaviors and
decisions fueled—or slowed—
his or her accomplishments.
Twenty years later, our unique
“...to truly know if someone will be
a good fit for your organization, you
have to go beyond the resume. You
have to understand their story.”
McKinley candidate meets
with at least three people
within our organization,
and we make sure that each
candidate is interviewed by
people from several different
business units. This process
Copyright © 2015 McKinley Marketing Partners
recruiting process—and the
underlying principle that a
resume is not a person—is
what helps us find the best
marketing talent for our
clients, again and again.
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“The first thing to look for when searching for a
great employee is somebody with a personality that
fits with your company culture. Most skills can be
learned, but it is difficult to train people on their
personality. If you can find people who are fun,
friendly, caring and love helping others, you are on to
a winner.”
~Sir Richard Branson, CEO, Virgin Airlines
Culture fit isn’t secondary.
Susie Aubuchon, SVP, Client Services
“Culture fit” used to be a subject that was
breeched only at the end of a job interview—
relegated to a category of “additional questions.”
An interviewer would ask a candidate, “So,
what do you like to do in your spare time?” or
a candidate would ask “What’s the working
environment like here?” and both parties would
feel that they’d gauged the cultural fit question to
a satisfactory degree.
I’ve been with McKinley for more than a decade,
and I’ve learned that cultural fit should never be
a secondary consideration. As “company culture”
has entered into the everyday language of
recruiters and hiring managers, it’s become clear
that an employee who fits well into the company
culture actually performs better. A study
conducted by RedPeg, a company that studies
corporate culture, found that employees who
were identified as a good cultural fit are nearly
20 percent more likely to be a top performer
within an organization. This is especially true in
marketing. When creativity, collaboration, and
innovation are essential for success, a culture
conflict can be distracting and damaging to
progress.
Copyright © 2015 McKinley Marketing Partners
Companies have also realized employees—and
the internal culture they create—are an extension
of their brand. Before social media, internal
culture truly existed in an enclosed bubble. But
social media has erased this boundary. Now a
company’s employees are public representatives
of their brands, and the culture they foster
and project will directly affect the clients and
employees the company attracts.
McKinley’s consultative recruiting approach
enables us to fully understand the culture of each
of our clients. We spend time in their offices and
“Employees who are
identified as a good
cultural fit are nearly 20
percent more likely to be a
top performer.”
get to know their people before we send over
any potential candidates. It’s one of the most
important parts of our engagement with clients.
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Leverage employees’
passions to maximize
marketing strategies.
Victoria Flood, Director, Business Development
I work with clients in a number of fields—from hospitality
to government contractors to nonprofits. While each client
has industry-specific marketing objectives, companies
across industries are constantly asking themselves the
same questions: Which marketing efforts will deliver the
most ROI? How can I do more with less? How can I avoid
the disruptions and inefficiencies caused by employee
turnover?
My answer is always this: make sure that you create an
environment for marketers that fosters creativity and
“Create an environment for
marketers that fosters creativity
and innovation.”
innovation. Hire a team with diverse skill sets. Discourage
people from working in silos. Align individual strengths
with specific initiatives, and, when appropriate, let your
team’s passions, interests, and ambitions influence your
marketing approach.
Let your marketing team generate content (blog posts,
white papers, etc.) or learn a new skill via a marketing
campaign (social media, a new email platform, etc.). You’ll
see a higher ROI because employees will put more effort
into marketing strategies that inspire them. You’ll do
more with less because you’ll be leveraging your team’s
strengths, not dodging their weaknesses. And you’ll
minimize employee turnover by letting employees do work
that is truly meaningful to them.
Your team’s passion is your best resource for authentic
content and innovative strategies. Don’t ignore this asset.
Copyright © 2015 McKinley Marketing Partners
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Identify the problem
you’re trying to solve,
then find the person
you need to solve it.
About McKinley
McKinley works with companies
and organizations of all sizes to find
the perfect marketing resource for
their team. Our unique process goes
beyond the traditional interview
and enables us to fully understand
our candidates’ capabilities,
personalities, and work styles,
ensuring that they will exceed our
clients’ expectations and fit into our
clients’ company culture.
McKinley maintains a qualified
bench of fully vetted marketing
experts who are ready to fill roles
across various industries and
functions – from communications
to digital marketing to project
management – for however long
they’re needed. Our own marketing
expertise — combined with our
carefully refined recruiting process
– helps us deliver specialized
marketing talent quickly.
Christopher McKinley, Senior Director,
Business Development
Clients often come to McKinley when they need to fill a
position—fast. When you lose a critical person on your
team, the vacancy itself seems like the problem. But I
always start by asking my clients, “What problem are
you trying to solve? What goal are you trying to reach?
What marketing objective are you trying to complete?”
Framing the hiring need this way—focusing on what skill
set and personality traits you need to solve a specific
problem, as opposed to evaluating candidates to see how
their skill set could be worked into the organization—is
incredibly empowering. It helps our clients take a step
back and concentrate on the skill set they really need,
instead of focusing on simply finding a replica of the
person they’ve lost or a resume with bullet points that
are an exact match of the job description.
But identifying the root problem is easier said than
done. This is when an outside perspective becomes truly
valuable. McKinley works with our clients to complete
a holistic analysis of their marketing team—what are
their objectives, what does their collective skill set and
soft-skill set encompass—and then develop a long-term
roadmap for maximizing their marketing talent base.
Just like a marketing campaign, building a marketing
team should be considered a strategic process—with
clear objectives, milestones, and KPIs.
Copyright © 2015 McKinley Marketing Partners
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“Failure comes part and parcel with invention. On the surface, hiring people who have
failed may not seem logical, but failing big
teaches people how to address problems and
take the right path the next time around.”
~Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon
Marketers will become
more influential in overall
Business Strategy
(so hire wisely).
Martin Hendershot, Director, Client Services
While marketing trends have changed, a solid understanding
of traditional marketing will always be necessary for successful
marketing teams. McKinley’s 2015 Marketing Hiring Trends
survey found that the most companies are looking for candidates
with expertise in marketing strategy and project management
as well as digital marketing. However, companies reported that
their future hiring choices would focus on digital expertise: digital
marketing, content marketing, and data analysis.
Copyright © 2015 McKinley Marketing Partners
The increased demand for
digital skills reflects marketers’
(and company executives’)
growing confidence in the value
of digital marketing strategies,
most likely because it is now
easier to measure the success
of digital marketing efforts.
Unlike many offline marketing
tactics, digital marketing
provides data and analytics
about customer engagement,
enabling marketers to measure
ROI. SiteCore’s 2014 report on
the digital marketing landscape
found that 80 percent of
surveyed organizations
reported tracking ROI of digital
marketing activities.
However, with great data
comes great responsibility.
Marketers are increasingly
influential in major business
decisions. Gartner’s 2014
study of digital marketing
budgets found that 42 percent
of all marketers say that they
participate in strategic planning
and investment decisions that
shape the business.
Because digital marketing
provides marketers with the
tools and data they need to
actively participate in directing
business objectives, companies
must recruit marketers who can
transform the insights gleaned
from data and analytics into
successful long-term strategies.
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McKinley works with you to find the perfect resource for your team – for however
long they are needed. With a dedicated McKinley team member working to
support your needs and a talented “bench” of vetted marketing talent at-theready, we can quickly provide professionals who match our clients’ marketing
needs and company culture. If a qualified candidate is available, the turnaround
time can be 24 hours or less.
Visit www.mckinleymarketingpartners.com for more details about the talent
network we have built.
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