A Complete Guide on How to Hire a Growth Marketer

Each enterprise, big or small, aims for growth. This is why growth marketers are becoming more and more in demand. In the past year alone (October 2022 vs October 2021), Google Trends show that there has been a 360% increase in searches for growth marketing managers. 

Thus, we give companies a complete guide on how to hire a growth marketer, right from the candidate search up to the vetting. 

How to ⁠find ideal growth marketing candidates?

Stalk growth leads within companies you admire

There’s always that company with marketing campaigns we wish we came up with. If you have a certain marketing team you look up to and respect, especially in terms of their multi-channel campaigns, then it’s worth looking into their growth marketers or similar roles. 

Find former Founders

According to TechCrunch, growth marketers are often former Founders. They make a good point – a lot of Founders have relevant growth experience prior to their startups. 

Moreover, Founders and growth marketers both have a holistic and multi-disciplinary role that cares about acquisition, retention, conversion, revenue, and even messaging. They work across the board from branding to product. 

Look into your competitors 

It makes sense to look into your competitors’ growth marketers since they’ll have an edge in the know-how of your industry. They’d be well-versed enough to know how competitive the industry is, and how you could possibly one-up your competitors. 

Let us help you

If all else fails, there are also platforms that help you find the candidates you need. 

In our team’s case, we rigorously screen our candidates in order to find one who could meet the client’s required skill sets. Below is our screening and interview process for good candidates:

1. Skills & experience screening
2. Technical interview
3. Live interview
4. Pilot project
5. Sustained performance

Match with a growth marketer within 27-72 hours.

How do I get good growth marketing candidates to apply?

Create a job description that stands out 

According to LinkedIn, it could be good news that 99% of job descriptions are long and boring because it would be easier to stand out with a compelling job description among a sea of boring ones.

Growth marketers are seasoned professionals, and they probably get offers here and there. A stellar job description that stands out is one that is simple, concise, personalized, and candidate-centric yet authentic enough to give them a snapshot of who you are. 

Here is an example growth marketer job description template you can check out. 

Provide enough resources about who you are

When a candidate is applying for a job, they of course decide based on what the company’s like, which they usually judge on your website and introduction.

But according to Low6 Chief Marketing Officer Josh Turk’s statement in Keynote Search, “Listings accompanied by a recruiter video received 38% more high-talent follow-through applications, than those without. A refreshing take on this approach is to not only explain what your business does but to illustrate.”

Therefore, give your potential hires more opportunities to get to know your company, what it’s like to work for you, and your value proposition. Remember, you should let them know that there’s something in it for them too. Creating another channel to get to know your company helps you stand out from the rest of the listings.

Know what you want out of this role 

Nothing is more repelling than employers who are unsure of what they’re looking for. Some employers desperately fit various unnecessary requirements into one role, especially the ones it’s not typically the role’s job. If employers don’t even know the role well enough, how could the candidate expect you to understand their work and give them autonomy?

Ontra provides us with a good example of knowing what they exactly want from their growth marketer. Their job description’s qualifications and responsibilities are very specific to their business, at the same time, clear and concise. 

How to screen a good growth marketer? 

Aside from the usual individual interviews, growth marketers should definitely be tested for their technical skills. You want to make sure the resume matches their core competencies. 

Here are a few examples of what they can do for their skills test: 

• Create a social campaign for your company, and illustrate its step-by-step methodology, marketing strategy, and hypothesis
• Design an experiment based on a sample case study or set of metrics from your company
• Propose A/B tests and initiatives to optimize your landing page 
• Analyze sample data on a target audience, and create optimization strategies that will drive conversion rates based on that

Lastly, allow your team to interview the growth talent when they pass the skills test. Since the growth marketer will be working across teams, it’s best to see if they have a rapport with them. This way, the candidate may also have a better idea of how the team is as well. 

Growth marketing personas you’ll come across

Evidently, not all candidates will have the same experience and top expertise. Since growth marketing is such a multi-disciplinary role, you’d expect a diverse group of candidates to apply. Nonetheless, there is no superior type of candidate, only the one that best fits your company’s needs.

Below are the common growth marketing personas you may come across. 

The Savvy Performance Marketer

The savvy performance marketing is a growth marketing candidate with a lot of experience in paid acquisition and social media marketing. 

Paid acquisition is highly important for growth. Not only does it state the obvious – yes, it acquires customers – but it also provides a lot of data to analyze and optimize your strategy. Thus, candidates with this background have skills in data analytics, experience in running multi-channel campaigns, and familiarity with fast turnarounds. 

The only downside to this character is that they’re not used to long-term campaigns or other marketing channels such as e-mails and onsite content. 

The Ex-Businessman 

As mentioned earlier, former Founders could make great growth marketers. However, the Businessman character is not just limited to them. 

There may be candidates with a background in business management and have experienced the holistic demands of a company, in which a growth marketer would experience, too. Business managers keep things afloat while possessing a good growth mindset.

That said, some may not be as savvy in marketing specifics (e.g. SEO, email marketing, or copywriting). Make sure you hire a Businessman character that was hands-on with their marketing.  

The Digital Marketing Maven

Some refer to digital marketing as if it’s interchangeable with growth marketing. However, they have their similarities and key differences. Like growth marketing, this role also requires a multi-disciplinary approach as it handles content, paid socials, customer acquisition, lead generation, and brand awareness. 

Thus, a candidate with this background could be a very good fit for the role since they’re used to being a jack of all trades. The big difference is that digital marketing is not very data-driven and does not go to the extent of customer retention. 

Watch out for candidates who haven’t stepped up from the digital marketing role. Ensure the digital marketing maven you’re considering sees things from a long-term perspective to grow your customer base. 

The Data Analyst

This candidate is very good at data analytics and running experiments. Since data analytics is one of the key skills required for growth marketing, this candidate could be a good fit. However, they have to be able to create and optimize campaigns from their findings. 

Top 5 growth marketing skills

Although there are different growth marketing characters, they should still all possess the key skills required in any growth marketing job. Hence, we handpicked the top 5 growth marketer skills to help you vet the right abilities. 

Do you need a growth marketer right now? 

Companies in all stages need to keep growing in order to survive. It’s never too late to find a growth marketer if you want to scale your business. However, the optimal time to hire a growth marketer is as soon as you’ve achieved the product/market fit – a process in which you discover a strong demand for your product. 

Growth marketers are needed early on because the early stages of the company are the most crucial. According to an Inc. report, a company’s growth strategy is one of the critical success factors in early-stage businesses. 

Building a good foundation and a growth momentum could help you get to win more investors, and eventually achieve profitable status sooner. This is why growth marketers are so vital to every new business.